The Contributors' Column

IN words that should sink deep into the conscience of every Gentile, Dr. Alvin Johnson (p. 733) calls a halt to the virulent gossip now poisoning American minds: ‘Need I state that in recent years there has been a marked increase in anti-Semitism in America? Everyone knows that this is true. Need I attempt to recount the causes of this hideous phenomenon? Everyone knows that there has been an active anti-Semitic propaganda carried on, in part by sympathizers with Nazi Germany, in part by gullible individuals who take seriously such myths as that of the “great Jewish conspiracy” of international bankers and Bolsheviks, to ruin the world and establish the empire of David on its ashes.'

Dr. Johnson is Director of the New School for Social Research and Chairman of the University in Exile.

A Chicagoan who studied at the University of Chicago and who has written successively for the Associated Press, the Chicago Evening Post, and the Chicago American,Milton S. Mayer (p. 711) has a hearty respect for lie1 dynamic personality that has taken the Windy City by storm — Charlotte Carr, the new Director of Hull House.

Frances Woodward (p. 719) divides her time between Boston and the Connecticut coast. She has contributed to the leading periodicals and is well remembered for her ‘Oklahoma Race Riot,’ which won the prize, offered by Scribner’s in 1931 for the best contribution on Life in the United Slates.

Bill Adams (p. 758) is an English oak who has his roots deep down in California. Seafarers and landlubbers have a treat in store if they have never read his colorful biography. Ships and Women.

A New York attorney, member of the firm of Miller, Owen, Otis and Bailly. Leslie Craven (p. 767) has devoted years of his life to the safeguarding of American railroads. For sixteen years he was one of three members of the valuation counsel for all the railroads in the country and a member of counsel for the carriers in the O’Fallon Case, which settled the principles for the valuation of railroad property and the recapture of their earnings under the Transportation Act of 1920. Then in 1933 and 1931 he became counsel for Mr. Joseph Eastman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and thus saw the dilemma of the railroads from a new point of view. Mr. Craven’s article is timely. On October 29 the Emergency Fact Finding Board appointed by the President in the controversy between the railroads and the labor unions recommended that the proposal of a 15 per cent wage cut be abandoned. This action intensifies the crisis and makes certain that the railroad problem will be a major issue before Congress at the coming session.

The lyrical quality of Robert Nathan’s (p. 777) prose and poetry has placed his name high in the list of contemporary writers. Readers are to be reminded of that touching novel of his, Road of Ages, which was written two years ago almost, as it seems, with prescience.

Agnes Repplier (p. 778) affords us quizzical and enchanting glimpses of American life as it was lived in a gentler season.

Pardee Lowe (p. 785) is a Chinese-Ameriean of the second generation. After graduating from the Harvard School of Business Administration, he devoted himself to a sociological study of the Chinese in California. His researches have led him through the fascinating byways of the old Barbary Coast in San Francisco, where he is to-day a familiar and welcome figure.

A teacher of English at the University of Colorado and author of The Saga of American Society,Dixon Wecter (p. 793) underscores that snobbery which has turned us inside out since 1930. He writes: ‘ Although nobody doubts that brains and a noble passion for humanity may appear in men sprung from low economic levels, and though few will deny that monopoly of opportunity must be discouraged from age to age by fair and temperate means, yet to insist upon the Messianic character of the common man qua common man, or the infallibility of the discontented, is to build a snobbery which is even more mischievous than the contumely of a Hamilton or Jay.’

In recent weeks the letters from ‘Under Thirty’ have been almost singleminded in their thought of what war would mean. The Atlantic is privileged to publish two letters which were written in England when the world was on the verge of catastrophe. G. A. (p. 800) is a poet of recognized ability; E. R. (p. 801) is a young schoolteacher. It is interesting to compare their desperate calm with the perplexity in America so well expressed by Robert C. Hallett (p. 804) of San Francisco.

In this issue E. F. Benson (p. 805) brings to completion his picture of the most famous English household of the nineteenth century. His biography is shortly to appear in book form.

