The Contributors' Column

FOLLOWING the seasons, Marjory Gane Harkness divides her time between Lake Forest, Illinois, and Wonalancet, New Hampshire. Two years ago she turned to us with ‘ some seething plans for writing,’and our subsequent encouragement has been well rewarded. She was asked if she would prefer to have her present essay anonymous. ‘Ought it to be?’ she replied, ‘I do not feel so.

I speak for all widows and have not revealed anything private.’ ▵ In his analysis of the rise and power of Huey Long, George E. Sokolsky reaches conclusions as unexpected as they are persuasive. In these days of syndicated news we are thankful for those few individual observers who travel over the vast reaches of the United States and whose penetration enables us to see more than the caricatures in the press. ▵ Nine years before the depression, Robert Dean Frisbie made up his mind to trade his job in California for a place in the tropical sun. In his quest for the unmolested state he moved first to Tahiti, then to Puka-Puka, and then to an uninhabited isle. From Puka-Puka he wrote us as follows: —

Though I have not so much as a penny, I am very happy. The place is actually more primitive than ever it was, and I really look for it to revert to savagery unless copra again becomes a marketable product. As it is, we have been told that the return of the trading vessel is very uncertain, and that we can depend on only a yearly man-o’-war for communication with the outside world. It seems to me that I have a rare opportunity ahead of me: to watch the island sink back into a primitive state. It is sinking, too, as I have tried to point out in my sketches. People can’t go to church in pur is naturalibas, and they can’t buy European gadgets unless someone will buy their copra. Without religion and commerce no one but a curious lubber like myself will take any further interest in them.

An American who would pass judgment on European affairs must have linguistic ability, an exceptional knowledge of history, a quizzical intentness not to be shaken by blandishments, and, above all, a keen sense of balance—an equipment, for instance, clearly possessed by Frank H. Simonds, the most experienced foreign correspondent in American journalism. Hilda Rose is a mite of a woman (she weighs eighty-seven pounds) who once taught school and who to-day, with an aged husband and a son in his teens, is pioneering in Fort Vermilion, Alberta. Her letters, written to three close friends in New York, help to keep her going; thanks to a friendly ‘round robin,’ they remind the Atlantic’s circle of the hardihood and spirit which our great-grandparents must have had on their frontiers. It seems only fair to repeat this caution uttered by one of Mrs. Rose’s correspondents: ’I only wish the readers knew she did not volunteer all the sad details. These had to be got out of her by insistent inquiries.’ Should any readers wish to send a Christmas remembrance, they may do so direct by letter to the above address or through the agency of the T. Eaton Company, Winnipeg. ▵ A recent examination of the entire mass of Dickinson family papers by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, niece and heir of Emily Dickinson. revealed the existence of various unpublished poems, preserved at the family homestead in Amherst and omitted by the editors of the first three volumes published in 1890, 1891, and 1893. A single volume containing 130 of these new poems will appear on November 22.

Lewis W. Douglas was born in Arizona forty-one years ago. His qualities, tested as they had been in the war, in finance, and in four sessions of Congress, led to his appointment as Director of the Budget of the United States. For two years he threw the whole weight of his energies behind the policy of balancing the national account. Of the danger of deficits he is qualified to speak with singular emphasis. This is the third in a series of five articles by Mr. Douglas. ▵ Whether in his novels, his essays, or his short stories, Henry Williamson is at his best when he writes of nature. His studies of the Devon moors, his stories of the little-seen denizens of the British Isles, have brought him an increasing number of devoted readers, among whom were to he numbered John Galsworthy and the late T. E. Lawrence. The Atlantic considers itself fortunate to print in this and in earlier issues three panels from Mr. Williamson’s most recent work, Salar the Salmon. This story of undersea life will be published in book form early in the spring of 1936. ▵ The paper by Della T. Lutes should be read aloud in every Atlantic household before, not after, Thanksgiving dinner. It is guaranteed to make the mouth water. Walter D. Edmonds, the novelist, is most at home in the Erie Canal country of upper New York. Is there, we wonder, a particular brand of humor which flourishes in that soil? Or is it because of Edmonds’s own sauce that his legends slip down so easily? ▵ Lovers of poetry will do well to keep their eyes peeled for Burning City, a new collection of ten long poems about America by Stephen Vincent Benét. ▵ If you love to travel but can’t pay your way, what is there to do? Juanita Harrison, an American colored woman in middle life, gives you her own highly individual answer. With a smattering of languages, with friendliness and buoyancy, she worked her way as ladies’ maid and housekeeper through no less than twenty-two countries. Of her many letters of reference we quote one from the English couple for whom she worked on the Cap d’Antibes: —

