Immortal Wilson
SIRS:
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WILL JUDGE CORRECTLY BETWEEN FRIENDLY PITKINS CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE INFORMATION TIME OCT 7 AND THAT OF MR TUMULTY IN A POSITION TO KNOW MOST INTIMATELY REGARDING THE IMMORTAL WILSON WHO CREATED MOST OF HIS ENEMIES BY HIS ABILITY TO JUDGE BETWEEN FORWARD LOOKING MEN AND THOSE OF THE OPPOSITE TYPE IT IS SURPRISING THAT MANY WONDER IF COLLEGE PROFESSORS ARE REALLY UNDER PAID STOP
J. E. O'BRIEN
WHEELING, W. VA.
Resolution
Sirs:
When I read about your new advertisement policy in a recent issue, I was cheered to learn that TIME'S management, more courageous than most publishers, had decided to limit the amount of advertising matter. As I recall it, you said you would in the future restrict the newsmagazine to 80 pages. You can imagine what I thought of your courage when I opened the Oct. 7 issue and found the last page numbered 84. Have you . . . "weaseled"?
B. F. SODERBERG
St. Louis, Mo.
On p. 57 of the Sept. 16 issue, TIME published the following: "Until the end of 1930, no issue of TIME will exceed 80 pages plus cover and color inserts." The Oct. 7 issue, numbering 84 pages, included a four-page color insert.—ED.
Storey on Air
Sirs: . . . [In reference] to the picture of myself and my opinion of air transportation (TIME, Sept. 23).
The article does not reflect exactly the thought I had in mind . . . but in the main it is accurate. I believe there will be considerable travel by airplane by those who are curious and those who wish to have the experience of the trip. In the end, however, the travel by this means will settle down to those who have urgent business and are willing to pay the extra price for speed. Last year the Santa Fe handled an average of 12,400 passengers per day on its trains. It might lose several hundred of these to airplanes and not be affected seriously. The increased travel by rail due to the growth of the country would probably make up for any loss such as this. The airplane certainly will not affect us in the same degree that the automobile has done. In 1920 we handled approximately 15,000,000 passengers—in 1928 approximately 4,500,000— the decrease being due entirely to automobile and bus. In the case of the automobile its greater flexibility and convenience is responsible for its vogue—in the case of the bus the cheaper fares. Neither reason will apply to the airplane.
W. B. STOREY
President
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway System
Chicago, Ill.
Lanny-yap
Sirs:
TIME'S use of "lagniappe'' (Sept. 23, p. 13), easily a dollar's worth of word and unfortunately not included in many abridged dictionaries, recalls Mark Twain who, in Life on the Mississippi reported pickling up an excellent word, worth traveling to New Orleans to get—"a nice, limber, impressive, handy word—'Lagniappe.' They pronounce it lanny-yap.
"It is Spanish—so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune the first day (in New Orleans); heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth.