Evening Star Newspaper, December 30, 1928, Page 63

ILLUSTRATED | FEATURES he Sunday St MAGAZINE SECTION Part 7—8 Pages “WASHINGTON, D. (., SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 30, 1928. Florida Is Waiting to Welcome President-Elect Hoover In Sunny Florida, America’s Winter Vacation Land, President-Elect Hoover Will Make Plans for Forming His Cabinet, Work on Important Issues, and Prepare Himself for Strain of Coming Term by Taking Healthful Exercise for a Montfx or Two, and Resting When His Many Problems Permit. BY ANNE HARD. (Ilustrations drawn specially for this article by E. H. Suydam.) A having a good time. Here are polo fields, golf courses, taxi-airplanes, speedy motors. S soon as Florida learned that the next President was coming down here g get a rest the whole State turned in and produced its own Hoover rest output until it glutted the market. Here is a land where everything looks scrubbed clean; a land that swims in sunshine and bright colors. Here are thousands of people just Up and down the blue waters rush motorboats trailing a sun-baked man balancing upon an aquaplane, boat races. Here are horse races and dog races, motor races and speed Here beautiful ladies swim in bright land-locked beach pools at the edge of the sea under miles of palm shadows—and wear their brilliant bathing costumes while they lunch on the roof of a hotel of byzantine splendor—and then go back to the sea again. Here they dance cn & circular floor under palm columns at the edge of the sea. Here comes a trim yacht into port, and here a Coast Guard cutter trails the little brown boat of a captured bootlegger. Everywhere is light, life, color; everywhere are displayed the luxuries, the pleasures of the rich. But Mr. Hoover cares nothing for the amusements of the wealthy. From the house he has taken in Florida he can look across the waters and see the bright parasols of the bathers on the beach. He can hear the music from the tea dances in the coconut grove of a smart hotel a few hundred yards away across the waters. But they are as far from his interest as if they were a hundred miles away. His hobbies are fishing and working. He will have plenty of opportunity to gratify both of them in Florida. Half a dozen of the most magnificent estates opened their gates to him. Beautiful sea-going yachts begged him to use them. He picked out just one com- paratively simple house, one comparatively simple houseboat. * ok X X THE superficial observer, looking at the houseboat in which he will un- doubtedly spend a large part of his time, might reach a wrong conclusion. He might decide that Mr. Hoover will have plenty of rest on that boat. But here, as in his house ashore, he will have noth- ing to do but decide about an extra ses- sion of Congress, write his inaugural ad- dress, form his cabinet, work at the tariff, listen to several thousand sam- ples of advice, discuss the opinions of a 4 4 5 - a THE INVITIN and the target of the citizens who want to talk to him about it. When he goes aboard the houseboat these and 50 other problems will fol# low him aboard. If he could leave them all behind what a pleasant rest he might have. For it is a trim and cozy craft, 85 feet long with engines of 135 horse- power, which develop some 10 knots an hour, and its captain, Rayburn Otwell, handles it with a precision to make a passenger sleep of nights no matter what the weather, » PALM-SHADED SWIMMING POOL. hundred leaders, think out his policies on prohibition enforcement and similar little restful things. Congress has ap- propriated millions of dollars for South- ern drainage, and he finds himself m the heart of the country that needs it On its side is its pleasant name, Amitie, which is friendship no matter how you pronounce it. And at its prow is the gay little red, white and black burgee with the monogram N-25 of the Biscayne Yacht Club. VIEW.FROM THE WATCH TOWER ATOP THE BOATHOUSE ON many counts. They were luckily the first to be offered. They were also in many ways the best fitted to the Hoovers’ tasks. And in the person- alities of their donors there are certain fine resemblances. Mr. and Mrs. Hoover might have accepted several estates far mwre mag- nificent. . Both the Penney house and the Adams’ houseboat are compara- tively small. They are thoroughly un- ostentatious. They are thoroughly com- fgr{able. And there are no strings tied sclentist, engineer, inventor. He dis< Mr. Adams, host of the Amitie, is covered a certain way of “cracking oil” which added many millions of gallons to the amount of gasoline which the crude oil of the country can produce. He is one of those intellectuals whose brain children bring them a fortune. * K K x n addition to his abilities as a chemi- cal engineer and scientist Mr. Adamg is an artist. Member of the Student Art League in New York, he still de- votes much of his leisure time to his passion for the beautiful. He makes his own sketches for the beautiful iron grill work, wood carving and stained glass windows in his lovely home on Belle Island. The fountains in his grounds and even the low yellow stucco houses are of his own design. He is an expert and a collector of Chinese rugs and art objects, and the house in Florida is filled with the loveliest examples of Oriental work. Although he is not himself