Evening Star Newspaper, May 19, 1935, Page 37

PRESIDENTIA WILLNOT BE L ELECTION PARTY FIGHT Issue Will Be Between New Dealers and Antis, With Leftists Joining Roosevelt. BY MARK SULLIVAN. ERTAIN steps are being taken by the Republicans looking ( to next year's presidential election—regional meetings, declarations of policy by out- standing leaders and the like. As an expression of political vitality this is wholesome. To many, however, it seems not enough. It is hardly a com- plete facing of the extraordinary sit- uation now existing in America. It is inadequate, literally and indis- Putably inadequate, to think of Ameri- can politics today in ordinary terms of Republican vs. Democratic. I am aware of the advantages of our pres- ent system. I am aware of the diffi- culty, the almost impossibility, of changing this system for the purpose of any one campaign. I am aware that in ordinary circumstances there is ad- vantage in not having one party wholly conservative, the other wholly radical. But the present circum- stances are not ordinary; they are extremely unordinary. Next Year's Set-up. ‘The set-up of next year's presiden- tial campaign can best be expressed, can only be adequately expressed, in terms which dismiss the familiar use of the words “Republican” and “Dem- ocratic.” The country is divided between New Dealers and anti-New Dealers. Cer- tainly that is a simple enough state- ment of the political situation—no one can possibly deny it. ‘To the New Dealers—those who un- derstand and favor the New Deal or are beneficiaries of it—Mr. Roosevelt 1s apparently going to add all the dis- contented, all the radicals. That is a fair observation, based on Postmaster ‘General Farley’s recent statement that Mr. Roosevelt is going to have all the left wingers with him. If that is the program, it means that Mr. Roosevelt will go so far to the left that there will be no reason for anybody on the extreme left to have a third ticket, under Senator Huey Long or anybody eise. That program will leave no op- portunity for the Socialist type of leader, such as Upton Sinclair, or the Socialist type of voter to try to cap- ture the Democratic party organiza- tion, as Mr. Sinclair did in California last August. That program, in short, would consolidate, as the New Deal party, all the “left”—all those who are opposed to conservatism. Early Assumption Wrong. If this is the program, it is a new development. Until some two weeks ago it was widely assumed that Huey Long would have a third party, and that this third party would subtract | some 5,000,000 votes or so from Mr. | Roosevelt. In short, up to the time of Mr. Roosevelt’s action about the | business leaders in the Chamber of Commerce, and Postmaster General Farley’s comment in connection with that episode—up to that time most | of us thought it was the New Dealers | who were going to be divided. We | thought that Mr. Roosevelt’s follow- | ing would be divided in the election | next year between New Dealers in the ordinary sense and radicals to whom the New Deal is not enough. It now appears that this earlier assumption was wrong. Apparently, now the New Dealers and the radicals are going to be consolidated and present a united front. Turn now to the anti-New Dealers, the conservatives. There we find cleavage. The antis have no common leadership such as the New Dealers and radicals have in Mr. Roosevelt. As respects rank and file of the voters, the anti-New Dealers are divided be- tween Republicans and Democrats. There are some 13,500,000 who | voted the Republican ticket in the | congressional election of November | last year. Those are anti-New Deal- | ers, dependable anti-New Dealers. ‘They voted anti-New Deal at a time | when New Deal prestige, Roosevelt prestige, was still high. Those 13,- 500,000 are the mass of anti-New Deal strength for next year’s election. Antis Among Democrats. In addition there are a large num- ber of Democrats who are as anti- | New Deal as any Republican is. There | is an immense number of Democrats who, on a straight issue, New Deal versus anti-New Deal, would vote anti-New Deal. How many there are of these anti-New Deal Democrats I cannot estimate. Among Democratic leaders, the number who, in their | hearts and consciences, are anti-New Deal is a great majority of the whole. It seems probable that Mr, Frank Kent is right in his estimate that, out of 69 Democrats in the Senate, fully 60 are, in their hearts, anti-New Deal, many of them profoundly anti-New Deal, some of them heart-sick and soul-sick at the seizure of the Demo- cratic party by the school of thought which goes by the name New Deal. Well-informed Washington believes that the foremost leaders of the Dem- ocratic party in the Senate are, in their hearts, opposed to the New Deal; that the very men who pilot New Deal measures through Congress are dismayed by man, of the