The flying wives of Sir Abe (diamonds) Bailey, 64, and Sir James (coal & iron) Heath, 77, were on the ground last week.
Lady Bailey, 39, landed her plane at Croydon airport, near London. She had been on-the-way from Cape Town, South Africa, since May 12. Trouble in the jungle and with stubborn British colonial officials, she said. But nonetheless Lady Bailey tossed off her helmet proudly; she had completed a round trip of 18,000 miles, something her rival, Lady Heath, had never done; furthermore, she had beaten Lady Heath in that strange shuttle race of last spring.*
Lady Heath, 31, last week in Manhattan, applied for her first U. S. citizenship papers. What Sir James would say about that, she did not say.
Unbroken Stick
Daniel Guggenheim is getting old—72. His name is still synonymous with gold, silver, copper and nitrate mining from Alaska to Chile. That synonymity developed a half century ago when the late Meyer Guggenheim started a smelter in Colorado for his seven sons. In the last three and a half years, however, Daniel Guggenheim has made his name consonant with aeronautical promotion. First he gave $500,000 to New York University for a college of aeronautics.† His good friend Alexander Klemin is its active head. Next he gave $2,500,000 for a Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aviation. His active son Harry F. Guggenheim is good president there.** Last week he let it be known that he had sent a $480,000 gift to Chile. The only condition was that the money be applied to promote South American flying.
South America has no endowed school for the teaching of general aeronautics. With the poor development of land transportation, there is a great opportunity for planes to carry passengers, mail and express over the greater part of the continent. This enterprising air transport companies are beginning to do—largely with planes bought in Europe.
Daniel Guggenheim is a grandson of Simon Guggenheim, a Swiss immigrant, and son of Meyer Guggenheim. He is the second of seven brothers: Isaac, Daniel, Murry, Solomon, Simon, Benjamin, William. Many years ago their father called them together, told them the parable of seven sticks which separately could be broken, but together were unbreakable. He started them in the mining business with a smelter in Colorado. They prospered, engaged the best brains in the mining business, gained control of vast copper mining properties which produced two-fifths of the world's copper supply. When they sold control of Chile Copper to Montana's Anaconda, in 1923, their Chilean investments alone were estimated at $100,000,000.
Daniel is known as the leading spirit of the group. During the War he took the lead in seeing that the Government was supplied with copper at half the prevailing market price. Before he was 40 he had crossed the Atlantic 70 times. He is a patron of Art, Music, Literature, horse breeding, horticulture, an excellent geographer and anthropologist, a noted philanthropist.*