Evening Star Newspaper, November 9, 1930, Page 98

Parental Instinct By Fannie Hurst. A Story of Great De- votion Told by; One of the Leading Writers of the Day. people used laughingly and entirely without opprobrium to refer to Kester's maternal in- stinet, his children, particularly daughters, had formed a sort unspoken compact to retort with unanimity: *What'’s the matter with paternal instinct? BLESSED gang of ruffians was what Mrs. McMuriry, who tended the brood all day, ealled them. A blessed gang of ruffians and their daddy no better than the rest, flinging around from the minute he entered the Eg | sl e ~N THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 9, 1930 Myron fell asleep in Kester’s arms, listening to a rier, he would think nothing of coming home of an evening, washing out towels, helping drape one of his daughters into a half made party dress, or assisting with the dinner. Faise pride? . Nonsense. No reason why a man shouldn't do whatever chores present themselves. Silly convention that certain duties belong to one sex or the other. He who hesitates is lazy. As gradually his brood began to marry off, those household chores automatically grew lighter. At 43, Kester was a grandfather. At 45, his last child had left the nest. Life, of course, was sifnpler now, Financial responsibility lifted, sons and daughters well on their own, his own vigorous health unimpaired, there seemed future and good future ahead for Kester. Father will marry again, now, the girls de- cided among themselves, and affectionately set about scouting for timber worthy of him, As a matter of fact, Kester's thoughts did turn that way. Even with their devotion, his children had their own interests now. Life was no longer the hurly-burly affair a growing family had made it. He had done a good job. fm and mother, too. The wife who had died his last child would have blessed him for it. His tribute to her lay in his success. Slowly, but rather definitely, Kester's thoughts began to turn to the desirability meeting some woman . . . 1 was along about this time that Myron's T-year-old son began to exhibit certain quale itles in his little makeup that secretly, for months, had been disturbing his parents to no small extent. On various occasions, for this and that flag- rant offense, the child had been sent home from school, finally on his eighth birthday actually meeting with final dismissal from school au- thorities who could no longer cope with him. For another six months, secretly, and eager to spare his grandfather the fact, Myron and an adorably pretty wife struggled with the seri- ous problem of this boy. _ When he was 9, however, there came about the shocking occasion of Myron, jr., being ap- prehended before the Juvenile Court. he had asked his father to repeat. Kester was @ strange man. A ron, jr., lives alone with his grandfather in a small house they have taken om the outskirts A Senator Grves First-Hand View of Russian Progress. factories, cement works, are being located in re- Continued jrom Thirteenth Page program of enforced collectivism was aban- doned. Today the chief progress in agriculture is registered in the advance of these great col- lective farms, to which the government sends crop experts, managers, machinists and tractor operators. When a new giant tractor was delivered to one of the collectives during my visit the weather and ground conditions were most un- favorable for immediate operations. Instead of waiting a few days for more favorable con- ditions, the native supervising mechanic allowed one 6f his men to mount the new monster at the American manufacturer in his sales talk. UNMINDP'UL of the fact that maximum resulis were calculated under most favor- able ground conditions, the group of awed spectators were sorely depressed by this monu- mental collapse of their foremost dream. It required no little diplomacy on the part of the American engineer to revive the old faith in the 30-plow machine. The incident epitomizes the meeting of the old and new orders in Russia today. Again, one traveling through the tiny hum- drum villages comes suddenly upon a great as- semblage of comcrete mixers, steam shovels, pneumatic drills, derricks. The whole panorama flowers without warning into a bewildering hase of smoke, steam and dust; the serenity of age- less and unchanging villages is shattered for- ever by the roaring, pounding, clatiering of an army of builders. A new hydro-electric power plant is lifting its sharp clean lines high above the ancient hovels of the medieval steppes. Here the arts and erafts of the twentieth century re- make the whole known world for a group of peasants who still will have to. be taught, when occasion demands, how to turn on a water faucet. Under the industrialization program, the basic- operation plants, such as steel mills, chemical her productive eapacity than any nation in the world. In her industrial operations, Russia strives hard to duplicate the American system of mass production. Her leaders prefer American ma- chinery, when ecredit terms can be For American machinery is the only product in the world which is geared to the seale of operations to which Russia aspizes. Agricultural egnipment built to the scale of the great plains of the States best adapted in their eyes to those vast sweeps of fertile soil which bend off into space on the Russian horizon. And ma- chines which provide shoes for a nation of 120,~ 000,000 in America appear most likely to be the only types nearly adequate to the ultimate de- mand of a nation of 160,000,000. for example, before the new cemand for steel table knives can be met at home. Time again Russian officials remarked during visit that «the national educational 2Ef ;E?,; 1 United States Government soon how long it can defer formal a nation whose markets are so industry. if I saw near Moscow the structural beginnings of ‘a great factory, modeled after American plans, which officials told me would within a year be turning out several hundred American automobiles daily. I wondered, half whether America would recognize Russia before Moscow was faced with the American parking problem Meanwhile, however, Russia is hard at work at the task of Belts dark recesses of the mines, aga ing maws of the blast furnace over expanse of the