a musician, he is fond of music and a patron of various musical enter- prises. Mr. Penney made his money out of a system of chain stores unique in their business conception, and he spends his fortune upon especially two big practi- cal philanthropies—one an experiment in Florida forestry and agriculture and the other a settlement of village homes for retired Christian workers. Both in the amassing and expendi- ture of his fortune he shows himself a man of extraordinary vision. In his, system of chain stores the manager of each of the thousand or so THE PENNY ESTATE, SHOWING THE HOTEL ACROSS THE BAY. Inside is a cozy, salon and a cozy master’s stateroom and several cozy guest staterooms and a tiny dining room, all fitted in cheerful marine blue. And at its stern there is a roofed and open deck with wicker furniture. It leaves its moorings against the tall posts at the edge of the estate of its owner, Joseph Adams of New York, and it slips out through Biscayne Bay in and out among the .coral rocks and managrove thickets of the Florida Keys, into Card Sound, into narrow Angel Fish Creek, and comes to a stop by the green tangle appropriately named on the charts Palo Alto Island. Nothing is in sight but the low thick- ets, the sky and_the waters of jade and opal. Nothing bfit a little fishing smack, the Patsy, her showing four fish- ing rods in wait and her hold fitted with spare engines against an emerg- ency which might carry her out to sea. * ok kX IT all looks like a perfect place for a rest. Then, suddenly, there is a drumming sound in the sky. Over the mangrove thickets drones a seaplane. If they can’t get at Mr. Hodyer by land or sea, they will be able to reach him by air. In a moment the plane drops to the water, swings alongside, delivers its packet. X The rest that Mr. Hoover is going to get in Florida has been limited right at the start. Yet it will not be entirely diminished, for the Amitie will stand by in these waters, so soundless and sheltered, while the little Patsy puts out to get bara- cuda by the score around the lighthouse or out in the open Atlantic. Then, too, the Amitie will make a number of longer cruises, all the way to the west shore of Florida, in all prob- ability. And in between times there will be those inevitable days ashore in the house lent to the next President by James Cash Penney. Then Mr. Hoover will live in a place conveniently arranged to satisfy his re- quirements and the requirements of the corps of executive assistants, stenog- raphers, newspaper men, photographers, telegraphers, Secret Service men, cas- ual visitors, important visitors and mere lookers-on, who inevitably follow in the ‘wake of importance. ‘The home is located on Belle Island, which is tied to Miami by the beautiful Venetian causeway. To the left of the road which bisects the island is an unoccupied estate. To the right are the two places belonging to Mr. Adams and Mr. Penney. * K Kk X TH.EH.E is no wall or hedge to mark the boundary between their estates, but a low wall rises between them and the public highway. On three sides they are surrounded by the waters of Biscayne Bay. Secret Service men, posted at two points, can look straight across the grounds of the Penney estate and take in at a glance the small ex- tent of lawn, the tiny swimming pool, the little Japanese rock garden, the boathouse and the garage, not to men- tion the hovering hibiscus, the danger- ous oleanders and the daring poinset- tias. Shadows of royal palm, like feather dusters in jade cases, silhou- ette themselves against the white stucco walls of the Penney house, and Bugin- villaea vines make purple or crimson blots against them. You enter a low oak door into an oak-paneled small reception room, be- yond which immediatety there is a large square living room. A dining Toom opens to the left of the living room, and a music roo.a, containing a grand piano n?d a pipe organ, opens to the right of it. All are paneled in the same dark, wax-finished oak. There is a hint of late French Gothic in these rooms—in the grooved panel- ing, in the flatstone fireplaces, in the ceiling of the music room, two stories high, where behind the oaken rafters there are designs in water color against pale turqouise blue. Alllook out over the water through glass doors which open onto tiled porches. Oak-paneled stairs ascend to the four bedrooms, with their sleeping porches and glimpses of the speeding motors on the long causeway, of the tiled roofs of Miami Beach, of the shining waters of the bay. Another turn of the stairs leads up- ward to two more bedrooms, a sewing room with its own little porch and a How Virginia Tobacco Is Grown, Sold and Processed " A Visit to the Virginia Tobacco Region. Auctioncers and Warehouses—How the “Weed” Is Marketed. DANVILLE, Va., December 26. ESPITE the increasing use of tobacco, relatively few persons who smoke have but the vaguest understanding of the processes through which it passes before it is available in its tra- ditional forms. There is, of course, & general comprehension that the tobacco leaf is grown in the Southern fields, is harvested, is purchased by the large manufacturing companies and is stored in prizeries to be used at a rate de- pendent on the current-demand for the finished product. The development of tobacco growing and its sale offers a romantic chapter in the early history of the South, and one of the peculiarities is that the to- bacco planter of today is following the trail set by his forefathers a hundred years ago, with little change. Danville is one of the oldest tobacco martketing centers and one of the larg- est markets in the South, clearing, all 10id, epproximately 100,000,000 pounds of raw leaf during the course of a sell- ing season which begins in October and usually lasts for five months. Certain wvirtues of the soil in the Piedmont pla- teau make possible the production of that type of tobacco indispensable for use in the cigarette, and for that reason | tobacco will remain the staple crop of Virginia unless and until some unex- pected change comes in the public teste. No tourist bound for Southern climes should pass through the tobacco region at this season of the year without a pause long enough to witness the high activities of those furnishing the raw material for millions of smokers in this and other countries. To enter a tobacco warehouse where piles of the pungent weed are sold at the rate of 300 piles an hour is to enter a veritable Babel, from which the stranger will gather little. He will see a man surrounded by perhaps a hundred other men, chanting a low song, the words of which are un- intelligible, and he will see from the surrounding groups strange physical ac- tions denoting a bid on a pile of to- bacco. The public auction is still the means whereby the grower gets a price for the leaf he has been cultivating during the preceding months. Skl TOBACCO auctioneer inherits his ability. It is not learned by rote. His life and that of his prede- cessors has been steeped in the tobacco industry. The task requires capacity to appraise a pile of tobacco the mo- ment he sets eyes on it, to catch the wink of an eye from a buyer or a gesture of the hand from those about him and the further capacity to keep “in voice. In some of the larger warehouses dur- ing a tobacco glut a sale will start at 9 o'clock in the morning and will con- tinue, with a half Rour intermission for-dinner, until light fails, usually at about half-past 4 o'clock at this season of the year. During that entire time he is chanting his low drone and sell- ing tobacco at what appears on paper to be the impossible speed of 300 piles of leaf in one hour. The auctioneer has always sung his song, for to speak his piece would mean to incapacitate his vocal chords long before the sale is over. The sing-song “cry” is the only means of saving himself. It is no easy task. Good auctioneers are paid hand- some salaries, for the sale of tobacco depends on their ability, and at the end of a sale the auctioneer is a spent man, usually ready for complete relaxation to prepare for his next tour of duty. The_records of the Danville market do not carry the mind back to Revolu- tionary days, when tpbacco was being sold much in the same way that it is today. It is known, however, that while Cornwallis was giving battle in these parts tobacco was being raised and that it was brought to market here by novel methods. The farmers built a stout hogshead of oak large enough to carry half a ton of leaf. Through the cen- ter of the cask he drove a shaft which protruded at either end. To this was affixed shafts and the whole hogshead revolved as one great wheel, and it was thus that tobacco traveled. Arriving here, it was spread out on the sidewalk and buyers acquired it in trade, usually exchanging necessaries for the farm. Another way about that pe- READY TO START ONE OF THE VIRGINIA TQBACCO SALES riod was for the buyers to buy a field of tobacco at harvest time or to visit the farmers’ barfls and to make offers on samples pulled from the curings, for tobacco is” not brought to market in its green state. On being cut it is strung on sticks which are lodged in tiers in the multitude of tobacco barns which dot the countryside. A fire is built of wood underneath and for two or three days heat gradually drives from the leaf its moisture, and when withdrawn tobacco has taken on the golden or mahogany color and is ready for the factory. * ok ok * N being brought to market today— usually in a motor truck or even in small lots in the rear seat of the family car, the tobacco is graded, placed in large wicker trays, weighed and set out on the warehouse floor. On each pile is a tag giving the weight and the name of the farmer. No sooner has the auctioneer disposed of the pile and moved on to the next when a sales fol- lower marks on the ticket the price paid for the tobacco and the name of the buyer. The tickets are left at the office of the warehouse, where a corps of skilled clerks run up the totals and make out the checks. The leaf is carried to the buyers’ factories and the farmer calls for his check and receives his money on the same day that the sale has been made. With half of the crop of this season already sold in the Bright Belt, millions of dollars have been placed in circula- tion, stimulating ‘retail activities, for the tobacco planter is a “one-crop” man and he usually has purchases to make and fertilizer bills to settle, if not to take up a mortgage now and then. Once the tobacco bought at the auc- tion sale has reached the prizery it is further processed. Tobacco notorious- ly absorbs moisture in the air and it is pliant when placed on the warehouse floor, for the curing process does not destroy the ofl content in every leaf. To leave it in this state would mean it would, within a few days,” become in- fected with mould and would be de- stroyed either by spontaneous combus- tion or through rotting. * ok Kk ¥ T!m first duty, therefore, is to pre- serve the tobacco, and to this end it is placed in steam dryers, which gen- erate, under steam pressure, high temperatures. The steam dryer is reaily & long corridor, housed in, with the to- bacco passing through different tem- perature grades on an endless chain, and when it emerges at the end of an hour it is dry and brittle. Expert ‘workmen back it into tierces these are carried to the storage warehouses, where they may be kept for years with the leaf losing little of its virtue. Whether the prevailing method of selling tobacco is sound, economically, an open question. The tobacco planter has always felt that he has no voice iy the price his leaf shall bring and that he is at the mercy of the whims of buyers or the fluctuations of the tobacco market. Twice during the present, generation have tobacco co- operatives been started, and each time they have failed for various reasons. The Tri-State Tobacco Growers’ Co- operative Marketing Association failed three years ago, largely, it is believed, because the overhead was excessive and the farmers found that they had to walt too long between payments. Not the least interesting feature of ]any Southern tobacco market is the | process of stemming. The veins of the tobacco leaf have to be torn out before ! the leaf can be used for any purpose. 1 Negroes are employed by the hundreds to do this, and to enter a stemmery is | to hear a rich rendering of negro spiri- tuals in their native surroundings and in a way which lingers long in memory. | GERARD TETLEY, Danville, Va. e Stock-Farm Aid. LTRA-VIOLET light is now prov- ing a boon to the stock farmer. Besides maintaining domestic animals ‘in good health during the sunless months of Winter, it improves their condition so that they bring a higher price in the market. A test was made with 12 pigs in which they were treated | with the light for three minutes daily when 10 to 12 weeks old, the length of | application being rgx-ulullly increased : with their age, until they were 20 weeks old. A like number of pigs were kept simultaneously under ordinary condi- tions. All were sold on the same day ond in every case the irradiated pigs { brought a higher price than the un- | treated animals. The operation was large room extending over more than half of the house. ‘This room, with its crystal chandelier, its shining floor and Jacobean benches, has heretofore been called the ballroom. Now there is already in sight a new use and a new appellation for that room. The speculative . eye of Lawrence | agricul TR s i i %‘ - stores is. a partner in the business, not merely an employe. the largest block of shares and is chair- man of the board of what is actually.a limited co-operative corporation, with the managers as shareholders. He* has 106,000 acres of land in Flor- ida. Part of it is scientifically forested in long-leaf and Cuban pine. Part of it is in satsuma oranges and beacon grapes. Part of it is given over to small holdings of about 20 acres each of the cow-hog-hen kind. In the last named he is trying out the Mr. Penney holds | pape their worn-out workers derelict upon the waters of old age. It is a daily illustration of what can be done for them and of what should be done foy them by their younger and wealthies brethren. Mr. Penney had the vision to see it, the practical sense ‘to build it. Man of science and man of practical vision, these two, Mr. Adams and Mr. Pepney, are doing their best in the sowing of the rest crop for Mr. Hoover in Florida. The air-filled porches of the Penney house, the lovely lawn with palms and flowers are there. There is the music room where Mr. and Mrs. Hoover may listen to music with a few friends of a Sunday afternoon. ‘There, moored close by, is the friend- ly little Amitie and somewhere in the fishing grounds the Patsy and her rods await the anglers’ passion. But when you up North in the midst of sleet and cold are feeling a little jealous of Mr. Hoover's rest, when you see him in the “movies” walking under the palms or stepping abdard a house~ boat, just relember how much of & “rest” this is. . The Holiday Tree. The honors for introducing the Christmas tree are about equally di- vided. Martin Luther is said to have brought the first one into his home—a little fir tree, on which he hung candles. But it was a woman, the Duchess Helena of Orleans, who imported the custom into France. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg introduced it into England, but his home-loving consort, Queen Victoria, was its chief sponsor. The Christmas tree and Santa Claus (St. Nicholas) arrived simultaneously in New York with the Dutch colonists. And it is safe to say that if some jolly Dutch burgher cyt down the first fam=- ily fir tree it was his good frau who trimmed it. Most of our Christmas customs orig- inated in Germahy. The Germans in- augurated the mysterious closed room into which for days nobody but mother was admitted! Except that their early Christmas trees were decorated with r roses, apples, sweetmeats and wafers instead of elaborately colored electric light bulbs, and the presents laid out on a nearby table were sim- pler, a German Christmas in the si teenth century was much the same as it is with us today. A story is told of a lady in Wittenberg in 1737 who oper= ated on a large scale. On Christmas Eve she placed as many small trees in her rooms as there were persons to whom she wanted to make presents. . By the height, ornament and application of chain-store ‘methods to ture. That is, he has at the top arrangement, every one could see which tree was. intended for him. As soop S— o O s AN S ONNNNATN, 1 SN s X5 “\) FTRAEN N Wt/ is e 5}'3\' DY Ll W T o . sy gy X PR AN L] T THE HOME WHERE THE PRESIDENT-ELECT AND MRS. HOOVER WILL BE GUESTS. Richey, advance messenger for Mr. Hoover's “rest trip,” filled it with no shadowy shades of brilliant guests. He at once saw it fittéd with a good, big desk or two, an extra telephone and a long, thick carpet which Mr. Hoover's feet can tread when he walks up and down in meditation. * koK ¥ ND when the thoughts he is de- veloping there have crystallized he will find himself in immediate touch with his executive assistants and his!| stenographers. These will be only a few minutes’ walk away, over in the pretty little yellow stucco “guest house” belonging to Mr. Adams. Mr. Hoover can call them to him in a motent or he can walk across the flagstones bridg- | ing the lawn, by a tiny formal garden, | under the palms, to the house itself— | and there, is he likes, he can stay in- doors or he again can step out onto a porch at the edge of the water. ‘When he goes thither he will not be able to avoid the minions of the press, whose headquarters will be established in another of the Adams buildings—a suite of pleasants rooms, ai wit their outdoor porch, over the Adams jarage. In all these houses and offices, in| living rooms and in business rooms, the emphasis is always on the joy of the! Florida outdoors. It is, as every one knows who is familiar with the Hoover home in California (that house in which every room leads out of doors), just the sort of emphasis that appeals to both Mr. and Mrs. Hoover. But there is in the choice of this handsomely repaid in that each pig sold or 14 times as much as its treatment home, of these and of this house- boat & deep-! appropriateness of the staff of scientific experts. Next he applies mass purchasing and finally mass selling. Having found that co-operation paid in business, having started the system with his Florida holdings, he sought to apply it to the whole citrus-fruit indus- try-of Florida. He began. He is now president of the group of co-operatives known as the |, Florida Fruit Growers, which is said to include 95 per cent of the citrus grow= ers in the State. B ‘T was when he began this end of the work that he became acquainted with Mr. Hoover, through Secretary Jardine. Mr. Hocver saw in Mr. Pen- ney a man who, like himself, cared little for material things and had a genuine sense of service. Some one said of Mr. Penney: “If he needed a new pair of shoes he would < have the old ones half-soled so he could give $20 to the Salvation Army to buy shoes for somebody else.” ‘The settlement he has established in Florida for retired Christian workers is th | as unique in its ideas as Penney busi- ness or the Penney experiments in farm co-operation. ‘ Married couples who have $500 capi- tal are admitted to live in one of the attractive little apartments. There is a clubhouse, of-course, and a hospital, and so on, and, more significantly, there is"one church in which these men and ‘women of more than a score of separate denominations worship together with- out respect to creed. ‘Whether t means it to be so or not, this village is & living shame to Chris- tian ehurches, wi 0o often cast i i, as the presents had been arranged and the candles lighted on the trees all the people entered, looked at the things and took possession of the presents and their respective trees. X In his autcbiography the puinter Al- brecht Adam says: “In Nordlungen we don't have the |dark fir tree for Christmas. Instead lof that a small cherry or apricot tree {is planted months before in a pot and tplaced in a corner of the room. Gen- Icrally these trees are covered with blos- {soms at Christmas time, and fill up the ‘whole corner of the room, This is Ilanked upon as a great ornament, which certainly adds much to the beauty of the Christias festival. One family vies with another, and the one who has the finest blossoms on its tree is very proud ef it.” ‘This kind of Christmas tree was by | no means an isolated custom. In Aus- \trian Silesia_the peasant women still |go out at 12 o'clock at night on St. | Andrew’s day to pluck a branch of the apricot tree, which is put in water so that it will flower at Christmas time. Armed with their flowering branches, they go to Christmas mass, and the branch is supposed to give them the power of discerning witches. Oid Mahogany. { FREIGHT steamship recently ) reached New: York from the Philip- | pines with 500,000 feet of mahogany for |the manufacture of motorboats. The timber was cut from trees estimated to thave beew from. 800 to 1,000 years ol !