Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain, either supplementary to, or corrective of, news previously published in TIME.
Amendments
TIME New York, N. Y. Gentlemen: Meriden, Conn. Jan. 21, 1925
In commenting on the Child Labor Amendment, in your issue of Jan. 19, you say. "If the amendment is to be defeated, ten other states must reject it."
Article V. of the Constitution provides that an amendment becomes valid when (no time limit stated) three-quarters of the states have approved it. There is no pro vision for "defeating" a proposed amendment. Isn't it a fact that any state, the legislature of which has disapproved! an amendment, can reverse itself and be re corded in favor by the vote of some future legislature?
The proposed Wadsworth-Garrett amendment that "until three-fourths of the states shall ratify or one-fourth shall reject, any vote of a state may be changed" and "when ever one-fourth of the states shall reject . . . further consideration by the states is at an end" is intended to heal this constitutional idiosyncracy, since it also fixes a time limit by providing that "any proposed amendment shall be inoperative unless ratified within eight years." T. E. SANDS.
Subscriber Sands is right. It is possible for a legislature to reverse itself after ratifying or rejecting a proposed amendment to the Constitution. The period in which ratification may take place is unlimited (unless, as in the 18th Amendment, there is a clause setting a time limit--in that case, seven years). An attempt was made to write a time limit, three or five years, into the Child Labor Amendment, but without success.
It is still technically possible to adopt an amendment (to prohibit a U. S. citizen from taking a title from a foreign country) proposed by Congress in 1810 and never ratified. It is also still possible to pass an amendment (to prohibit any amendment to the Constitution which would abolish slavery) proposed by Congress in 1861. In practice, however, no amendment has ever been adopted unless it was successful during the first four years after being presented to the states. In only one case was an amendment rejected by more than onequarter of the states and subsequently ratified; this was the reconstruction amendment, No. 14, guaranteeing citizens' rights to Negroes. Ten Southern states rejected it, but later, when carpetbag governments were set up, ratified it. Barring such an unusual condition, an amendment which has been rejected by more than a quarter of the states may be considered about as good as dead.-ED.
'Not Substantial"
New York, N. Y. Jan. 23, 1925
TIME
New York, N. Y.
Gentlemen:
TIME, in the Jan. 19 issue, referred to the New York Evening Bulletin as "morons' caviar." Might not TIME be called "angels' food for the aristocracy of brains? Angels' food is not very substantial. ELIZABETH KING BLACK.
Anti-Rockefeller
TIME Little Rock, Ark.
New York, N. Y. Jan. 20, 1925
Gentlemen:
I ordered TIME to be mailed to my address.
T thought, when I ordered this periodical, that I was obtaining something away from this rotten propaganda that is swamping the mails, but I notice a cut of Rockefeller, and a sweet eulogy of this saint that would make a dog sick (in your last issue). If I were to write what I think about that sweeted-scented bunch of Standard Oil mob, I would do time for mailing profanity through the U. S. Mails.
I cannot understand why you, or any publisher, should think the whole of the public morons or asses when you spring such stuff. I am an even-tempered man, but, by God, when I read such tripe, I swear a blue streak and kick my favorite dog.
Don't send me any of your publications; if you do they are sent at your risk, for I will certainly throw them into the street, for the name of Rockefeller is barred in my shack and then some.
If I find his name in my Sunday papers, out they go into the garbage can without reading them.
You can publish this if you like.
ROBERT HALE.
Why Misquote It?
TIME New Brunswick, N. J.
New York, N. Y. Jan. 19, 1925
Gentlemen:
On Page 18 of your issue for Jan. 19, under heading RELIGION, subtitle "A Needle's Eye," after a recital of recent events in the Rockefeller family, you say (Page 18, foot of first column), "The parable is one that has often been quoted with smug exultation in needy homes, in great houses with lamentable quakings. It has to do with a camel, a rich man's son, Heaven, the eye of a needle." And further on, middle of next column, you repeat: "Mr. Rockefeller is familiar with the parable about the rich man's son."
You evidently are not. For the text reads (Mark x:25), "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
I have no quarrel with your application of the text. But why misquote it?
C. E. D. PHELPS.
Eight Inches
TIME Oak Ridge, N. C.
New York, N. Y. Jan. 19, 1925
Gentlemen:
In your issue of Jan. 19, 8 of the 17 inches of your MILESTONES column are taken up by divorce matters. I object to such items masquerading under this heading. HENRY D. STYER.
Finds Himself Slipping
TIME Kansas City, Mo.
New York, N. Y. Jan. 20, 1925
Gentlemen:
I have a particular aversion to persons I who rush to the contributors' columns of periodicals with their complaints. I had hoped I always would be able to resist following them, but on reading your account of the Lewis-Munn wrestling match, I find myself slipping.
You are guilty of the grotesque error (common among Easterners) of believing there is only one Kansas City, and that it is in Kansas. For your information, Kansas City, Kans., has 125,000 population and Kansas City, Mo., 400,000. The wrestling bout you so graphically described took place in the latter.
The bout was in the same hall where Senator Jim Reed-surely you know his state-frequently has exhorted the populace. You say the bout was "in full view of 15,000 Kansans," and refer to the "thunderous applause of the Kansans." Remarkable, indeed. that all the spectators should have come from the other side of the line.
Your Sports Editor knows his wrestling, but not his geography. For his sake I hope our Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club don't find him out. RAY RUNNION.
'Poor Judgment'
TIME New York, N. Y.
New York, N. Y. Jan. 23, 1925
Gentlemen:
Do you not think you used rather poor judgment in publishing in your last issue the letter signed by Howard K. James? You cannot use the excuse that you publish all letters received as I personally know of at least a dozen which have been written to you but have not been included in your column LETTERS.
Presumably you are not particular who subscribes to TIME--Catholic, Protestant or Jew. Therefore, should not such a letter as that of Mr. James be omitted, knowing full well that it would be resented by every Roman Catholic reader?
It is easy to imagine what calibre of man is this Howard K. James, when he used such language in his correspondence to you that you were obliged to omit same.
MARIE A. WAGNER.
The language of ex-Subscriber Tames, though libelous, was not obscene.-ED.
Railroad Sop
TIME Cambridge, Mass.
New York, N. Y. Jan. 24, 1925
Gentlemen:
You think that because you state facts in a two-faced way, that any one has to take them the way that will give you least trouble. Let me call your attention to Page 27, column 1 of your Jan. 26 issue. I will admit that the story is good; it's the kind of story I buy the magazine to read; but in it you have the kind of sop to the big industries that probably gets you all your advertising. You say that Nurmi, the Finnish runner, got off a "certain famed express" in Chicago "well-fed, well-rested." That's a two-faced fact. You pretend to be merely telling your readers that this runner was in good shape for his race, and no one can prove anything else. Rut what you're really doing is patting the N. Y. Central on the back for making Nurmi as comfortable as no one believes he was Before I retired from business, Sirs, I traveled twice a week between New York City and Chicago town, traveled, I think, on every famed express" there is. Never once did I get off the train either well-fed or well-rested.
If only your statement had two good faces might get by. As it is, the balderdash about the Finn's comfort is so obviously invented to soft-soap the railroads that I can't it go by without protest.
T. C. SHENKS
It is true that Nurmi's statement that he got off the train well-fed, well-rested, may appear, when quoted, an exaggeration, a sop to the railroads. Nevertheless, TIME stated in the same article that the knives, forks, glasses of the dining-car jingled, mentioned "the clatter of tableware that trembled"--facts for which the N. Y. Central R. R. was responsible and which cannot have added relish to the hardy Finn's meal. TIME spoke also of the dining-car waiters, employes of the railroad, whose "white eyeballs rolled, puffy lips twitched"-a spectacle which Diner Nurmi cannot have surveved with enthusiasm -ED