mea- sures they sponsor; that these men, in living up to their titular party responsibility as leaders and chair- men of committees, are doing violence to their private convictions. Apparently this distaste for the New Deal goes straight up toward the top of the Democratic hierarchy. The other day a particularly well informed commentator wrote that “Vice Presi- dent Garner is swallowing hard these days: he doesn't like a good deal of the administration legislative program, but he is swallowing it. * * *” And so we have the anti-New Deal- ers, those opposed to the New Deal di- vided between Republicans and Dem- ocrats. The anti-New Dealers consist of substantially all the Republicans and many Democrats. Is there any reason why the anti-New Dealers should be thus divided? Is it whole- some for cge country that they should be divided How can they achieve unity? i Opposition Is Divided. 4 In the line-up as it stands, with the New Dealers united and the anti-New Dealers divided, the New Dealers are likely to win the election next year. ‘The New Dealers are likely to win, not because there are more of them, but mainly because the opposition to them is divided. And if the New Dealers win next year, what will follow? Mr. Roosevelt and his associates in the leadership of New Deal thought will fasten upon the country their new conception of society. If and when we have the new conception of so- ciety, it is inevitable that a change in the American form of Government will follow. Yet the New Dealers do not have a majority in the country. If there were presented to the country for a Yes and No vote a clear choice between, on the one hand, the thing that the New Deal contemplates or even the New Deal at its present partial stage of progress, :and, on the other hand, the sented to the country, the voters would reject what Mr. Roosevelt calls his “new economic order.” But for the purposes of the presi- dential election next year the New Dealers have immense advantages. They have the $4,000,000,000 which Mr. Frank Kent correctly describes as the “largest campaign fund in his- tory.” It is inevitable that the use of this fund will have the effect of promoting the New Deal conception of society. One of the men who will have the disposal of the money, Mr. Harry Hopkins, is, it seems tenable to say; an ardent and forceful believer in a chang~d order of things in America. Urges Class Consciousness. Certainly it seems tenable to say he believes in stirring up class conscious- ness. In the newspapers recently he was quoted as saying, to a gathering of his assistants who will have charge of distributing $1,000,000,000 or more, “Unless you realize that this is a fight between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,” you do not belong at F. E. R. A. headquarters.” I have not verified that quotation attributed to Mr. Hop- kins. It was published in a syndi- cated column in upward of 100 news- papers. It is sufficiently akin in spirit to formal public utterances and speeches Mr. Hopkins has delivered to Jjustify belief that it correctly repre- sents his philosophy and attitude. It is tenable to expect that the power of the money Mr. Hopkins will now have to administer will be used to inculcate among the distressed and the discon- tented what radical terminology de- scribes as “class consciousness.” Another who will have control of much of the $4,000,000,000 is Prof. Rexford Tugwell. To any one who has read Prof. Tugwell’s books, or who knows his past associations, it is im- possible not to believe that Prof. Tug- well has a kind of personal dislike ‘ror the American system of private ownership and business conducted for profit, and that he earnestly wishes to bring about in America some de- gree and form of collectivism. Can any one doubt that Prof. Tugwell, in administering the money at his dis- posal, will follow the law of his na- ture? Can we doubt that, so far as Prof. Tugwell has discretion, he must incline to administer the funds in a way likely to promote his notion of society? Walker Will Be Factor. The New Dealers will have yet another advantage from that four bil- lions. One of the men in charge of it is Mr. Frank C. Walker. Acquaint- ances of Mr. Walker give a good ac- count of him; they describe him as an able man with practical ability | who does not share the ideas of Mr, Hopkins and Prof. Tugwell. But Mr. Walker is the former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. Can any one doubt that that fact will figure in Mr. Walker’s distribution of the relief money? 