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. . . I find your comment on my book Labor Spy [TIME, Jan. 3] the best present in the Christmas sock. . . .
TIME, here's a question. . . . Suppose a man builds a factory and equips it with a lot of modern machinery. Say a million for the plant and another million for the equipment. Then he digs up a lot of orders and hires a force of 500 men and puts them to work making cheese or rolling pins or whatever. . . . Well, what kind of men does he get? Experts on statistics will tell you that a certain percentage are absolutely honest and want to work hard, another per cent will steal anything they can get away with, another group are malcontents, while another section are like Rush Holt, "natural-born hell-raisers." The first thing our owner knows, there is "labor trouble" in the plant and he wonders why. His foremen don't know and his employment experts don't know. So far, the only means discovered by industry is to have one of my ilk—a Labor Spy—who will circulate among the men and find out just exactly what is on their minds and why. I'm not referring to labor unions; unions are only one phase of the labor espionage business and, until the past five years, a very minor part of it.
The owner of the plant I speak of has fire insurance, tornado insurance, and life insurance on the lives of the principal officials. His largest cash outlay (in a good many plants) is for labor. Is he justified in hiring one of us to make certain that his labor machine doesn't go sour? I'll not pretend to answer. I'm retired and don't give a damn. . .
GT-99 New York City
Chamberlain's Leap
Sirs:
TIME'S editors, bemused by gout, evidently have never leapt walls. In your issue of Jan. 17 you show a picture of Britain's gaitered Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain "leaping" a stone wall. Look more closely. There is a ladder in the right-hand corner. Mr. Chamberlain has climbed up the ladder and is now gingerly stepping off. He is going to land stiff-legged at that. He will probably wryly agree that a leap should be goaty, not gouty.
HAROLD BERMAN New York City
Satisfying News
Sirs:
It certainly was a satisfaction to pick up the current copy of TIME [Jan. 10] and get the real story of that chap who went haywire out on the coast on a borrowed yacht.
To learn that Jack Morgan was only one of his assumed names is what I call real news. . . .
JOHN C. MORGAN President Morgan Advertising Co. Mansfield, Ohio