Born in Amsterdam, Holland, J. Anton de Haas (p. 815) became an American citizen in 1917. He holds the degrees of B. A. and Ph. D. from Leland Stanford Junior University and took his M. A. at Harvard, where he is now the William Ziegler Professor of International Relationships. He speaks with a rounded knowledge of American universities, having taught or lectured at Ohio State University, Columbia, the University of Washington, and the University of Southern California.

Born in Moscow in 1901, Marya Zaturenska (p. 823) is to-day the wife of the American poet and critic, Horace Gregory, the mother of two children, and the author of two books of verse, Threshold and Hearth and Cold Morning Sky, the second of which has recently been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell (p. 821) first went to Labrador in 1892. He fitted out the first hospital ship for the North Sea fishermen and cruised with the fishermen from the Bay of Biscay to Iceland. During his mission he has built five hospitals, seven nursing stations, and four orphanage boarding schools, and has done everything in his power to promote industry, agriculture, and child-welfare work along the coasts of Labrador and North Newfoundland. To-day he spends his winters at St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, but his thoughts are still ice-bound.

A Californian who knows our foreign population intimately, Jo Pagano (p. 829) has staked out for himself a characteristic province of American life, whether in gay or sombre mood.

A journalist whose headquarters have been in Washington since 1926, Charles Stevenson (p. 835) has brought to light the shocking state of affairs in the building anti contracting fields. Trained in accuracy as a correspondent in the Capital, he wrote first for a bureau serving newspapers in the South and Southwest. From 1928 to 1932 he was in charge of the Washington Bureau of the Philadelphia Bulletin, in 1934 he held the same appointment with the Washington Herald. Thereafter he became a free lance.

Charges of such importance as those which Mr. Stevenson has to make must be closely documented. And in order to prove his case beyond shadow of doubt Mr. Stevenson felt it advisable to divide his argument into two parts, the second and concluding half to appear in the January issue.

Wilson Follett’s (p. 849) department on ‘The State of the Language’ brings forth this pertinent request from Gaylord W. Laue of Bellingham, Washington: —

‘I wish Mr. Follett would make some comment on the hail and indiscriminate habit of using the verb “to sell" for the meaning of “to persuade,” “to convince,” “to accept.” Now comes a new form: “lo unsell.” In a trade journal (American Paint and Oil Dealer for September) there is an article in which the author says that the salesman must convince his customer that she must not paint over dirt. But the author says it thus: " A little inquiry will reveal that his first job is to unsell her on the idea of painting over the dirt.” '

Atlantic readers will remember Nora Waln (p. 851) for her House of Exile, and for her vivid and compassionate letters when first she saw China aroused by the Comintern. Upon her husband’s retirement, from the Chinese Customs Service, she bade farewell to her adopted Chinese family and went with him to the Rhine Valley, where, as he studied music and she fraternized with the people, the plans for her new book gradually evolved.

In this inimitable fashion,Punchreviews ‘Spella Ho.'

THE UNDER DOG GETS UP

Puling infants, attention!

Madison, Wisconsin
Dear Atlantic, —
It sort of roils me when a comparatively callow youth tells the public that his fictitious character. Studs Lonigan, was a ‘normal American boy of his period.’ My wife and I reared six children, some older than Mr. Farrell and some younger, Every one is a university graduate, and every one is enough of a rugged individualist to be earning his own living, and, where married, a living for his family. Not one of our children had any of the moronic characteristics of Studs. Not one of our children was a poolroom. drinking habitué. Perhaps such a life was normal to Mr. Farrell, but it is effrontery to assert that such was the life of the ‘normal American youth.’
That Mr. Farrell is the victim of anti-prohibition propaganda is disclosed by his statement that the prohibition period was ‘one of the most insane periods of our history.’ At the time the prohibition amendment was adopted, Mr. Farrell was, or should have been, still attached to his mother’s apron strings, He would then have had a clearer idea of normal living. I wonder if he ever lived in a community of about 800 people with 45 saloons and brothels galore. I did. and know from experience what the prohibitionists were trying to do. They attempted to provide an environment in which the youth of the land could grow up decently and soberly. The mistake they made was the assumption that a majority of the people wanted such an environment and that they would cooperate in the elimination of the ‘major cause of all automobile accidents, alcohol.’ See report of the American Medical Association.
More evidence of Mr. Farrell’s error is his assumption that bootleg liquor was responsible for the many deaths reported by the anti-prohibition press. Almost every death reported was caused by ethyl alcohol, as disclosed by post-mortem examinations. On page 209 of the book Alcohol and Man. edited by Dr. Haven Emerson, we find this: —
' It is not these added poisons which cause death, but the? ethyl alcohol contained in the illicit as in legal alcoholic beverages, the only important difference being that the bootleg liquors are usually less poisonous bemuse they are so commonly diluted with water.’
A part of the foregoing was prompted by the puling of some of the infants under thirty who write for the Atlantic. What kind of world do they think this is? Parents made many mistakes, of course, one of the most serious being the rearing of self-pitying, spineless young people who want every luxury without doing anything to deserve it. Some of them are typical Studs Lonigans.
C. M. JANSKY