1If, by any chance rather too great to conform to human nature, Mr. Walker personally should not deliberately direct the four bil- lions so as to re-elect Mr. Roosevelt— can.any one doubt that beneficiaries of the money, men who approach Mr. Walker to ask for large allocations, will assume that they can commend themselves to Mr. Walker and to Mr. Roosevelt by so disposing of the money they get as to promote Mr. Roosevelt’s re-election? Allied to this is another advantage the New Dealers will have. The cam- paign to re-elect Mr. Roosevelt will be managed by Postmaster General Far- ley. Mr. Farley is not really a New Dealer, in the sense of entertaining any notions about a fundamental change of society. Probably all this stuff about a new social order goes over his head. If he ever put his mind on it I suspect he would be shocked by it. Practical Politician. To him, thinking in terms of votes, the phrase “New Deal” is probably Jjust a good vote-getting slogan. Mr. Farley is a practical politician, & po- litical organizer, a piler-up of votes. And if the program is to get the votes of the radicals and the discontented, those are the votes Mr. Farley will go after. He will have the aid of the officeholders, a vast army of them, men for the most part like Mr. Farley himself, who give little thought to any novel New Deal theory of society, but are profoundly interested in hold- ing on to the offices. ‘The sum of these forces working for the New Deal and Mr. Roosevelt next year is very great. In the face of this immense and compact force on the side of the New Dealers, is there any excuse for the anti-New Dealers to be divided? Is there not a duty on Re- publican leaders and Democratic lead- ers alike to find a way to consolidate the conservatives? To give opportu- nity for expression to all who in both parties oppose the New Deal? To see that next year’s election is a clear contest between those who want the New Deal to go on and those who want it ended? There are several possible ways. One would be for the Republicans to give their presidential nomination to a Democrat who is as qualified to be President and as sound in conserva- tive thought as any Republican is. One such Democrat is Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, but Senator Glass is 77; and in spite of the example of Clemenceau and Hindenburg, that is rather old for the onerous role of heading a country. Two other such Democrats are Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia, and Mr. Lewis Douglas, until recently President Roosevelt's director of the budget. Schoolboys Run School in London LONDON (#)—The dream of schoolboys the world over has hecome & reality in a suburb of London. Grafton School, , is run by the boys themselwes. The school motto, “Be Matey,” applies more par- ticularly to the relations between the boys and their teachers, for the boys look upon their masters as big broth- ers, and the teachers upon the boys, naturally enough, as their smaller brothers. The school rules—oh, yes, there rules—were drawn up ,by the b:’y: themselves. A program of work is selected each week by the boys and their teacher, and any boy objecting to this can, he gives a suitable alternative, do other work. What is, and what is not “suitable other work” is decided, not oy the teachers, but by the rest of the class. It is now some years since the school-cane was taken in great cere- mony to the caretaker, who, amidst vociferous cheering, consigned it to the furnace. Asked whether this mode of edu- cation might spread throughout the British Isles, the headmaster replied, familiar American form of society and government—if that choice were pre- ) 4 ;ze__m, of course, only experiment- THE SUNDAY STAR , WASHINGTON, D. C, MAY 19, 1935—PART TWO. New Rush for Diamonds Hoarded Gold Going Into Gems Which Have Been Marked by Romance, Greed and Death. BY C. PATRICK THOMPSON. EWS that the great Jonker dia- mond, the 726-carat stone found by a native on the Elandsfontein claim of the Jonker-farm in South Africa, has been bought from the London Diamond Syndicate by an American dealer has finally convinced the dia- mond folk that their long Winter has ended. Since 1935 opened they have been peering out of the igloos to which they betook themselves when the great slump began (closing down their mines and caching their stocks of stones as usual), and on the dark horizon they had seen white flashes and the familiar play of prismatic colors. Yes, no mistake about it— after four years diamonds are in de- mand again. The Jonker sale is said to be a $750,000 deal. The stone is yet to be cut, and the largest of the pieces will probably not exceed 200 to 250 carats. The two bigest stones cut from the giant 3,000-carat Cullian were only 516, and 309 3-16 carats, respectively, making them easily the world’s largest diamonds. The 277-carat Nizam stone is third on the list. But this is only the largest single transaction that has occurred during the first quarter of 1935. In that period more than $8,000,000 worth of fine diamonds have been sold in the London market. Indian princes and merchant-bankers have been turning into diamonds the huge profits made by the sale, at 120 