(2 of 4)
Sirs: May 23 Letters inexcusably maligns scientists, apropos their ready remarriage and hypothetical helplessness. Myself and scientist friends have built our own houses. We can do plumbing, carpentry, electric wiring and painting. We have sold merchandise, bought stock, and written copy. We raise vegetables and live stock as well as children; can cook, keep house and nurse the sick. Perhaps a few professors of now-scientific subjects are inept, but as for scientists, they look like hardware dealers, work like millwrights and catch on like columnists. We can prove this by cases at Berkeley and Stanford as well as here and back East. We are, like all strongly sexed males, vulnerable to feminine loveliness. Scientists are remarried promptly by smart women who recognize good catches.
M. W. DE LAUBENFELS Pasadena. Calif.
Taking TIME
Sirs: I "took" the Literary Digest for 48 years, including every issue; now I am .going to "take" TIME for all the balance of my life; I like it, especially its courage.
CHAS. L. HYDE SR. Pierre, S. Dak.
Flat Glass
Sirs: TIME, May 30 said, "Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co. has contributed to Ohio's relief troubles by discharging 4,000 of its 5.000 Toledo workers." This statement creates a wrong impression. The flat glass industry has felt the full force of this depression and operations every where have, of necessity, been sharply reduced. Our company was compelled to lay off a considerable number of its workers — most of them temporarily — but there is quite a difference between such a layoff and a "discharge."
We feel strongly on this subject because we have been working for years to iron out seasonal peaks and valleys and insure steady employment at good wages. As proof—our factory wage workers were paid an average of $1,581 per year during 1936 and 1937
JOHN D. BIGGERS President Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co. Toledo, Ohio
All thanks to able President Biggers for setting TIME'S record straight. Last month President Biggers wound up his job as Administrator of the Government's Unemployment Census, was happy to report to President Roosevelt that he had spent only $1,986,595.46 of the $5,000,000 authorized.—ED.
Dark Angel
Sirs: TIME, you slay me, not for giving Charlie Ward and Brown & Bigelow to Minneapolis, but for calling Mr. Ward an angel—even a dark one [TIME, May 23].
Louis M. HAN SEN St. Paul, Minn.
TIME hastens to return Mr. Ward, Brown & Bigelow to St. Paul, where they belong, apologizes to all concerned.—ED.
Soaring Flight
Sirs: I wish to thank you for the excellently written account of my soaring flight from Wichita Falls, Tex. to Tulsa, Okla., setting a new American distance record [TIME, May 2]. I am bound, however, to point out one error.
You said that I was towed into the sky by an airplane, which was not true. I was launched by an engine-driven winch mounted on a truck (designed and built by E. Paul du Pont Jr.) winding in 4,000 ft. of ⅜in. manila rope spread across the airport. This enabled me to climb to 800 ft. above the ground before dropping the rope. . . .