The Howe Messenger (Howe, Tex.), Vol. 18, No. 40, Ed. 1 Friday, October 24, 1941 Page: 4 of 8
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THE HOWE MESSENGER
Friday, October 24, 1941
Notes of an
Innocent Bystander:
Old, but Good: Mrs. Jimmy Young,
the newspaper gal, passes along th«
one about the American woman iq
London for her first air raid. She
was so scared she jumped into a
nearby garbage can. Two Chinesa
came along and saw her.
“Goodness me!” said the first
“What strange people are these Oc«
cidentals. In China we wouldn’t
think of throwing away a pretty
woman like that for at least anothet
ten years!”
• • • —
Dot Is Dot Vay: Eddie Cantor’*
favorite anecdote about Dot Parkei
deals with the time she was bored
stiff at someone’s country place for
the week-end. She sent a pal this
telegram:
“Please rush loaf of bread and en»
close a saw and file!”
• • • —
In Other Words: The World-Telly
interviewer described Franz Werfel,
the German refugee author, this
way: "Here is a small, stoutish
man with a face broad and gemuet-
lich as a kartoffel pfannkuchen.’’
That’s a nice thing to portisen
about a stan portis, and how’d you
rillarah if he prampsoned the same
sedkuppit?
• • • —
Quiteso, Quiteso: Two vaudevil.
lians were standing in front of the
Palace Theater reminiscing about
the good old days. “Too bad,”
sighed the first nostalgically. “Just
as I was about to be booked into
this house, they rang the curtain
down on vaudeville—and gone are
all my hopes and dreams—my tough-
est break.”
To which the other replied indif-
ferently: “So what? What did you
miss—a couple of bows?”
• • e —
Notes of a New Yorker:
It could only happen in the mov-
ies, eh? Well it happened over at a
New York afternoon paper, wher*
the city desk was supposed to as-
sign a photographer to cover the
war maneuvers in South Carolina
. . . Instead, they sent him to North
Carolina, about 400 miles away—tch,
tch . . . Strangest sight on Fifth
Avenue these days—seeing Boris
Karloff, the Hollywood chill-billy,
entering Elizabeth Arden’s. Not to
get prettified, merely to remove the
gray streaks from his hair so he
will look more like Boris Karloff in
“Arsenic and Old Lace.”
• • • —
The Andrews Sisters will get
$5,000 per week when they head-
line at the Paramount Theater . . .
The America Firsters are having
their problems. Many backers have
deserted. The committee has shaved
expenses, slicing the publicity staff
to the bone.
• • • —
The Big Parade: Robert C. Bench-
ley, who lost one of his sox on the
east-bound train the day before—
ankling around the midtown place*
wearing a gray one—with the othei
ankle nekkid ... A. A. Berle Jr.,
the Ass’t Sec’y of State, reminiscing
with Damon Runyon over their
Hearst apprenticeship . . . Gail Pat-
rick of the Moom-Pitchers giving
The Stork cub some class . . . Errol
Flynn—the reason the beauty par-
lors are doing business . . . Eddy
Duchin was in a boot shop when
Geo. Jean Nathan came in ... “I
want a comfortable pair of shoes,”
he said . . . “Something for walk-
ing?” asked the clerk . . . “Well,”
well’d the critic, “something for
walking out.”
• • • —
Jan Masaryk, now foreign min-
ister for the Czechs in exile’ is bound
for the U. S. . . . Jim Morris, owner
of the Detroit hockey team (and a
big racing stable) dropped $20,000
on Nova . . . Eighty million dollars
has been spent in Manhattan and
The Bronx this year for postage—
biggest sales since 1929 . . . The posl
office here will add 9,000 postal em-
ployees for the Christmas biz. Hired
only 6,000 last year . . . MGM’s
answer to that senate snub-commit-
tee was the $40,000 purchase of the
film rights to “Above Suspicion,”
another uppercut to the Bund.
• • • —
Judge Landis’ new ruling will stop
ball players from endorsing ciggies
and hooch in their uniforms. In
street clothes, anything goes. . .