Dear Miss Morris, —
My husband and I are only too willing to give you references for Juanita. We were very fond of her and found her an amazing character, besides being a very good servant. We left her at the villa, knowing full well that she would look after it just the same as if we were there. Juanita is a really good woman in the finest sense of the word, and full of a wonderful humanity. I should be glad if you will tell her if she ever comes to London to write to us. We should be delighted to see her. Yours truly,
HT:LKV AND HUGH ROSE
‘Braes,’ St. Mawes, Cornwall

Miss Harrison’s letters, an installment of which appeared in the October Atlantic, were carefully collected and edited by one of her other employers, Miss Mildred Morris, to whom our thanks are due. ▵ It is no wonder that Joe Lee, a young Bostonian, should feel impelled to recapture the beauty of autumn. It is the most splendid season in the New England calendar. ▵ Now affiliated with the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, William B. Munro was lor many years a professor in the Department of History and Government of Harvard University. He is expert in his knowledge of constitutions. ▵ For more than a quarter of a century Arthur Pound has been closely identified with industry in its most active centres. His book, The Iron Man in Industry, is a reference work highly regarded by those who know.

At theAtlantic’sinvitation, Mr. Lewis Douglas, late Director of the Budget, has made a conscientious scrutiny of our Federal fiscal policy, His statements have occasioned a debate in whichAtlanticreaders will take part for some months to come.

Dear Atlantic, —
It would be a very agreeable situation for those of us who were born in New England and are endowed with some of the proclivities of the Scot if Mr. Douglas were correct in writing that ‘Saving — Not Spending — Will Bring Reëmployment.’ But when one considers that bonds are advertised for sale at a price to yield as little as one per cent, it is difficult to believe that more capilal — that is, more saving — is really needed. The fallacy of Mr. Douglas’s renewed plea for special efforts to revive the capitalgoods industries is clearly exposed in Father Ryan’s interesting book, A Better Economic Order.
Mr. Douglas is quite right in staling that thrift is still a virtue — but only for the man who will himself suffer or who will cause privation to others by the neglect of it. It is not thrifty for a very rich man to save when more capital will merely increase the number of factories, of which there already are too many. A man who used to do this sort of thing was called a miser— a valuable word, which seems to have gone out of use. A man can roll up and plough in profits nowadays indefinitely without being called a miser. On the contrary, he is honored, and for his benefit the inheritance tax was removed from the new tax law. Andrew Carnegie dispersed his wealth, believing that it was wrong for a man to die rich; he believed that the virtue of saving has a limit. Mr. Rosenwald, in an Atlantic article in May 1929, denounced the formation of perpetual trusts. A trust fund can be the very perfection of thrift; and in France, where thrift is proverbial, trust funds are not sanctioned by law.
Neither spending nor saving will bring general and stable employment. If has been hoped by some people that spending would prime the pump, would start Ihe wheels of industry; its immediate benefit is to keep the unemployed alive in the way least injurious to their morale; but its most fundamental benefit would be to stave off the day of reckoning in the hope that leaders of business and finance will see the handwriting on the wall in time.
Until our civilization is falling in ruins there will never again be sufficient opportunity for profitable labor to keep all workmen busy all the time. Our scientific friends tell us so; indeed, we are invited to rejoice that machines have ‘abolished the slavery of human toil’ — and this at a time when vast sums are being spent to provide toil.
Thus it appears that there is only one way out: the short day and short week — each short enough to put everyone to work. And there is a potent reason why this will probably not be tried: it means the very great reduction of those profits of industry which have never benefited more than a few people.
I know of an island in the South Pacific where unemployment is universal and almost continuous. There is no reason for working all the time, therefore the foolish natives don’t do it; a few hours of toil a week provide all that is needed, all that (‘an be used. The inhabitants of this uncivilized island suffer from unemployment of a severity and duration not yet experienced in Europe or America; but those poor South Sea Islanders don’t know that they are suffering. On the contrary, they sleep through the hot afternoon, and spend the night talking, singing, and playing on the beach.
In our more rugged climate, machines have brought the opportunity for Americans to lead a happy life. Machines have brought not only the possibility, but also the necessity, of profit for all in the form of leisure, and they have destroyed the possibility of concentrated profit in wealth for the favored few. Is America going to make the fatal mistake of trying to return to the old order in which work was provided for all, and profit for the few? Or will America, in its hour of decision, rise to its great opportunity to organize a system of society in which the leisure of our ten million unemployed shall, in the midst of plenty, be shared by all?
HARRISON W. SMITH
Springfield, Maine

