Opera Glasses in the Senate Sirs:
WHY? Recently I visited, for the first time, the two Houses of Congress in the Capitol at Washington, D. C.
It happens that my eyesight is seriously impaired and I frequently carry opera glasses to help out. I had anticipated pleasure in looking at, and identifying, many of the august (?) members of the upper house, including Borah, Glass, Tom Tom Heflin who mortally fears, etc. Imagine my chagrin when I lifted my glasses to my eyes, to be told by the doorkeeper that it was verboten to make use of opera glasses in the Senate galleries.
Not so the House, to them it matters not, and if one wants to gaze down upon them through a length of stove pipe it is O. K.
Can you ascertain just why the Senators are so sacrosanct that one violates the properties in gazing at them through opera glasses?
Does it make the dear things nervous?
A. E. BRUCE
Claremont, Calif.
Presumably because the size of the room permits of high visibility with the naked eye the use of binoculars is habitually forbidden in the Senate chamber (there is no written rule). The House is much larger; its denizens are correspondingly more difficult to observe.—ED.
Iowa’s Dickinson
Sirs:
Enlightened by your pithy reports on other members of Congress, the undersigned subscribers request that you print one on Congressman Lester J. Dickinson of Iowa, now a candidate for the U. S. Senate.
HARLAN MILLER
ALEX FITZHUGH
ELIZABETH DOUGLAS
RUDOLPH WEITZ
JAMES HANRAHAN
SAM C. GREEN
Des Moines, Iowa
The record of Representative Lester Jesse (“Dick”) Dickinson of the Tenth Iowa district is as follows:
Born: on a farm in Lucas County, Iowa, Oct. 29, 1873.
Start in life: plowing, hoeing, harvesting on his father’s plentiful acres.
Career: His father Levi, descendant of Nathaniel Dickinson, Massachusetts settler of 1630, migrated to Iowa after the Civil War, bought land at $1 per acre, sold it for $6, became a well-to-do husbandman. His son did farm chores, attended common school, grew tall and solid. Ambitious, he helped pay his way through Cornell College (Mt. Vernon, Iowa) which graduated him in 1898. He studied law at Iowa State University, hung out his shingle at the age of 26 in the town of Algona. Two years later he married Miss Myrtle Call who bore him a son, a daughter. For four years he was prosecuting attorney for Kossuth Co., spoke at Republican rallies, advanced to the Republican State Central Committee. Once he was defeated for the State Legislature. In 1918 he was elected to Congress where he has since served continuously.
In Congress: In seniority of service he is the fourth ranking member of the Iowa delegation. So firmly entrenched is he, politically, in the soil of his district that no man has dared oppose him in primary or election for the last six years. He has risen to be chairman of the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee which handles all U.S. funds for Agriculture.
In Congress he voted for the Soldier Bonus (1924), Farm Relief (1927, 1928, 1929), Immigration restriction (1924), Tax Reduction (1926, 1928, 1930), the Jones (heavier Prohibition penalties) Law (1929), Radio Control (1928).
He voted against Reapportionment (1929) Though not on formal record, he favored Boulder Dam (1928), opposed the Navy’s 15-cruiser bill (1929).
He votes Dry, drinks Dry, but does not make Prohibition speeches.
To foreign affairs he gives scant attention, takes no side on the World Court, Disarmament, the League of Nations. His position is that the Senate, not the House, must deal with such matters.
Legislative hobby: Agriculture and Farm Relief.
He is the real leader of the farm bloc in the House. This bloc is not so insurgent as its Senate counterpart, which permits him and his followers to maintain their standing as regular party men. He has stopped counting the number of bills for farm aid he has offered in the House in the past eleven years. Many of them were along the same lines the Federal Farm Board is now pursuing. With his knowledge of practical husbandry, of law, of politics, he has become Agriculture’s most potent House orator. He plugged for the old McNary-Haugen bill, extolled the Equalization Fee, favored the Debenture Export Plan. Though disagreeing with his agricultural views, President Coolidge once recommended him to a Massachusetts audience as the House’s “strongest speaker” on farm relief. He made his activities felt upon the House leadership. Speaker Longworth remarked: “Dick, if you ever need an affidavit that you have been a hell-raiser for agriculture, just call on me.”
In 1924, after two summers on a Chautauqua circuit as a farm relief speaker, he appeared at the Republican National Convention at Cleveland as a “dark horse” candidate for the Vice-Presidency.
In appearance he is handsome, in manner friendly, affable. Above broad shoulders, he carries high a well-shaped head with a shock of white hair combed back into a pompadour. Smooth-shaven, his Roman features have been burned dark by Iowa sunshine. A quick engaging smile reveals gleaming white teeth. Not at all the hayseed type of legislator, he wears conservatively cut grey sack suits, feels no embarrassment in cutaway and silk hat.
He does not smoke or chew. When angered, he swears vigorously. His flashy temper quickly subsides. Once he taught Sunday school in Algona. A Congregationalist, he used to attend the same church as President Coolidge until the crowds drove him away.
No sportsman, he plays anagrams with all-comers at any time, cribbage and bridge occasionally. He drives a Peerless and a Dodge, fiddles with his radio for distant stations, enjoys cinema. He lives in an apartment at No. 2800 Ontario Road in Washington, entertains the required amount for a Congressman, no more. His married son is his House secretary. His hobby: Dickinson genealogy.
As a candidate for the Senate, to succeed Democratic Senator Daniel Frederic Steck, he has already opened his primary campaign for the Republican nomination against Iowa’s Governor John Hammill.
Impartial House observers rate him thus: An able and industrious legislator who has supplied the House farm bloc with its political motive power. He stands higher than his slower-witted Iowa colleague, Chairman Gilbert N. Haugen of the House Committee on Agriculture. Except on controversial farm relief questions, his votes are with the regular Republican majority whose leaders frequently seek his advice. He supports the efforts of the Federal Farm Board through its experimental period. He is one of the 15 most potent members of the House, one of the 15 most popular.
His House term expires March 3, 1931.—ED.
Louisiana’s Sessums Sirs:
Clerical Louisiana must feel much slighted at your failure to record in Milestones the death on Christmas Eve of the Right Reverend Davis Sessums, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Louisiana. Iowa was not overlooked when you recorded the passing of its bishop in TIME, Jan. 6.
Bishop Sessums dies suddenly of heart failure at the age of 77. Famous Sessums accomplishments: a vocabulary that would have staggered Daniel Webster and almost any lexicographer; making Christ Church, New Orleans, the cathedral of the diocese.
WILLIAM A. BELL, Jr.
New Orleans, La.
Tetrapod
Sirs:
Every mother likes to think her child unusual, and now your magazine comes to uphold my own convictions. Your article on Tetrapodisis in the Jan. 6 number says that Dr. Hrdlicka could locate only 41 cases in two years. I can offer him the 42nd, (he will probably have 420 before the letters on the subject cease), in the person of my young son, aged eleven months.
He has been crawling for about three months and the last two of them he has walked about on hands and feet every time he has had the chance—that is, every time he found himself without any clothes on.
He has about half an hour exercise period before his bath in the morning and he then scuttles around on hands and feet faster than on hands and knees, hampered by a lot of clothes.
His young sister always crawled on one knee and one foot, but never tried to use both feet.
ESTHER B. CONEY
Watseka, Ill.
Sirs:
. . . My young son now 19 months old, trotted like a little bear from the time he was 11 months until he learned to walk at the age of 14 months. His gate was very amusing and also was very novel, for none of our friends have ever seen a child trot like he did. The fact that he made such good time with his peculiar gate gave him very little desire to walk, and accordingly his learning to travel in an upright position was postponed for some time.
V. MINERS
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Murder
Sirs:
In Freeport, Ill., one Harral Carl Bilger, photographer, salesman, and author of note(s), threatens to murder some editor on TIME if he ever again omits the column Miscellany, with the one-word heads, snappy items.
H. C. BILGER
Freeport, Ill.
Denver’s Quota
Sirs:
I was much interested in your article in the Dec. 30 number of TIME on “Faith, Hope & Organization.” I notice, however, that you included Denver among the cities which failed to get their full quota.
I do not know where you got this information, but I am glad indeed to report that we were able to reach our full goal of $729,461—with more to spare. This is 2% more than we raised last year, and the greatest campaign success we have had during our eight Chest campaigns.
GUY T. JUSTIS
The Denver Community Chest
Denver, Col.
Polo Club
Sirs:
In your issue of Jan. 6, p. 41, under Business & Finance, you mention Welch’s products in part as follows:
“. . . unlike such soft drinks as ginger ale and mineral waters, grape juice does not combine with alcoholic liquors.”
Some years ago a friend of mine, Joseph H. Swan III, attended the International Polo matches and at one of the clubs a bartender of some renown was asked to make up a new drink to celebrate the occasion. He used one-half grape juice, one-half gin, with a dash of creme de menthe. This mixture should be stirred slowly, and served cold. It is called a “Polo Club.”
In this vicinity the “Polo Club” has gained considerable favor, and while Welch’s grape juice is excellent we often favor less expensive grades. Try one with my compliments.
HAROLD A. HARVEY
Middletown, O.
It is also reported that grape-juice makes a good “carrier” for straight alcohol.—ED.
ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9vb2toaIZwuMStq56qo2K3orqMa25maWlofXA%3D