Letters to the Editor
RELIEF OF ENGINEERS
Dear Sir:
The Professional Engineers Committee on Unemployment was organized for the purpose of assisting unemployed engineers who reside in the Metropolitan area, through the period of the present economic depression.
In the course of our earnest and concerted efforts to lift the distress which we find among the 1700 engineers registered with us to date, it is very difficult to secure sufficient emergency jobs, provide loans in desperate cases, or even to furnish home relief in the form of clothing, dispossess notices, etc.
We are providing made-work positions at the rate of $5.00 a day for three days per week, and six-day jobs at $25.00 a week, insofar as our funds, which are furnished through voluntary contributions among engineering interests, will permit.
Nevertheless, our registration cards show that we have former students of your University, as listed below, who are in distress and need financial assistance. In view of this situation, we will be very grateful for your co-operation in presenting these facts to your Alumni. The men to whom we refer, probably have friends among the Alumni who will be glad to assist them, through our organization, or possibly you have an Alumnus in New York who will consider it a privilege to consult and co-operate with us in relieving this destitution.
A copy of reprint from "Civil Engineering" for February, 1932, entitled "P. E. C. U." is enclosed, as a full story of our activity.
Please accept our heartiest appreciation for any consideration which you may give to this situation.
Very truly yours,
Executive SecretaryRelief Committee
29 W. 39th St.,New York City
DABTMOTJTH DISTRESS LIST
No. ofApplic. Class Degree Married Dependents 3 04-15 BS 33
ON CAPITALISM
Dear Sir:
The "Suggested Program" of Prof. Ames at al., in the January Supplement for "Progress and Prosperity" is interesting. It is apparently a rather ambitious effort to make the United States safe for the kind of capitalism from which we have suffered so long, and whose perfect fruitage has at last descended upon us. The name, homeopathic, given it by Prof. Knight in the note in your February issue, well describes the program suggested by Prof. Ames and his friends. There is not a word in the program that would bring the slightest chill to the spinal columns of such capitalists as Morgan and Mellon and Rockefeller.
May an old fellow who graduated in 1874 and has tried for some of the time since to keep his eyes open state a few perfectly obvious facts and just as obvious conclusions?
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson believed that the natural resources of the country should be conserved for the benefit of all the people, Alexander Hamilton and his followers believed, and have continued to act on the theory that the resources of the country should be devoted to the promotion of the interests of the well-to-do and able members of society. That federalist theory has controlled the dominant political thinking and the dominant political party for the greater part of our history, and unblushingly since the campaign of 1896. The result of such patriotic efforts has been unparalleled robbery, waste and monopolization. The Constitution supposedly designed to protect all the people in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has been degraded, mostly by Hamiltonian judges chosen for that purpose, into an instrument for the perpetuation of the power of great wealth, and the continued inordinate accumulation of the riches of the country in the hands of a comparatively few captains of industry and bankers and other schemers. Our land laws, our system of taxation, our corporation laws, have for the most part either been designed for the purpose or have been so manipulated as to favor the few as against the masses of the people. Our hypocritical tariff and immigration laws have worked to the same purpose and have conspired with the above causes to produce unparalleled unemployment, destitution, and crime.
If there be any considerable truth in what I have written there would be no injustice in such drastic capital levies and surtaxes on the higher incomes and inheritances as would in some measure remedy the wrongs that have been perpetrated on the common people of the United States.
So-called statesmen who consider the present conditions in the United States to be the result of the late war show little acumen. On the contrary the war was the result of just such conditions as I have described, and conditions for which the United States was perhaps more responsible than any other nation.
There is nothing new, I suppose, in what I have written. Editors are for the most part too reactionary or too cowardly to print such statements of fact or opinion. Drastic remedial measures for our ills under the Constitution would be preferable to the revolutionary measures found necessary in Russia and Spain.
THOSE INSIDE DUD'S COACH
My dear Professor Bartlett:
How your interesting article, "Old Timers" brought back the old days. And how happy I was to see "Pratt '06" in Dud's coach.