The Louis-Conn fight contract has
been signed for June, 1942, and pro-
hibits Joe from giving anyone else
a crack at the title before that date
. . . One of the nation’s leading
chemists still refuses to pay off on
his Willkie (for President) wager
—a Grand . . . The writers and
the shoe-string publishers of the hit
smash, “I Don’t Want to Set the
World on Fire,” are living on bor-
rowed coin!
• • • —
The Retort Proper: Then there’s
the one about the draftee who es-
caped from the guardhouse. The
sentry caught the dickens from hi*
corporal.
“Didden I tell you to put a man
at every exit?”
“Yeah, but this bird was smart
He left through an entrance.”
• • • —
Broadway Byron’s Definition oi
Carryin’ the Torch: When the Gai
Who Made You Forget What Time It
Was—Has You Staring - at the Cal-
endar.
Recreation Building for the Army
llllli*
----------- < ............*4
Architect’s drawing of hospital recreation building under construc-
tion at 65 army hospitals. The buildings will he furnished and operated
by American Red Cross, which will provide motion pictures and other
entertainments, and through its own staff carry on social service and
recreation program. Each building will contain a theater, recreation
room, small kitchen and guest-rooms for relatives summoned to bed-
sides of soldiers. Living and office quarters for Red Cross staff also
will be included in the building.
WASHINGTON. —The hos-
pital nurse smiled as she held
the telegram before the eyes
of the woman on the bed.
It said, “Red Cross and my
commanding officer say o. k.
for me to come, will arrive
hospital twelve hours, Red
Cross lending train fare keep
your chin up Mom.” It was
signed “Pete.”
The nurse tried to describe
the effect of that telegram on
the anxious mother.
“Sort of like a blood trans-
fusion,” she said.
Telegrams like Pete’s are mak-
ing people realize more and more
these days just how much the Red
Cross manages to do for Uncle
Sam’s army and navy. American
mothers are learning that the Red
Cross will give their sons in camp
definite practical help in time of
trouble. Back in 1905 congress
named the Red Cross the official
link between the men in the Ameri-
can armed forces and their families
at home; since that day the Red
Cross has been the trouble shooter
or “worry buster” of every soldier.
If there is illness at home, the
Red Cross, through its local chap-
ters and its field directors in each
camp, will keep the boy posted with
up-to-the minute news. It will verify
borne conditions and, as in the case
of Pete, help him obtain emergency
Eurlough, or perhaps a dependency
discharge. It will keep him well
supplied with reading matter, enter-
Million W or ds W eekly
NEW YORK. — Daisy Bacpn is
just about the ‘readin’est woman”
alive. She reads carefully and
weighs with judgment more than
1,000,000 words every week. Miss
Bacon is editor of three national
magazines and studies each line that
goes into them. She is the only
woman in the world who is active
editor-in-chief of such a trio and the
one woman who edits an all-fiction
weekly book. She publishes only
about 800,000 words a month, but
must read the astounding total to
Daisy Bacon
find what she wants to print. For
relaxation she reads “a few books”
each week.
Thoroughly feminine, tall, slen-
der, blonde, her hobbies are perfect
clothes and cats. Her costumes are
of her own design and have resulted
in her being called one of the best
dressed women in the country.
Her love for cats is exemplified by
pets at her apartment at 40 Fifth
avenue, New York, and by a parade
of about 200 modeled figures of fe-
lines across the top of her editorial
desk.
A descendant of Gov. William
Bradford of Plymouth Colony, and
the family of Sir Francis Bacon,
she loves the West and usually
spends her vacation there. One of
her great-uncles, John Holbrook,
was one of the noted sheriffs at Fort
Dodge, Iowa, in early days, helping
to bring about peace in a turbulent
area. An earlier ancestor was Dea-
con John Holbrook of Vermont, one
of the first American publishers.
Miss Bacon has an uncanny faculty
of quickly choosing stories and
articles favored by her readers.
tainment and comfort articles while
he’s sick in the hospital. It will
help him find employment when he
returns to civilian life and it will
give assistance to his family when
they are in trouble.
There is little that the Red Cross
will not do for a serviceman. Re-
cently a soldier was brought into a
military hospital with both eyes to-
tally and permanently blinded in an
accident. A volunteer Red Cross
worker there spent half a year
teaching the boy to read braille.