Dear Atlantic, —
Lewis W. Douglas’s article in a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly comprises a verification of the truth that the potential employer must be possessed of ’savings’ or capital before he is possessed of the ability to employ.
Possession of capital, however, is dependent on continuance of the law which sustains the capitalist in his right to his capital. Employment therefore depends ultimately upon common support of capital or property rights.
Civilization is born of uncompromising and untiring consistency in the establishment of property rights, and exists until it no longer respects the order on which its property rights are established. Future historians may be called upon to explain, in regard to the United States, the early breakdown in protection of property rights. The years from the beginning of our present industrial age until the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt were marked by contempt of all property rights excepting those of the industrialists, and the months since this administration began are marked by contempt of all property rights including those of the industrialists.
MARY ALLEN GRANT
Sparta, Illinois

I How words grow.

Dear Atlantic, —
I was interested to see in Howell Vines’s story ‘The Mustydines Was Ripe,’ in the July Atlantic, that the hero carried his belongings in a ’crokersack’ (crocussack). The words ‘crocus-sack ’ and ‘crocus-bag’ are commonly used in the rural sections of the Southeastern States from Virginia to Georgia, and perhaps elsewhere, as the name of the burlap bags which hold seed and fertilizer. I have once heard a length of burlap called ‘crocus-cloth.’
The word ‘crocus’ as applied to burlap is of long use. In the (printed) Vestry Book of Kingston Parish, Virginia, under date of a meeting in 1770 appears the entry: ‘Ordered, That thirty yards of crocus be purchased for the parlour at the Glebe.’ Evidently for a floor covering.
I am interested to learn how this use of a familiar word originated. Jute was first introduced into America from India about 1750, and within twenty years the material was called ‘crocus.’ As the botanical name of the plant from which it is made is Corchorus, I have thought that perhaps this unfamiliar word, being applied to the newly introduced material, was shortened and changed into a more familiar form in common use.
Can any of your readers suggest a better explanation?
G. MACLAREN BRYDON, D.D.
Richmond, Virginia

A correction for Mr. Embree.

Dear Atlantic, —
We should not like to be classed with those who do protest too much; but Mr. Edwin R. Embree’s comment in his June article that ‘the jealousy of the southern section of the state [California] has forced the development of a large subdivision in Los Angeles which already numbers nearly 7000 students, the overwhelming majority of whom are women studying to become teachers,’has moved me to obtain from our Registrar the following statistics of enrollment: —

As Mr. Embree himself says, figures speak for themselves.
AGNES EDWARDS PARTIN
Los Angeles, California

Living in the past.

Dear Atlantic, —
Mr. Stanley Casson’s article in July, ‘Challenge to Complacency,’ is of more than ordinary interest to those of us who live in ancient Carthage and have seen smooth grassy mounds adjoining our villas carved by the archæologists into the ruins of Roman and Punic civilizations. In common with most people hereabouts, we have, lining our garden path and adorning the pillars of our wall, round stone balls about the size of Dutch cheeses, the ammunition of wars fought on this ground two thousand years ago. I take my children across a field (avoiding the camels of Bedouins encamped in an ancient granary) and we bathe in the shallows formed by the ruins of the enormous sea wall first erected by Dido when she fled from Troy with treasure which even then was ancient. Sometimes we climb the Byrsa hill to the museum, and look at the toys and milk bottles of the children who used to run about in the walled city whose pride caused some of the most dreadful wars in history. Last night when the moon was full I stood on a mosaic pavement built by some Roman upon the ruins of Punic days, and wondered if it were possible that so short a time ago one of the most horrible sieges of history took place here. These cobblestone roads, neatly drained and bordered by beautiful terraces, were once thronged with people as proud as we are. I wonder if, two thousand years hence, archæologists. poking about in the débris of my villa, will admire the designs of my tiled floors and marvel at the marble sink in my kitchen!
ALICE BERRY-HART Carthage, NorthAfrica

Little sisters — and brothers, too — please note this.