John Tuck '05 is the man beside Dud. Tubby Gray (C. T.) '06 is the one opposite me, inside. George Agry '05 and Bill Jennings '07 are also inside.
6 East 9th Street,New York City.
NEW HAMPSHIRE POETRY
Dear Sir:
I ran across the enclosed poem clipped from the Associated Gas and Electric Company Bulletin for December, 1931.
I thought you might be interested in printing this in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, as it touches a warm spot in the heart of any one who has ever lived in New Hampshire.
1000 Chestnut St.,Philadelphia.
NEW HAMPSHIRE IN THE FALL
When it's autumn in New HampshireAnd the air is sweet as wineAnd the flaming hand of natureTouches every tree and vine,When the sun is bright and balmyWith a tint of beaten brassAnd it lays a golden carpetOver meadows rich with grass.
When the wind is from the westwardAnd the sky is deep and blueAnd the glory of the sunsetsRivals e'en the rainbow's hue,When the nights are splashed with silverFrom a big moon overheadAnd the white frost gleams at daybreakAnd the ears of corn are red.
Ah, it's great just to be livingWhile these golden days are here,Just to bask in autumn sunshineAnd to breathe the air so clear,Just to walk amid the splendorAnd the wonder of it all,Just to be in old New HampshireIn the glory of the fall.
USE OF DARTMOUTH MOVIES
Dear Sid:
I trust that you have received the two reels of Dartmouth 16mm. movies in good order and I wish to thank you for manipulating this deal for us. As I have stated before there is no intention on my part to offer any destructive criticism with reference to these films but, instead, I trust you will take it as constructive criticism.
It is my intention this next year to make the rounds of aE the important high schools in this district and I would like to have a representative film of possibly four to six hundred feet of Hanover. Our showing last week at Lake Forest Academy was well taken, with the possible exception of shots of the Secretaries Meeting and of the Board of Trustees. From the response, it seems that the boys are particularly interested in carnival pictures, football pictures, Delta Alpha, and similar activities.
The idea of a composite film is great and it does much to sell Dartmouth to a crowd that may be on the fence as to their choice of colleges. It is money well invested, therefore, to have an excellent composite film and I trust that you may keep this in mind, as I will be calling on you again for this type of film in the early fall and would appreciate anything you could do in drawing up a film which will appeal to boys en route to Hanover.
I am keenly interested in this work and can very readily see the good it is doing. It not only helps a good many high school boys to decide where they are going, but prompts them to direct their studies for Dartmouth requirements.
175 W. Jackson Blvd.,Chicago, Illinois.March 9, 1932.
FOR TORONTO ALUMNI
Dear Sir:
There has been organized in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, an International Alumni Association which we believe to be of a quite unusual character. This organization has been in existence somewhat over a year and is increasing in membership and activities at a steady rate. It was the outgrowth of various attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to establish and maintain local college clubs consisting of graduates of individual colleges. While a few of these have had a successful existence, many more have failed because the numbers available did not seem to be quite sufficient to maintain permanent interest. The International Association draws its members from alumni of all colleges, but particularly those outside Canada. It now has members from seventy-one different colleges, not counting graduate or honorary degrees of which there are a large number represented. Included in these are fifty-two colleges in the United States, nine in Canada, six in the British Isles, two in Germany and one each in Spain and Italy.
The activities of the organization have followed three separate lines, namely, social events; general meetings for the discussion of subjects of international importance, usually featured by a speaker of some prominence; and weekly luncheons for purposes of good fellowship.
It may be of interest to some of your alumni to learn of the existence of this Association. The Association has no limit to its membership and dues are merely nominal. We already have on our roll of members 0. H. Shenstone '10 and would be glad to welcome any additional alumni who care to associate themselves with us.
Toronto, Canada.March 12, 1932.
Secretary
AMES PAPER NO REMEDY
Dear Sir:
What you continue to refer to, in your editorial columns, as the "distinguished contribution" of Professor Ames, although it is suggestive, is distinguished quite as much by picturesque errors as anything else.
The general theme of the paper is the extension of a concentration upon research and study. This is a commendable enough cultural ideal. But upon its application as a remedy for economic depression it becomes suddenly vulnerable. The suggestion is made that all business, from the smallest individual proprietorship to the largest corporation, and the government in addition, proceed to allot more time and money to research. In our present competitive system, however, no business will go further than the profit from its product will permit it. Would Professor Ames have had his railroad executive continue research to the point of bankruptcy? Sensing this difficulty in the application of his plan, he proceeds to fall back upon the assistance of the government, as is customary with so many authors of plans for rehabilitation. Just as the government was anathema to business during prosperity, so is the government now the fairy godmother. Professor Ames seeks more aid in this quarter than we in this country should consider desirable and economically feasible.
Professor Ames misinterprets the nature and cause of the late-lamented boom. The year 1929 ended a period characterized by unusual and non-recurring factors. It marked the peak of constructive activity which arose out of the enforced stagnation brought about by the concentration solely upon military affairs in the preceding years. This, rather than any invention, such as the automobile, was the principal explanation; and it is too much to expect that any new device can now produce a similar phase in our economic cycle.
Further, the assertion that the so-called non-consumable intangibles are not subject to overdevelopment is hardly tenable. There can just as easily be overproduction of nonconsumable tangibles and intangibles as in semi-consumable and consumable tangibles.
The Cabot commentary on the Ames program is in every essential a tirade against economists and only in the most meagre fashion a review of the subject matter. It is beside the point, too, because it does not have to do, whatever Professor Cabot may assert, with representative economists of to-day. It smacks unbecomingly of the views expounded by our many Babbitts of business and politics. This is unfortunate.
Sincerely,
2105 Burr Ave.,New York City, N. Y.March 12, 1932.
FOR THE FUTURE
Dear Sir
I have just learned, through his daughter, that Professor Edwin Frost '86 at Yerkes Observatory is beginning to write some Memoirs of his Life and that Little Brown & Co. or Houghton Mifflin Co. may publish them. Among them are to be a great manyrecollections of Dartmouth, Hanover, and college happenings and people.
It occurred to me that our ALUMNI MAGAZINE should try to get hold of these that pertain to Dartmouth and like Dr. Bartlett's historical articles, secure an advance publication in the MAGAZINE for the perusal of the alumni. Whatever his keen mind and wonderful memory portray will be very much worth while. I think everyone of the alumni up to the 1900's at least will be extremely interested in reading anything that Professor Frost may write;
I have had a suggestion for some time regarding the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, and it is based on the matter of economy. The news of the classes has become so great, why wouldn't it be a smart idea to print the ALUMNI MAGAZINE in two sections; the first section the regular MAGAZINE, and the second section, the news of the classes. The news of the classes section could be printed on less expensive paper stock. The advantage of this would be, first, less cost, and second, a more practical use of the news of the classes. Being separate, they could be used and read differently, and kept differently, while the first ALUMNI MAGAZINE section could be bound year by year and kept with the principal interests to readers.
Cordially yours,
919 North Michigan Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois.
March IS, 1982.
IN MEMORIAM
Dear Sir
The following resolution has been drawn up by the department of Mathematics. It is sent to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE in order that it may receive the attention of Professor Young's many Dartmouth friends.
Resolution
For over twenty years John Wesley Younghas served Dartmouth College as a member ofits department of Mathematics, and for muchof that time as the active leader of the department.
The department wishes to express its appreciation of the high ideals of scholarship and instruction, and the sympathetic interest in theactivities of his colleagues and students, whichguided him in the exercise of the manifoldduties of his position.
With a deep realization of the loss which ithas sustained, the department conveys to hisfamily its sincere sympathy in their immeasurably greater loss.
C. N. HASKINS B. H. BROWN E. G. BILL C. A. HOLDEN R. D. BEETLE L. C. MATHEWSON L. L. SILVERMAN C. H. FORSYTH C. E. WILDER, C. H. SPOONER Chairman F. W. PERKINS It. ROBINSON Hanover, N. H.March 11, 1932.