Dear Atlantic, —
For some years it has been the fashion for us, the parents of those ‘under thirty,’ to abase ourselves before our children because in handing on this world to them we cannot offer paradise on a golden plate. The trouble with our generation is that we have done too much for our offspring in a material way, even striving to give them the best education obtainable to the end that they might make the right social and business contacts. Indeed, this impression of the reason for education is so widespread that even our Phi Beta Kappas are aggrieved that their little golden keys do not always open the door to golden opportunity. Perhaps, while we were building strong bodies and minds, we should have seen to it that character grew apace, and should have taught our children to be more concerned with what they give to the world than what they receive from it.
That our generation should assume full responsibility for the Versailles Treaty, the hitter aftermath of the World War, the depression and the recession, is presumption. The tangled skein of life in which we and our children are enmeshed leads as far back, at least, as the beginning of the industrial age and Europe’s dream of empire. Perhaps the wise would carry the thread much farther back. So it would seem that we and our children are paying in large measure for the sins of our fathers. Even though we take full blame for a burden of wrong that has really been growing for generations, it will avail us nothing, if we and our children cannot see the way to lift the load of injustice for those who come after.
DORA D. MCHALE

It’s an ill wind . . .

Peterborough, New Hampshire
Dear Atlantic, —
‘Moses’ was a wonderful story. During the recent hurricane, when I was huddled up in a corner of a northwest piazza, fearing every minute the house behind me would crash, and listening to the wind, I thought, ‘This is the way it must have sounded to Saint Peter, Mose, and the rest of them huddled on the doorstep of Heaven,’ and it brought a smile in spite of the terrors of the wind and fright of watching the great red reflection in the sky where the village was burning and the river so flooded no help could come.
ISABEL A. CASALIS

More about Social Security.

