(4 of 5)
Sirs:
In your article on Paterson, N. J. labeled "Debt & Taxes" (TIME, March 18), you say that "around those mills [silk mills] on the unsavory banks of the Passaic have been waged some of the bitterest and bloodiest strikes in U. S. history."
The banks of the Passaic are no longer unsavory. In 1924 there was completed the Passaic Valley trunk sewer, at a cost of $24,000,000, Paterson's share being $4,000,000, which takes the sewage of Paterson and other North Jersey municipalities in a subterranean duct and discharges it in lower New York Bay at Robins Reef. Numerous dye shops of Paterson are no longer allowed to discharge their waste in the river and the stream is now clear and without odor.
The strikes, while involving large numbers of people, have not been bitter and bloody. According to the Paterson police there has been only one death in labor troubles since 1894. . . .
FRANK J. DAVIES Counsellor at Law Paterson, N. J.
September Morn's Trail
Sirs:
Your account of how the painting by Paul Chabas entitled September Morn rose to fame (TIME, March 18) is not as complete as that given by Harry Reichenbach in an article he wrote for the Jan. 23, 1926 issue of Liberty, called Fame Made To Order.
Mr. Reichenbach implies that September Morn is very poor art indeed, and that it owes its fame only to the Comstock episode, which was really a publicity stunt engineered by himself. According to Mr. Reichenbach he was hired by the Russman Art Corp. to publicize the picture. His way of doing so was to hire ten boys and girls to stand in front of the window in which the painting was on display, while he visited Comstock and induced the latter to come and view the shocking spectacle of youth being corrupted. For this, Mr. Reichenbach says, he was paid only $45, out of which he had to pay his helpers 50¢ apiece. BROOKE ALEXANDER Princeton, N. J.
Sirs:
. . . You tell an interesting story of the disappearance of the famous painting September Morn and quote a statement from Paul Chabas, who painted it, to the effect that the picture has disappeared after it was sold to a Russian collector some years ago.
In May, 1923 my wife and I were entertained at dinner in Paris by Myron T. Herrick, who was at that time our Ambassador to France. After the dinner, when we had all risen from the table, he asked me whether I remembered that Anthony Comstock, that New York vice man, had caused the arrest and imprisonment of a humble shopkeeper for displaying in his window an engraving entitled September Morn. Upon my replying in the affirmative, he said, "Come in here, I want to show you something." We followed him into the drawing room, and there upon the wall was the original oil painting of September Morn, representing a nude girlish figure in all the charm and beauty of youth, standing with her feet in the water and shivering with a delicious innocence as the cold waves lapped her ankles. When we had all admired the beautiful picture, ''Isn't it a shame—" he said, "Isn't it a shame—" repeating the word, "that hypocrisy and fanaticism can go so far in our country!"