to 145 shillings an ounce, of hoarded gold bought orig- inally at 82 to 85 shillings an ounce. The diamond syndicate beams as it sees its cache of stones diminish in the London safes. Sales Show Increase. ‘Men are climbing down again to the big Kimberley pits, preparing to re- sume extraction of the diamentiferous rock in which diamonds are embedded like currants in cake. Washing has just begun of the 2,000,000 loads of blue ground which has been lying un- touched these last three years on the | De Beers Con- | solidated reported in March a 1934 | great earth “floors.” income from diamonds of $4,501615, against a trifling $1,487,150 in 1933. Spring, indeed, has come. It is a synthetic Spring. Men made it. Back of it lies a tale of dreams and schemes, a tale of imperialism, ambition, intrigue, money and blood— the sanguinary tale of the struggle for control of the diamond pocket found by the white man on Chief ¢ he ‘Waterboer’s tribal lands north of the | Sl B, Syt Bk gront el Orange River in South Africa. This story is more enthralling in its way than the bizarre tales which have entwined themselves around such dia- monds as the Lion of Lahore, the Koh-i-noor, the Hope Diamond and the sinister Golconda—scraps of car- bon which seem to have absorbed the essence of human lust for wealth and power. It was one day in 1867 that a Dutch farmer, Van Niekerk, visiting a friend by the Orange River, was struck by the astonishing brilliance of one of the stones the children werg playing marbles with. He thought it might be of value, passed it on to a trader, who sent it to the Cape mineralogist. “A diamond, worth $2,500,” was the’ expert’s ver- dict. The Cape governor bought the stone at that price. “Charm” Brings $125,000. ‘Two years passed; then a witch doctor brought Van Niekerk another large, brilliant stone—he had been using it as a charm. The Dutchman gave the native several head of cattle for it, and himself found a trader who gave him $55,000 for what proved to be an 83-carat diamond. The trader in his turn made a pretty good bar- gain, for he sold the stone to the wealthy Lord Dudley for $125,000. Diamonds were rarer then than they are now. . This second discovery started the rush to the Orange River and the Vaal. In a few months 10,000 pros- pectors were camping along the river banks, sinking pits in the heavy gravel of the big bend, sifting the river bed soil in hand cradles. But they were working the wrong spot. In the Au- tumn of 1870 diamonds were found on the Dutoitspan farm, on the open veldt, 20 miles away. Gamblers rushed to buy up all the farms around. Thousands of prospectors then rushed the new farm owners, who, unable to hold their property, made the best of a bad job by letting 30-foot square claims to diggers at $2.50 a month. Into this melee came the man destined to bring order out of chaos and win an empire of diamonds in the process—subsequently using the wealth derived therefrom to further his vision of a British African empire stretching from the Cape to Cairo. He did not impress men on arrival as one destined to wear a crown; a shy, lanky, 18-year-old youth, an English parson’s son who had been sent out for health reasons to a cot- ton farm in the Umkomanzi Valley. Finding no money in it, he had trekked to the diamond diggings, a month’s journey by ox cart. His name was Cecil Rhodes. ‘Those were great days. of dawn 10,000 human beings, whites and hired blacks, crowded on a piece of ground 180 yards by 220 yards, and started to dig. A seven-foot road- some claims were divided into quar- ters, and even into eighths. Rhodes described the diamantifer- { ous soil as just like a Stilson cheese; the description has never been bet- tered. They were getting a diamond out of every 50 buckets of soil. Rhodes averaged $500 a week on his 30-foot- square claim. One may here interpolate that it was just by chance—so conspicuous in British imperial affairs—that the funnels of diamantiferous earth and rock happened to lie athwart the track of the African corridor which Rhodes later described as the Suez Canal into the interior. There were 50,000 turbulent white immigrants struggling for diamonds on a 20-acre patch when the British imperial ma- chine, through its shrewd and enter- prising satrap, one Southey, elbowed off the Transvaal Boers and the Pree State Boers, made a deal with Chief ‘Waterboer of the Griqua tribe and grabbed the Griqua territory for Britain—and the diamond patch along with it. The Boers were sore. Five years after the big grab a blushing British government paid. the Free State $450,000 as a solatium. The Boers took it, but with a sour smile. One year's output of diamonds from the volcanic pipes they had lost aggre- gated far, far more. The diggers took all the diamonds they could find out of the top layer | of yellow earth. At 60 feet they struck the kimberlite, the blue