Another army camp reports the
case of a veteran’s widow who was
refused government compensation
because officials lacked evidence of
her husband’s disability. During
the next few months, a busy Red
Cross field director wrote more than
200 letters on her behalf, finally un-
earthing the evidence which meant
her livelihood.
Right now the Red Cross is
busy constructing headquarters'
buildings for its staff at 62 army
camps, and has undertaken to fur-
nish and operate hospital recreation
buildings in 65 army stations and
general hospitals. Furnishings for
the latter will include a theater and
motion picture, equipment, as well
as offices and a lounge. Thanks to
the Red Cross, American mothers
can be perfectly sure that their con-
valescent sons will have plenty of
medically approved entertainment
while they are laid up.
Red Cross service to the armed
forces covers a lot of ground. The
army and navy recruit their nurses
from the nursing reserve of the Red
Cross. The present drive to collect
200,000 units of human blood plasma
for the armed forces is another Red
Cross assignment. And just to top
things off, the women of this coun-
try, as volunteers in the ranks of
the Red Cross, this year handed
over to the United States army and
navy over 28,000,000 surgical dress-
ings, and are now starting upon a
batch of 500,000 sweaters.
As one soldier put it, “Uncle
Sam’s our commanding officer, and
he looks out for us the best he can.
But the Red Cross—well, the Red
Cross is Mrs. Sam.”
Hoosier Couplets
Ready Now for
Braille Readers
Ortmeyer Humorous Verses
Free to Blind People
Anywhere in U. S. A.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.—Arthur H.
Ortmeyer, well-known writer of cou-
plets, who conducts a column in the
Indianapolis News called “Hoosier
Homespun,” has widened his field
of homespun philosophy and humor
into braille. The couplets, some of
which appear below, are now being
distributed by the Indiana state li-
brary. The post office gives free
postage, as it does with all braille
publication in the U. S. Any sight-
less braille reader in the country
may borrow for reading, the book
“Life Lines” postage free, on appli-
cation.
Alabama and Mississippi state li-
braries have asked for rights in pub-
lishing the book and the Library of
Congress will begin issuing Ortmey-
er’s couplets soon. A few selections
from the couplets follow:
* * *
Churning waters sing a paean
Even in a wash machine.
* * *
No double feature yet quite vies
With that of sunset and sunrise.
* * *
Ortmeyer goes humorous:
Quiz
A woman druggist, how to list her?
The soph replied: A Pharmacister!
Impression
A waffle is, so I’ve heard said;
A pancake with a non-skid tread!
Count Ten
Recall, when ire would have its fling,
It cost a bee his life to sting!
The Pleasure Bent
The pleasure bent—this is no joke—
Oft find themselves both bent and
broke!
Wright Cadet
From all appearance Cadet Rich<
ard M. Wright, of Richmond, Ind.,
is about to board an airplane at the
very site where his famous cousins,
Wilbur and Orville Wright, once
conducted a flying school. This
photo, taken at Maxwell Field, Ala.,
in the Southeast air corps training
center, where Cadet Wright is now
enrolled in the Pilot Replacement
wing, might be called “Wishful
Thinking.” Keen to start flying like
700 other cadets in his class, Wright
will not be allowed to enter an air-
plane until he has completed an ini-
tial five-week training course, which
will condition him to enter flying
school.
U. S. Farm Aid to Britain
Likely to Pay Dividends
Better Consumption Market for American
Farmer Cited as Post-War Period Goal;
British Expected to Co-operate. *
By BAUKHAGE
National Farm and Home Hour Commentator.
Rural Folks Go to Church
WANTED
li
WANTED
m
WANTED
WANTED
m
WANTED
SI
A6E Id
j
The rural sections of the country are better promoters of Sunday
School attendance than those in cities, according to a recent survey by
the International Council of Religious Education. The chart above pic-
tures the situation today, in accordance with figures released by the
council. (1) 14,500,000 crimes in 1940. (2) 1 crime in 5 by boy or girl. (3)
185,000 U. S. Sunday schools. (4) Criminologists say church training
prevents crimes.
CHICAGO. — Rural Americans
have proven to be better Sunday
school promoters than their city
brothers, a survey made public
here by the International Council of
Religious Education discloses.