White Plains, New York
Dear Atlantic,—
If we can afford to spend, as has been estimated, $3 billions per year in gambling and $5½ billions per year on strong drink, why should we become excited about a peak load of $4 billions a year by 1980 for old-age pensions? Especially when half of this sum is expected to be derived from then current payroll taxes and the balance resulting from accruals in a fund which will have been built up in the intervening years— built up as any other fund is appreciated, by parting with its liquidity for an addition in interest.
The sums paid by workers and employers are used by the. government just as sums paid by investors for new securities are used by companies in their businesses. The business of government is service to its citizens, and of private enterprises service of a more limited character to a more limited number of citizens. Out of their revenues they pay the costs of borrowings. There is no more reason to be alarmed at the safety of the funds in the government’s hands than at the safety of funds in private hands. Consider railroad bonds with 30 per cent of the roads in receivership! The attack on the use of Social Security funds for general government, expenses seems to be in the belief that most of such expenditures are waste. There is waste without doubt. It cannot be helped in the nature of the present distress, where foresight anti planning have been conspicuous by their rarity. But to give the impression that there is great loss in succoring the suffering unemployed, building great public works, and lending financial assistance to banks and other corporations, is a gross distortion. Protection against wasteful expenditure can be achieved only to the extent that an enlightened public brings pressure on its representatives against the practice. I am satisfied that the mechanism of the Social Security Account is sound in principle and operation, and that the use of collections paid into general fund is no more open to attack than the use of funds from other sources.
Mr. Linton, judging from his article ‘Insuring the Future’ in the October Atlantic, is in favor of oldage pensions on a pay-as-you-go basis, with a small reserve; on social rather than on individual actuarial equity procedure, and with larger initial benefits. There is implied therein a sacrifice of a value which is greater than the fiscal problems involved — namely, the aim of Social Security in paying a pension as a right accruing from the worker’s own productivity. Self-respect has social as well as,individual advantages, whereas a uniform old-age pension, such as is paid in England, smacks of the degradation of the dole.
I do not believe that the problem of providing larger initial benefits and of making amends for society’s failure to have initiated the system before to those who are now or soon will be old is impracticable. The schedules can be recalculated to reduce the later pensions and spread the benefits over the earlier. Where the amount is still under that paid by free old-age assistance, the difference might be paid on an affidavit of need made by the applicant, plus an amount of say $3.00 or $5.00 per month in equalization of the earned portion. The differential between the earned portion of the pension and the part paid by society to compensate for its tardiness is clearly a charge on the general taxpayer.
Any debt structure breaks down when revenue is insufficient. That a $40 billion debt owned by bondholders plus a $40 billion debt to Social Security beneficiaries would be a very heavy burden on taxpayers is self-evident. If there were no Social Security collections the money would have to be raised elsewhere. With currently unutilized Social Security moneys it is possible to purchase Treasury Bonds for Social Security Account. This would transfer debt from one class of the public to another, and it is absurd to state, as newspaper writers have, that it represents an IOU from the government to itself. Under such procedure the public debt would be a live force with its payments smoothed out monthly and flowing into consumption goods. Were the general debt all bought in, and funds still available for purchase, it is likely suitable toll or other revenue-producing works could be found to support the investment. Such a debt would not be a dead weight. With a revival of enterprise we may reasonably look to sufficient revenue to balance the budget. The budget can he truly balanced no other way.
Rather than take any backward step in Social Security it would seem to me wiser to adopt a bolder attitude in equating pension payments to the purchasing power of the moneys when the taxes were paid. The, United States Bureau of Labor Index of Living Costs could be used in making the calculation at the time of paying the benefits. It should involve no change in records, simply a manual, like a bondyield book, to figure each case. An equalization fund could be established for the money differences, deficits payable out of general taxation.
It is most desirable that we be realistic in working out the programme, that we do not saddle future generations with too great a burden, but we must also guard against outmoded orthodox financial concepts.
H. M. BUGGELN

Wanted — a leader.

Niagara Falls, New York
Dear Atlantic, —
The Reverend Bernard Iddings Bell’s criticisms of modern preaching are trenchant, but his proposed remedy is perplexing to the uninformed layman. We need, says Dr. Bell, more dogma. This word he defines as ’that which is agreed upon.’ Well, what is agreed upon? Unless I misunderstand the author, his position is that orthodox trinitarian doctrine, as derived by the Church Fathers from the Bible, is the correct dogma. There appears to be some slight further implication that the Episcopalian interpretation supplies the valid answer. If that is so, then it seems evident that what he favors is not dogma, but his particular dogma.
If that is his thesis, he has the right to state it, of course. He becomes then just one more shepherd calling ‘Follow me,’ to the further befuddlement of the sheep, confused already by the multiplicity of pastors. If I must follow a leader — whom? Dr. Bell considers his dogma fundamental. But the late Dr. Gresham Machen thought his version of Presbyterianism was likewise fundamental. The Reverend Heber J. Grant believes Mormonism to be basic. The late Mary Baker Eddy was convinced that Christian Science was the final answer. The late Grand Lama of Tibet considered it indisputable that the Lamaistic version of Buddhism was essential. The Grand Mufti of Cairo is assured that Islam is the one true religion. And these are only a few of the would-be leaders.
Miserable man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of spiritual guides? It’s tempted I am to say, ‘A plague o’ all your houses!’
But seriously, can we escape the conclusion that, unless a man is content merely to put on the sectarian mantle of his particular community, he cannot evade the responsibility of deciding for himself such matters, of hammering out his convictions on the anvil of his own experience, observation, and thought?
DWIGHT E. ALLEN

Have we outgrown religious conservatism?

