State Sterilization

Sirs:

In a footnote on p. 36 of your issue of Oct. 5 you state that "in 15 U. S. States sterilization may be ordered for habitual criminals, imbeciles, or insane persons." The fact is that there are 2 7 States which now have sterilization laws applying to the insane or feebleminded or both. Some of these laws, however, provide only for voluntary sterilization. In every State almost all of the sterilization is virtually voluntary since it is done with the consent and frequently at the instigation of the patient's nearest relatives. The patient himself, being either insane or feebleminded, cannot give a consent which is legally or morally worth much. So far as we know, habitual criminals are not compulsorily sterilized in any State.

As you say, the patient in any case has the lull protection of the laws and a right to appeal to the courts if he considers that his personal rights are being invaded. The fact that appeals to the courts are almost non-existent is an indication of the public sentiment back of the law wherever it is understood. In a test case from Virginia in 1927 the Supreme Court of the U. S. upheld the constitutionality of eugenic sterilization.

Sterilization has been practiced in California institutions for 22 years with a total of more than 7,500 operations to date.

E. S. GOSNEY President

The Human Betterment Foundation

Pasadena, Calif.

Tolerably Bright Boy

Sirs:

Like an easy-going racehorse is my reading of readable TIME until I come to the hurdle of middle names in the reference to more or less well-known public men. It seems to me the designation "Herbert Hoover" for the occupant of the White House is much more satisfactory than "Herbert Clark Hoover."

The average reader of readable TIME is a tolerably bright boy, and he will get your meaning at once if you refer to them as Senator Borah or Senator Norris; and if you further particularize by referring to them as Senator William Eloquence Borah or Senator George Whangdoodle Norris while it serves to establish the painstaking exactness of your research department yet, to me, it makes a very awkward break in the flow of easy reading and takes up valuable space. . . .

JAMES ARTAXERXES ("JIM") STORIE

Chattanooga, Tenn.

TIME is permanently committed to printing middle names, but not to repeating them ad nauseam. To J. A. Storie, a bow.--ED.

Preserved Fish's Grave

Sirs:

It may interest your correspondent Fred E. Kerry--whose letter you published in the Oct. 26 issue of TIME--to know that Preserved Fish is buried in one of the old graveyards in New York's lower east side. Unfortunately I cannot recall the exact loca- tion. . . .

KENNETH R. EDWARDS

Rochester, N. Y.

Preserved Fish is in vault No. 75 in the century-old New York City Marble Cemetery at Second St. near Second Ave.. wherein lie many of oldtime New York's families: Chesebrough, Lenox, Ogden. Allen Bogardus. Van Alen, Griswold, Kip. Taylor, Stanton, Webb. A marble slab marks "PRESERVED FISH'S VAULT" where five others (only one other Fish. Mary) are buried. On the Fish plot there also rises a marble monument to Captain H. Leslie, a New Bedford fellow-whaler, who is also in vault No. 75.--ED.

Children's Prayers

Sirs:

Shocked beyond my meagre powers of expression was I at the picture (TIME, Oct. 26, Religion) of two children, American, praying to a Heavenly Father who they believe loves them with an infinite love.

I, with other heads of families, inwardly shudder at this picture with its insidious propaganda of love and beauty. How can we train our children to become racketeers if their imaginations are formed daily by such examples? Shame on TIME and book publishers who brazenly adopt such pornographic circulation methods.

If TIME should ever mention St. Francis, who gave his money to the poor, I would be forced to cancel my subscription. Such interference with my duty to instill greed and selfishness in my children shall never be brooked by me.

RICHARD T. LEWIS

Albany, N. Y.

Sirs:

The deleted picture of children praying on p. 22, TIME for Oct. 26 was the subject of discussion yesterday in a group of young parents. What they want to know is this, "Did Mrs. Blaisdell know that your magazine intended to announce her attitude on children's prayers?"

Said one young mother, a former co-ed flapper, "I have not taught my children to say their prayers, but at least I have the grace to be ashamed of it, and I am not married to a Columbia professor either but am the wife of a mere salesman."

"That is just the reason you are ashamed of it," said the father of one young wife. "These college professors are likely to be unbelievers. The products of women's colleges are mostly a faithless, shameless lot too. I ought to know for I sent three daughters to Bryn Mawr or Mt. Holyoke. [I am not sure which college he designated. It was one or the other. Perhaps the three doubters distributed themselves. Both colleges were mentioned by the father.] My married daughter is not teaching her children their prayers, a vital mistake to my Methodist mind. Probably Mrs. Blaisdell is from Bryn Mawr [or Mt. Holyoke], therefore unashamed, even proud of her infidelity. But life brings folks to their knees, I have noticed. She is young yet," he concluded.

One mother said her little girl visited her grandparents and came home with a prayer taught her by her grandmother, which the mother felt was a merited rebuke. Another said her child learned little prayers and grace at table at the kindergarten or preschool, which relieved her very much as she wanted her child to pray but had not taught her any prayers because she did not like "Now, I lay me" and thought the Lord's Prayer too long and difficult lor a child.

While nearly all agreed that to hear and see children praying is touching and sweet, yet no one liked the deleted picture.

A number disliked photographic illustrations of any kind and thought this particular one lacking in both art and appeal.

Some expressed a desire for the complete prayer beginning, "Gentle Jesus meek and mild" used by the children of Publisher Farrar..

AMY V. BROWN Cleveland, Ohio

The oldtime hymn "Gentle Jesus" has a number of versions. As a prayer, its first verse usually goes:

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child.

Pity my simplicity;

Suffer me to come to Thee.

It has now been ascertained that the Farrar children's prayer is the first verse of the hymn "Jesus, Tender Shepherd":

Jesus tender Shepherd hear me,

Bless Thy little lamb tonight.

Through the darkness be Thou near me,

Keep me safe till morning light.

Sirs:

Am airmailing this from Mexico City to lose no time in congratulating Mrs. Blaisdell on her censorship of "religion" as an implement of education. Had the minds of Edison, Franklin, Burbank and thousands of other original thinkers been sufficiently crippled by belief in and reliance on "divine power" and "life after death," they would have passed to the limbo of unaccomplishment with the rest of the orthodox millions.

In the Latin countries we have the best opportunities for observing contrasts. Dominated for centuries by the arbitrary dogmas of wealth, church and state, the Latin-American mind gets nowhere, invents nothing and is fearful of every new and original idea and there is a very considerable mental stratum in the U. S. A. that functions on the same plane.

I can name hundreds of "saints of science" whose altruistic devotion to research for truth's sake, developed a spirituality--a refined, unselfish morality, that far transcends in sanctity, all egoistic professional martyrs for all time.

The Spaniards of the Armada called the English sailors "pagans" because they depended upon efficiency instead of prayers, but efficiency won the fight. An American general exhorting his troops said, "trust in God but keep your powder dry. . . ." Why train children to kid themselves?

PARKER H. SERCOMBE

Mixcoac D. F., Mexico

Sirs:

As for me I take my religion straight and oldfashioned. But perhaps Mrs. Blaisdell (TIME, Oct. 26) by her white ribbon Prohibition of religion may be doing more good. Can't you see this "Blaisdell Act" producing bootleg worship? I can well imagine these children, who are to be so carefully shielded from any reference to a higher power, turning into every church they pass for a surreptitious prayer. Perhaps contraband worship is just what the churches need to make them full to overflowing with this intense younger generation. If this be true, I say more power to Mrs. Blaisdell.

HARRIET EVANS WYCKOFF

Washington, D. C.

Kolo

Sirs:

Ordinarily I'd just hate to contradict TIME, but this time I just know you're wrong.

In your issue of Nov. 2, Army & Navy, p. 13, we find that "At a banquet of generals General MacArthur joined hands with the others, did the national dance, called kolo, which consists of running around the table in one direction then running around the table in the other."

Whether intentionally or not, you hereby give a definition of the kolo which places it in a somewhat ridiculous light. As a Jugoslav, may I say that I rather resent this? The kolo is far from what you seem to think it is in both form and spirit. In the first place, just because there happened to be a table when the particular dance about which you write was held does not mean that a table is necessary for the kolo. As a matter of fact it is a hindrance in most cases. My mother has danced the kolo off and on for over 30 years and this idea of the table is something entirely new to her. Here in Flint, in Detroit and in Cleveland I've taken part in dancing the kolo together with hundreds of other Jugoslavs but never have we run around the table in one direction and in the other.

The kolo is primarily a folk dance in which from two to hundreds may take part by joining hands, forming a circle as nearly as possible and then going through a series of rather complicated steps in as nearly a perfect unison as the ability of the dancers will permit. To say that the kolo simply consists of "running around in one direction and then running around in the other" reveals not only ignorance, which might be excused, but also bad taste and lack of appreciation which is particularly distasteful in TIME.

We may hop, skip and jump but we don't just "run around." There isn't just one kolo, but many of them and with a great many variations in steps. In some kolos the dancers go to one side then the other, in some they go back and forth and in others they go in only one direction. Sometimes, too, they go up and down. But only those who don't know better just run around. The beauty of the kolo is that most everyone present takes a part, loosens his spirit and forgets himself in a community of feeling that renders the whole group move as one body and stirs their emotions to the very depths.

MICHAEL W. EVANOFF Flint, Mich.

Start of Pleasure Sirs:

Holstein cattle-breeders among TIME devotees were doubtless given a start of real pleasure to see the picture of the new Holstein National grand champion, Man O' War 30th with his breeder, Walter Schmidt of Minnesota, at the leadstrap, and to read your description of the National Dairy Exposition in the Oct. 26 TIME. Pansy caught your fancy; how about King Bessie Mabel Susie, another well-known young bull of this breed entered at the National but not exhibited?

On p. 12 of the same issue, describing the "Anti-Tammany Cow," your repeated incorrect use of "udders," indicating the cow's teats, will amuse farm-raised TiME-readers--perhaps a more numerous section than you suspect. For the benefit of TIME'S editors: a cow has but one udder, the gland which secretes milk. The appendages on each quarter, from which the milk is drawn, are correctly known as teats-- inelegantly but rather universally pronounced "tits," Mr. Webster to the contrary notwithstanding. I hope no newborn delicacy prompted TIME'S lapse from the correct biological description.

M. S. PRESCOTT

Editor

Holstein-Fries!an World Lacona, N. Y.

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