The first nation-wide survey of
Sunday school distribution and at-
tendance showed that 72 per cent of
all church schools in the United
States are found in rural areas of
less than 2,500 population.
In attendance, however, the ur-
banites have an advantage. Sunday
schools located in cities have an
average enrollment of 210 compared
to the rural church schools’ 65. A
nation-wide average of 114 is main-
tained.
Thirty-six Protestant denomina-
tions, co-operating through the In-
ternational Council, operate Sunday
schools in the United States and
now have a total of 160,430 schools.
Total pupil enrollment for these
schools was announced as 20,772,141.
Dr. Mary Leigh Palmer, associ-
ate director of leadership education,
made public the statistical findings
of the survey.
WNU Service, 1343 H. Street N. W.,
Washington, D. C.
After sitting down for an hour
with the undersecretary of agricul-
ture, Paul H. Appleby, on a quiet
Saturday afternoon when only de-
fense workers and newsmen have
to labor, I walked back through the
park with a feeling that perhaps
some of the lease-lend bread which
America is casting across the water
might come back buttered, and
even with jam on it.
Undersecretary Appleby was fresh
off the Clipper from Europe where
he and AAA Administrator Rudolph
M. Evans had been talking food
with the British.
Three things came out of my
queries of the undersecretary as to
his experiences.
First: Thanks to the United
States, the British have passed what
looked like a crisis in their food
supply.
Second: The American farmer is
going to get a little extra gravy for
the extra sweating he is going to
do to produce more “food for free-
dom.”
Third: (and this is what I meant
by the butter and jam on the lease-
lend bread) Appleby believes, and
he told the British so, that the Unit-
ed States has a post-war goal in its
extra-production efforts. That goal
is to build up a better home-con-
sumption market for the American
farmer—and all farmers—and the
British are expected to co-operate.
As to the first point, Mr. Appleby
was chary about giving out facts
and figures. He did assure me,
however, that quantitatively the
United States is now delivering at
British ports an amount of food suf-
ficient td take care of the basic
needs of the population, civil and
military. That means there are
enough ships to handle and deliver,
taking sinkings into consideration,
this minimum tonnage. So if the
present amount of tonnage is limit-
ed and the type of food required for
a balanced diet is raised in the
United States, the islands will not
starve. Although the British will
be getting on with a lot less than
they are used to, they will have
enough of the right kind of food to
do the job they are expected to do.
Complaining *Wasn*t Done*
According to Appleby, even when
the pinch was at its worst early last
spring, popular opinion in England
was such that morale was not af-
fected seriously. Complaining sim-
ply “wasn’t done,” as the English
say. In other words, if somebody
sounded off about what he was not
getting to eat in a public place, he
would be reproved in short order by
his listeners.
The British food ministry and the
department of agriculture officials
now understand each other, accord-
ing to Appleby, and each is satis-
fied as to the other’s efforts, and
those efforts have been co-ordinat-
ed.
• Specifically, Undersecretary Ap-
pleby and Administrator Evans re-
ceived suggestions as to improved
packaging — for instance, minor
.changes in the content of a canned
product, the kind of cartons that
best protected a certain commod-
ity. You see many of these prod-
ucts, in fact most of them, the
United States had never exported at
all before and American officials
did not have experience in the best
packaging methods. For instance,
there were lessons in packaging and
labeling to be learned about cheese.
The Americans suggested to the
British that it would be easier to
arouse the sympathy and co-opera-
tion of people in this country if they
knew just what this food was being
used for—say, one thing for school
children, another for babies, some-
thing else for workers.
The British showed a break-down
in the statistics was impossible be-
cause of exceedingly abnormal con-
ditions of transportation. There is,
for instance, uncertainty as to
where a given ship is going to land,
what railroad will be available for
shipments. Then, too, there are
many difficulties of administration
which make it impossible to chan-
nel special shipments to special
points or assign them to special
groups.
Distribution Control
Another thing the Americans ex-
amined thoroughly was the control
by the government of distribution
of the products. All food belongs
to the British government whicli
turns meat over directly to the re
tailer and the other material to th*
wholesaler. The Americans saj
they were convinced that no prof
iteering exists in this procedure.
Although we have been able tf
bring lease-lend shipments up to J
per cent of British food consump<
tion in tonnage, and 20 per cent in
value, that does not mean that our
problem as far as production goes
is solved. It is easy to provide a
lot of things the British do not need,
and hard to get some of the things
they need most. For example: The
British wanted 30 per cent of our
whole navy bean crop. Navy beans
were encouraged and American
farmers produced 35 per cent more
navy beans than normal. But
a cow can’t act that quickly when
you ask for more calves, and when
you get the calves it takes them
longer to produce a quart of milk
than it does for a garden to sprout
a bean.
Cheese is another product that
does not leap out of the ground. Ir
some places you have to plant, not
only the cow to produce the milk
but you have to produce a factor^
to process the milk into cheese.
Now, as to point No. 2: What
the American farmer is going t<
get out of all this. Mr. Appleby-j
expressing, I take it, the opinion oi
the department of agriculture an<?
the government—feels very definite
ly that the American farmer must
have a profit motive to bring about
this extra production and likewise
a profit when he has produced it.
What About 6 Per Cent?
“Mr. Morgenthau,” I said, “be-
lieves that business ought to be al-
lowed to make only 6 per cent on
its investment in the emergency.”
“Well,” said Mr. Appleby, “if the
farmer got 6 per cent and wages
for his own labor and management,'
I think he’d be satisfied. Anybody
ought to be satisfied with that in
time of crisis.”
And this factor—giving the farm-
er some assurance that his plant
expanson, as they call it in indus-
try, necessary to produce the things
Britain needs, will not be a white
elephant when the war is over,
I mentioned—namely, the attempt
to assure some universal benefit out
of the whole lease-lend food effort—
a benefit deriving from increased
consumption in peace-time which
the farmer as well as the rest of the
nation would share.
The farmer does not want to have
a new lot of surpluses on his hands
when the war is over. He and the
department of agriculture want to
understand that the new production
they are now building can be do-
mestically consumed after the war
is over.
Such consumption seems a long
way off but it is a star worth
following—once there were threq
wise men who had the faith to foM
low a star.
* * *
*Deep Satisfaction*
The other day a friend of mine
went into a famous Washington res-
taurant. When he was seated a tall
man strode in and took his seat
alone in a corner. He is a well-
known figure in Washington and my
friend watched him. He took out
the evening paper, opened it with a
flourish and began to leaf through it.
Suddenly his face lit up with a smile
of deep satisfaction. He folded the
paper carefully, set it up against
the water carafe and began to read.
His smile spread.
My friend wondered what he was:
reading and since he had a copy of
the same paper and could see the
lower half of the page the tall one
was reading with such gratification
my friend turned to that page in
his own paper.
It bore a large picture of John
Llewellyn Lewis, president of the
United Mine Workers of America
and former head of the C. I. O.
The tall man looking at it was
John Llewellyn Lewis, president of
the United Mine Workers of America
and former head of the C. I. O.
• * *
C. De gustibus non est disputandum.
The brilliant editor of the Farm
Journal, Wheeler McMillen, says he
doesn’t like parsley. I enjoy the
rabbit food myself. But I liked the
corn-covered cover of his October
issue so well that I pasted it right
up next to my map of Europe to;
take my mind off the war.
BRIEFS
by Baukhage
<1 Before June 30, 1942, the United
States must supply Great Britain
with the output of 50 million hens,
or 500 million eggs, according to
the department of agriculture.
* * *
C. A good cook could use a barrel-
ful of apples and never repeat her-
self once, says the Bureau of Home
Economics.
C. The bituminous coal division of:
the department of the interior is con-
sidering a proposal for the estab-
lishment of a ceiling over coal prices
as a means of protecting consum*
ors from increasing prices.
• • •
In the “shoot on sight” system
of warfare, it is more important
who sights than who shoots
|
•f
—
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Bryant, Russell W. The Howe Messenger (Howe, Tex.), Vol. 18, No. 40, Ed. 1 Friday, October 24, 1941, newspaper, October 24, 1941; Howe, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth848028/m1/4/?q=+date%3A1941-1945: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .