"Contact"

The eight general managers of Western Union Telegraph Co. last week received Circular Letter No. 467-31 from their colleague, Superintendent Frederick W. Lienau. Mr. Lienau, now Western Union's contact man with state and national rate-making bodies, once engaged a Harvard man whose job was to probe into Western Union's letter files all over the country to see that good English was being used by the company. Schooled at Heidelberg, versed in German, French and Greek. Contact Man Lienau is still a stickler for proper English usage. Now he had apparently been pained beyond endurance, for he wrote: "Somewhere there cumbers this fair earth with his loathsome presence a man who for the common good should have been destroyed in early childhood. He is the originator of the hideous vulgarism of using 'contact' as a verb--We contacted Mr. Smith.' ... So long as we can meet, get in touch with, make the acquaintance of, be introduced to, call on, interview, or talk to people, there can be no apology for 'contact.'

". . . Perhaps we can help to stamp it out by not allowing it to soil any good Western Union paper."

President Newcomb Carlton of Western Union also let himself into print last week. He was asked about the possibility of a merger between Western Union and Postal Telegraph now that they have joined hands in the Teletype business to compete against A. T. & T. (TIME, Nov. 30). Merrily he replied: "The Constitution forbids us to marry, but there is nothing to keep the Western Union and the Postal from Holding hands. Of course, when two persons sit on a haircloth sofa holding hands there is no telling how far they will go. ... But as for a merger, well there are such little things as the Sherman Act that stand in the way of that."

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