Dear Atlanlic, —
In the Contributors’ Column of the October issue I find a letter from a college graduate to a former teacher. It is a typical letter from untried youth. She judges the results she sees with no idea of the causes behind these results. Out of one experience she judges all. It is the prerogative of youth to make rash judgments.
After twenty years in business I think, perhaps, my observations may be a little more accurate.
It is one of men’s favorite accusations that women are emotionally unstable. If a woman loses her temper under strain, that to a man is emotional instability. We have no refuge in ‘God damns’ and the other phrases which make up man’s emotional outlets. Somehow even when women make use of them they don’t seem to give us the letdown that they give men. But when a man loses his temper — and in twenty years I can assure you I have seen a great number of men lose their tempers—it is a perfectly justifiable matter.
If the writer in question had worked for five or ten years, had ambition, had the training, had the need for a position that was well paid, and then saw some really inferior man get the position toward which she was working, merely because of her sex, I wonder if she would go sour? I think she would. And if she succeeded in getting that position and found that her salary was exactly one half that paid a man for the same work, would she snap and sputter P And if she were told men were paid more because they supported families, while she tried to make up for the fact that her father had been adequate only in bringing children into the world, or supported a widowed mother and helped to educate the younger children, or helped out the children of a brother who was smarter at bringing them into the world than in taking care of them, would she be sour?
My experience in business lias entirely convinced me that man is the gossipy sex par excellence. The most casual salesman or, for that matter, executive — who has a few minutes on his hands while he waits for his appointment will, without any encouragement, tell sou how wonderful his daughter is, what ambitions his son has, and intimate details about his home life that would make his wife blush — and often make me blush.
Any kind of job must have a value beyond its intrinsic one. We all must has e something to work lor. A title, or more money, and the better of these is the money. Men do not work because they love it— neither do women, and the fact that the average girl must take her place in an office for the first few years of her married life is evidence enough that men are only too willing to share their responsibilities. There is nothing really so irritating in an office as the boy or girl fresh from college. Many men have complained about boys fresh from college. In relation to business they stand in the same place at the end of college as they stood in relation to college at the end of their high-school years. An A. B. degree ensures no business ability. The general attitude is not that of one willing to learn a new game. The altitude in fact is that no one else has ever been to college. Something should be done about the girl just coming from college. If her teachers are wise they will tell her that she is on the threshold of something new and different. We enter college knowing we are going to learn. We enter business pretty sure we know everything. The girl’s discovery that women in business are a mistake is correct, but not for the reasons she gives. They are a mistake because after ten years, or even five, of being a combination of machine turning out accurate work inaccurately given, and a clairvoyant who must guess what is meant and not blindly follow haphazard instructions, they are no longer fit to be mothers. If they snap at the children — who would not, with shattered nerves? We would gladly resign our tasks in the office if our brothers were capable of the task of caring for us. But there never has been a time in the history of the world, since we led the sheltered life of doing a wash for a family of eight, canning for the household, spinning and dressmaking, that we have n’t carried our own economic weight. It is ten o’clock and I am still at my desk, because it was important to the executive I work with to talk over the fighting points of the Louis and Baer fracas to the extent of eating up two hours. He went home promptly, but 1 must carry on. My temper will not be smooth in the morning, and if the little girl who just came down from Mount Holyoke docs n’t do as I tell her, — a simple thing. — write the instructions that I give her so that she won’t forget them before she crosses the hall, I’m afraid I’ll be vexed. Little sister, much is forgiven you, because you talk in ignorance, but write us again ten years hence! JANE DOE

If you ’re waking, call me early.

Dear Atlantic, —
Della T. Lutes, in ‘Breakfast. Old Style’ (September), was delightfully succulent in her regrets for the passing of the breakfasts that were really breakfasts. But the inference that such meals belong entirely to the past was a little contradictory to some of my experiences in rural North Carolina within the last three years. In many of the country homes I have relished breakfasts as richly heavy as those described in the art icle. There were often eggs, of course. But they were accompanied by huge quantities of rice, stimulatingly tasty ham or sausage, or even fried chicken. There were two or three kinds of preserves or jelly to go with the hot, flaky biscuits in which fresh butter, churned by hand, melted to a delicious yellow. In one home I remember distinctly that two kinds of pie and a cake were served at the same breakfast. The cake and jelly were excellent together. And after providing all of this my host graciously kept insisting, ‘Take out an’ help yourself.’ I did.
FALK S. JOHNSON
Mars Hill, North Carolina

Breakfast in Pennsylvania.

