Governor Gardner's Back Sirs:
May a reader who enjoys TIME — its frankness, its sometimes bluntness, but especially the little bits of news, side-lights if you please, that are found in no other paper to my knowledge; may I make just one little complaint? TIME, " Sept. ... 21, in "Drop-a-Crop" subhead Other States... in North Carolina estimated crop 715,000 bales) Governor Oliver Max Gardner turned his back on the South." At least some of us North Carolinians think our excellent Governor did no such thing. We think he showed more wisdom that some other Governors—he implored Governor Sterling of Texas admittedly the key man of the key State to call a conference of Governors and their Commissioners of Agriculture in Memphis —specified NO SPEECHES, a two-day session to formulate a concerted, uniform program for the South in the cotton crisis. We think subsequent events have proven him more nearly right than other—some of whom have called legislatures, passed "No Cotton Laws" based on 75% of the producing States doing the same. Texas then upsets the plans by passing a 30% acreage law, making the No Cotton Laws of no avail since there can be no 75% prohibition of cotton without Texas. Now nothing remains for the States with No Cotton Laws but to repeal and pass other laws, necessitating other special sessions of legislatures if anything is to be done to help cotton this year. . . . Governor Gardner knew that cotton prohibition in the South would play into the hands of the Egypt, Russia et al; he knew the economic loss the South would suffer from no cotton; loss from employment in gins, plow hands, cotton pickers, truck drivers, warehouses, cotton buyers of loss employment in gins, plow hands, cotton pickers, truck drivers, warehouses, cotton buyers. He knew that the South would miss the money its crop brings in — around $500,000,000 this year at 6¢ per Ib. — that some institutions, merchants, banks would suffer.
We are satisfied that Governor Gardner had a logical slant on the cotton question: that he did not "turn his back on the South.''
THOMAS H. SUTTON Fayetteville, N. C.
TIME'S was phrase "turned his back on the South" was unfortunate. All praise to North Carolina's Gardner for turn his back on the South's other Governors when he conscientiously disagreed with the direction they were heading.—ED.
Spooler & Warper Sirs: Please — it's Barber-Colman [TIME, Sept. 21, p. 55] and it's a spooler and a warper — two different machines. . . . Also this system is acknowledged to be one of the foremost developments of past decade in textile manufacturing, greatly speeding up & simplifying the preparation of the warp threads for the loom and the weaving process. Preparation of the cotton fibre for weaving is a complicated process with too many operations involved. Present mills are seeing and will see a good many simplifications and combinations of these spinning operations (occurring prior to the spooling & warping mentioned above). You might call attention to the above. Correct it on the part of Sherwood Anderson as he is undoubtedly to blame — I noted the same error in a recent issue of Vanity Fair.