ground. What lay hidden in this mysterious new strata? Nothing, said the diggers, and they drifted away. “The biggest pipe of diamonds on the planet,” pri- vately thought Rhodes, who was stead- ily buying up claims. How Rhodes halved the cost of win- ning diamonds, wiped out the illicit Barney Barnato, to a standstill in a What Will Revive Trade? (Continued From First Page.) believe even the bureaucratic theorists of Washington recognize these facts— secretly, of course, They will not fully admit them because to do this would be to condemn the financial policy of the administration as well as its two chief experiments to date, N. R. A. and A. A. A. Instead, they are trying to find other excuses or to change the subject, or are seeking new foreign trade pumps to prime, since none of those first chosen have so far pro- duced much of anything except gas. Mr. Peek pushes doggedly his idea of bilateral bargains, which if put in effect would inaugurate what would amount to & system of international barter. He almost put across such an arrangement recently with Germany, by which Germany would have taken a large amount of American cotton in exchange for some of the products of German industry. As a single trans- action it looked worth while, as it would have disposed of a lot of surplus American cotton, which is a drag on the market; but Mr. Hull considered that it would constitute too dangerous a precedent. Suggestion Worries Some. Mr. Hull was probably correct. Soon thereafter—on April l1—very likely to minimize the danger of future dis- putes of the same kind, he issued a statement that it is the official policy of the American Government to ob- serve strictly the general-most- favored-nation principle—the first time, so far as I know, that such a statement has ever been issued to keep another branch of the Government in its place. - It was an admirable state- ment and it made clear that the De- partment of State was in charge of foreign relations. Some people were a little worried at the suggestion that the Secretary of State was planning to use this equality of treatment as a threat to make other nations behave, so far as Ameri- can goods were concerned. ‘They should not have been worried. There is no reason in the world why we should give equal treatment to the goods of a nation which discriminates against our goods. The only danger is that inherent in any retaliatory ‘weaj T this whole foreign trade study terrific stock market struggle—all this is the story of the stabilization of the modern diamond industry. Inheriting the Rhodes diamond em- pire, the De Beers interests, through financial control, producers’ agree- ments, government co-operation and | the Diamond Syndicate (which buys | the whole output and sits on it if necessary) now control the market as a market has never been controlled before. Although the price of dia- monds fell during the great slump, it | was only a fraction of the drop in other commodities. Maintenance, and even increase, in the price of diamonds is essential for | the future prosperity of the diamond trade and of Kimberley, whence come | 90 per cent of the world supplies. None knows this better than the czars of the Big Pits (who also control the West African fleld, where diamonds were discovered in 1919—they pro- duce about $2,500,000 worth a year). All sorts of diamonds come out of the reef-girdled chimneys—green dia- monds, blue diamonds, yellow dia- monds, carbonado (black diamonds), | and, rarest of all, the diamonds for | which men through the ages have slit | one another’s gizzards, and women | have sold their honor, if not their | souls—the colorless and limpid stones which, possessing high refractive and dispersive powers, show marvelous brilliancy and a play of prismatic col- ors when cut into forms with & num- ber of reflecting facets. Size is not everything. Forty per cent of the stones are useless to the dealer in precious stones, but manna to the dealer in industrial diamonds. Diamonds tip rock drills and precision tools and glass cutters. Diamond fragments, powdered and hammered ternational flow of goods must be re- | moved. Under pressure from some of the | theorists of local affairs there was a danger at one time that America might adopt the utterly disastrous quota system. The Secretary of State was alive to the danger and pre- vented it, except in the case of the quotas on wines and liquors. Hull Recognizes Basic Principle. Many people refused and still refuse to see the advantages of triangular trade—that we can sell to Brazil, Bra- zil to England and England to us just as economically and far more usefully and broadly than if we should make our sales to Brazil conform in amount always to our purchases from Brazil. Mr. Hull always recognized this, just as he never missed sight of the in- visible balances, so called. For example, if 10,000 tourists go abroad and spend an average of $1,000 apiece, that gives the countries they visit $10,000,000, which they may spend in the United States just as surely as though we had bought $10,- 000,000 worth of theix goods. Mr. Wallace generally stands with Mr. Hull, except that his knowledge is less—he has not made a life study of foreign trade—and except when he expresses sudden ideas of his own, like abandoning the American merchant marine, Mr. Peek rather consistently opposes them both. And the true New Dealers—the people who used to be called the Brain Trust and still, through the President, run the coun- try—are opposed to them all. Nobody knows exactly what they do want, but it is something different. Just & word more, in summary. Freely flowing international trade is dependent on confidence. Tariff walls can generally be surmounted in the end, but all trade bogs down if there is uncertainty as to rates, as to currency values, as to governmental policy. Un- fortunately all three of these factors are present in Washington. Chinese Police Daub Paint on Bare Arms RICT OF THE WESTERN TRANSVAAL. CENTER, LEFT: SORTING AND WASHING DIAMONDS IN THE AFRICAN FIELDS. CENTER, RIGHT: NAPOLEON'S FAMOUS NECKLACE. INSET: THE g)f(\ ER DIAMOND, AS BIG AS AN G LOWER: FROM AFRICA TO AMSTERDAM THE DIAMOND GOES FOR CUTTING. into a copper strip, will file anything. The hardest known substance has uses other than ornamentation and wealth concentration. It is estimated that, in all, dia- monds to the tune of 150,000,000 car- ats have been taken out of the South African chimneys—and there seem to be plenty more where they came from. And probably there are other deposits as yet uncovered elsewhere in Africa, Brazil and India. $750,000,000 in Diamonds. Supposing half the 150,000,000 car- ats of diamonds were good enough to cut into jewels, and allowing for the heavy loss in cutting (sometimes as much as 60 per cent), one arrives at & rough total of 30,000,000 carats, worth probably $750,000,000. Add the bort and splints, say 70,000,000 carats, and you have another $100,000,000, at least, to add to the total. Clap on the syndicate profits, the cutters, jobbers and retailers’ profits, and, if you say that the private own- ers of these diamonds have paid $2,- 500,000,000 for them, you will prob- ably not be far out. One could fill this magazine with the tales of crimes committed for pos- session of a fortune concentrated into 8 bit of crystallized carbon. They range from the sordid and common- place to the magnificent and bizarre. Some old diamonds have indeed caused s0 much woe that they have been given a personality by the super- stitious. For example, legend has it that the priests of the Hindu temple cursed the thief who stole their great blue diamond (subsequently known as the Hope diamond, from the name of its first English owner), and all those who might after him possess the stone. The diamond, by the seven- teenth century, had found its way over the old trade routes to Europe. It had a long list of fatalities back of it before Louis XIV bought it. The French Bourbons can scarcely be said to have enjoyed good luck thereafter. Their destruction in the revolution threw the stone into the market again, and it came to England by way of three successive owners, each of whom came to a violent end. Owner of Hope Diamond. Lord Francis Hope, who acquired it by inheritance, was nearly killed by the accidental discharge of a gun be- fore he married the American May Yohe, and was practically ruined be- fore he divorced her in 1902, so that he had to sell the diamond to pay his debts. Prince Kamtovsk: bought ii from a jeweler in Paris in 1903 and gave it to the French actress, Ladue. The night she wore it for the .first time on the stage of the Folies Ber- gere, a jealous admirer killed her on her return to her apartment. The prince took possession of the diamond, but was murdered a few days later by a man who attempted to steal it. A Greek merchant bought it and was murdered along with his wife and two ckildren. Abdul the Damned then became its owner—poor Abdul! After wreaking further mischief, it crossed the Atlantic and came to roost in the Edward McLean house. Little Vincent McLean ran out of the grounds into the roadway, and was run over and killed by a passing au- tomobile. It takes more than an ill-luck brand, however, to deter the cold and skeptical gentlemen of the diamond syndicates when they want a stone. They lately bought from the Arch- duke Joseph of Hapsburg. for $100,- 000, the famous Golconda, a 66-carat diamdnd which had trailed blood and misery over half the world for 200 years before it came to roost, in 1870, in the vaults of the imperial Haps- burgs—whose luck, the superstitious would say, has not been anything to boast about since. Stone Brings Luck. The Koh-i-noor (mountain of light), the seventeenth largest dia- mond in the world (it weighs 106% carats), is supposed to bring luck to its owners and disaster to those who lose their grip on it. Legend traces it back to 57 B.C., but it first appears in documental history in 1304. In that year it came into the treasury at Delhi, as part of the loot of Walwa, | sort. capital of the Pathan Empire. Tam- b3 EARTHQUAKE PREDICTION DEVELOPING AS SCIENCE Citizens Throughout U. S. Are Asked to Co-operate by Reporting on Earth Movements. BY G. K. SPENCER. As an American citizen, you are a deputy “earthquake observer.” You probably did not know that before, but we're telllng you now. Every United States postmaster, from hum- ble hamlets to great cosmopolitan centers, has been instructed to ob- serve and report in a detailed manner on all earth tremors in his baillwick, and to deputize you to do likewise. ‘The purpose is to obtain eventually accurate knowledge of the great earth blocks which constitute the United States, so that a new kind of map can be drawn. When this map comes into being it is probable that each of the mighty sections of the earth’s crust which imprison and float upon the central core will be numbered in an orderly manner, so that you can know just which blocks you live upon. A great number of scientific pur- poses also will be served. Since, like the great mosaic of an Arctic ice floe, movements—or quakes—occur along the edges of the great blocks, engi- neers take laborious pains to avoid drilling tunnels or mines across them. With known block lines much costly preliminary work can be avoided on all structures from office buildings to great dams. Can Improve Science. ‘Then, too, with known block lines, geologists and seismologists can sta- tion seismographs and other instru- ments along the lines, or “faults,” and add another factor to the rapidly de- veloping science of actual earthquake prediction. Earthquake prediction is coming, but at first it will be something like weather prediction by the United States Weather Bureau—that is, in- within the earth and out in space. Man’s science must still reach farther ahead into the centuries before it can become absolutely accurate. Move- ments along the fault lines which mark the edges of the earth blocks occur because the earth is still cooling off; they occur often during the lunar tides, for the moon creates a tide on the land as it does on the seas, often pulling the continents as far as 67 feet apart. W. C. Mendenhall, director of the United States Geological Survey, in- forms the writer that “a rather high degree of coincidence has been shown in the cycles of earthquake activity and those of sunspots. This, in con- nection with the visible relation be- tween earthquake and volcano distri- bution, indicates a close relation be- tween quakes and sunspot activity.” T. A. Jagger of the Geological Survey, in charge of the volcano ob- servatory, Hawaii National Park, also has traced a quite definitely close relation between sunspot activity and earthquakes. New Field is Opening. The above factors are now being combined with others to set up a science of earthquake prediction, and soon we shall have a new learned pro- fession on this earth, with an enthu- siastic body of college-trained prac- titioners. These men will know some- thing of astronomy, geology and mining engineering; they will be tidal authorities, too, and each will be trained in the use of seismographs, tiltmeters and numerous other instru- ments now in use and yet to be in- vented. Astronomy will be important, for when it is suspected that blocks in the great “alligator’s skin” which forms the earth's crust have slipped a bit past each other, astronomical bear- ings are taken. Slippages of up to 18 feet in a century have been dis- covered. In two places on the North Amer- ican continent fault lines are now fairly accurately known; these are California and that region just north of the Great Lakes. Particularly is this true of the Southern California fault lines, for which detailed maps are now in existence. You, as a deputy observer, can help this new science by reporting from your vicinity significant “escarp- ments” which reveal risings in earth blocks. Since the vast majority of earthquakes are so gentle that they cannot be felt by human beings, these escarpments reveal what has taken place. Escarpments may be anywhere from a few inches in height to per- haps 20 feet, though on a greater scale all mountain chains are mem- bers of the family. Many people still fail to realize that earthquakes are quite normal to the earth’s crust and, in the United States, a thousand times less danger- ous for the citizen than merely walk- ing across a busy street. East of the Rocky Mountains, the allowance for wind resistance alone in a building is more than would be required to pro- vide safety for occupants. West of the Rockies most buildings are