Dear Atlantic, —
I am lying in bed in a hospital which has just served me ‘the standardized American breakfasl of orange juice (the glass stood in cracked ice), toast, and coffee. It has been the accompaniment to my reading of Mrs. Lutes’s ’Breakfast, (old Style.’ Even so, I must still object to the ‘Old Style of her title. Less than a month ago my family and I sat down to breakfast in a farmhouse in Southern Pennsylvania. Cooked cereal, fried cakes and syrup (from a modern can, however), roast pork in rich gravy, potato salad, great slabs of homemade bread, preserves, homecanned plums, a glorious sponge cake, coffee, and milk (warm from the cow) were set before us in one fell swoop. No wonder our appetites staggered! The men of the farm had eaten at five; evidently there was a great disparity between their capacities and Ours, for our hostesses were horrified at the poverty of our seven-o’clock consumption.
I have eaten breakfasts in Japan of fish soup, fried fish, rice, and pickles; I have eaten breakfasts on the Tigris of greasy mutton, greasy rice, and Arab bread soaked in leben (clabbered milk, almost), but my Pennsylvania breakfast is still the prize of them all. ’Breakfast, Old Style’ has not passed from every American home.
MRS. DAVID D. BAKER
Baltimore, Maryland

The Atlantic in swaddling clothes.

Dear Atlantic,
Perhaps your readers would like to see an article about your younger self which I found in the August 1858 issue of my bound volumes of Merry’s Museum:
‘THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, devoted to Literature, Art, and Politics. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.
‘This able and interesting monthly has now accomplished its first half year, having from the start achieved a brilliant success. This is the more remarkable, as it commenced in a season of great depression, when other magazines were shaking in the wind, or falling before the blast. It is ably sustained by the very best writers in the country. A great variety of talent is employed upon it, and talent of such an order as never fails to command attention. Its politics will suit some classes of readers; its genial humor and sparkling wit will suit all. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table,” who is sometimes irreverently spoken of as the funny little Doctor, has more in him than some regiments of overgrown men, notwithstanding he has let out enough, in the last twenty years, or so, to supply material for fame to half a dozen. What would not the London Punch give for such a contributor?
‘The same fruitful pen is often detected in the poetry of the work, with golden twinklings of Longfellow, and other favorite bards of New England. We do not see how any family that has a taste for the cream of American literature, can dispense with this monthly visitor. To have it come regularly to your parlor is like receiving periodical visits, and holding periodical confabs with Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, Tuckerman, Whittier, and a score or two of kindred spirits whose presence and influence would throw a sort of halo about your door — whose gleaming would scarcely be lost before a fresh visit would renew it. If the Atlantic continues to do as well as it has done, we confidently predict that it will be as popular, by-and-by, as MERRY’S MUSEUM, and have young men and maidens, old men and children, watching for it at all the post-offices at every return of the month. The young Merrys will please tell their parents, and their older brothers and sisters, what we have said about it. If they have made a proper use of the MUSEUM, they will be fully competent to navigate the “Atlantic."‘
The irregular method of punctuation and capitalization may seem odd, but I have copied this review exactly from the Museum.
As for me, I am fifteen, and while just outgrowing Saint Nicholas. I am rapidly learning to appreciate the Atlantic of to-day.
MARGUERITE ALVIS
Green field, Oklahoma

No month passes without our receiving a score of letters with their chuckling ’Signs of the Times.’ Shall we bring out anAtlanticsupplement?

Dear Atlantic, —
There was plenty of room above and below, yet the sign writer left only enough space to make praise of oil and give directions in one notice. Here is what we read at a California service station: —

100% PENNSYLVANIA PURE LADIES

ALFRED J. SMITH
Oakland, California

Dear Atlantic, —
I have been enjoying your recent reprints of strange signs, and I cannot remain silent, for a friend of mine returned from a motor trip the other day with word of an unusually cryptic one.
Between El Paso, Texas, and Carlsbad, New Mexico, there are very few stops, and these are lone gasoline stations and occasional eating houses. It is one of the bleakest territories of the great open spaces of our state. My friend stopped for lunch at one of these wide places in the road and was thoroughly rewarded when his eyes beheld the following:

DON’T ASK US FOR INFORMATION IF WE KNEW ANYTHING WE WOULDN’T BE OUT HERE

MARY NASS BERMAN
San Antonio, Texas