Upper Montclair, New Jersey
Dear Atlantic, —
I find myself much disturbed by ' More Dogma, Please’ in the October issue. It seems to me that the Reverend Mr. Bell and Adolf Hitler are in perfect accord. The only difference I can see is that Hitler demands acceptance of political dogma while Bell begs us to accept theological dogma. He thinks it diplomatic to use the word ‘doctrine’ rather than ‘dogma,’ and I have not noticed that Hitler uses the word ‘dogma’; but there is no other word quite so good for the thing Hitler demands.
There is nothing more evident than that the rank and file of Protestants in the United States have outgrown religious conservatism. We cannot go back to anything we have outgrown. Growth may be slow or rapid, but it does not stop entirely. A hurricane forced me to saw through the trunk of a very large maple tree. There were one hundred and eighty-nine rings — indicating, I suppose, one hundred and eighty-nine years of growth. The inner thirty rings were three and four times as wide as those farther out, and the outer rings were so thin that they could not be counted without the aid of a glass. Increasing shade caused by the growth of other large trees had caused the growth to be less each year.
The mental life of the human race has often been subjected to such unfavorable conditions that its rings of growth could not be counted. A judge in France once said, ‘The Republic has no need for scientists,’and sent Lavoisier to the guillotine. Free schools, free discussion, and a free press are essential to mental growth; they are the air and sunlight the mind must have; but there are ‘blights’ that kill trees, though there is plenty of air and sun. There are ‘blights’ that kill the mind and leave the body alive. The rank and file of Protestants are too busy to read the documented History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, by Andrew D. White. Dr. White gets down to ’brass tacks.’ There is no rumor or guesswork, but names, dates and eases From original documents. We have a case history of how the Doctrine of the Trinity was made. It was made by a council whose instructed delegates were under the thumb of a ruler much like Hitler.
The human mind requires many years to recover from a blight like that.
A very different kind of book. The Torchbearers, by an English poet, gives us a case history of what one man did to make conditions favorable to mental growth. Night after night for forty years he sat in his observatory and had a careful record kept of the movements of the planets. He did not know the meaning of the ‘retrograde’ motion, but he recorded it. When Kepler looked at the record he said, ‘This sets the science of Astronomy ahead a thousand years.’
I do not know how to set forth all that is required to make conditions favorable to mental growth; but dogma— religious, political, scientific, or whatever other kinds there may be — is a blight as bad for the mind as the chestnut blight was for the chestnut trees.
F. F. CRANE

Sleepy, sarcastic wiseacres!

Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Dear Atlantic, —
I just got through reading two articles in your November — issue one an answer to the other, but I am sure it was never intended to be. Howard Mumford Jones seemed to be having his worries about the lack of patriotism in modern America and urged the revival of old hero tales to get this sneering country of ours back into the running with the European dictatorships. I don’t believe we have to scratch back into our annals for patriotic subject-matter. Why not look around us and exploit what we have now?
That seems to me to be just what Stuart Chase was doing in his article, ’Great Dam.’ I couldn’t imagine a better patriotic appeal to twentieth-century America. Even the cynical will feel a tingle of pride run up their back as they read, ‘The (.rand Coulee has been designed to take one million cubic fret per second, five times the flow of Niagara, and three times the height of the fall. That will be a sight to travel round the world to see!’ ‘We Americans maybe poor at . . . but, by the eternal we can build dams.’
Could any demagogue think up any better subject than this to rouse our sleepy, sarcastic wiseacres?
DAN R. MILLER

On behalf of sanity.

Paterson, New Jersey
Dear Atlantic, —
May I express my appreciation of the service you have rendered to civilization and sanity by printing Wilson Follett’s Letter to bis Communist Friend, Professor Jones’s article on Patriotism, and Albert. Jay Nock’s essay on Snoring As a Fine Art . Can these three articles not be reprinted in a pamphlet for circulation among those frenzied patriots who are dashing about in a lather to organize against Communists, Fascists, Martians, and other I logics and devils generally?
E. J. MARSH