now earthquake-proof, and where they are not they are rapidly being made so. Ship Construction is Cited. Dr. Kyoji Suyehiro, director of the Earthquake Reseafch Institute of Japan and former naval constructor of the imperial Japanese navy, told the writer that “if we can design and build ships to carry the strains of storms at sea, certainly we can design and build earthquake-proof buildings which, all told, are subjected to con- siderably less strain on the moving land than that imposed on ships by storms at sea.” Incidentally, in the case of our largest city, New York, it seems al- most a fortuitous guidance of Fate that it is recognized by geologists as the safest spot in the Americas, if not in the entire world, as regards earth- quakes, owing to its close-to-the-sur- face, rigid bedrock. In an exhaustive survey of the entire United States, including historical rec- ords, as far back as 300 years ago, a great insurance company established the following “expected average earth- quake " in cents per year per $100 of value in structures, and this basis in actual figures reveals how secure we may feel about earthquake damage: The Atlantic region, more than 50 miles from the coast, about one-half cent. e — not to her successor, but to his con- It has been suggested that the old Queen made this peculiar provision, which passes the stone from Queen to Queen of England, because she noted that the legend specifically mentions “man” in connection with its owner- ship; she argued that if a female owned it and chanced to lose it, it would have no power to harm her. But in any case, as the diamond will never pass out of the hands of the Windsor family unless the British Empire collapses and the monarchy ends with it (and perhaps not then) the precaution seems unnecessary. The great jewel is kept at Windsor Castle, and Queen Mary often wears it on ‘ fluenced by many complicated factors | ‘The Atlantic region, within 50 miles of the coast, about one cent. The Great Lakes and Mississipp] re- gion, below Missouri confluence and within 10 miles of bottom lands, about two cents. The Great Lakes and Mississippl region, remainder, about one cent. The Great Plains and Midcontinent region, about one cent. The Rocky Mountain-Wasatch re- glon, about three cents. Washington and Oregon, within 100 miles of the coast, about six cents. | Washington and Oregon, rest of re= gion, about 4 cents. California Mountains, east of the great central valley, about seven cents. California, within the great central valley, about five cents. California, within 50 to 60 miles from the coast and including the Im- perial Valley, about 10 cents. It was estimated by the head of one insurance company that the mere “business overhead” of writing an | earthquake insurance policy, even for California, would cost his company more than the average quake hazard. In the light of this evidence you ought to be able to go ahead and enjoy your earthquake and report what happens in your vicinity so that the geologists and seismologists will be helped in tracing fault lines. Though the tremor may be very slight, the mere fact that it was felt may be of importance, even without any more data. Its presence in your vicinity and your report may help scientists to work out important data. | A simple postal card to your nearest postmaster will be sufficient; he al- ready has instructions what to do. Earthquake prediction, of course, is |not the most important objective of | this new intensive study of the earth's crust; its importance lies in the fact that it will solve vital missing links in fields of practical engineering. If you desire—remembering that human beings cannot feel the vast majority of earthquakes at all—you | may observe some of our natural living seismographs, perhaps in your own back yard. Sometimes days before a perceptible quake, when the earth is in slow vibration, ants will continue swarming above ground because their earthly shelters are being slowly com- pressed. Squirrels and rodents may | be driven out of the earth, and they often migrate in considerable numbers. Chickens and other roosting fowl are always restless during a night of earth movements. Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford University, says that there have been recorded on the seis- mographs there more than 200 shocks in a year, of which not more than one or two could be felt by “the man on the street.” Quake Predicted Accurately. Bailey Willis, professor emeritus of geology at Stanford, a few years ago achieved the most remarkable feat of earthquake prediction yet known. In 1928 he made this statement: “I regard it as probable that in | Southern California there will be a | severe shock which is more likely to come in three years than in 10, and more likely to come in five years than in three.” Five years exactly elapsed to the time of the Long Beach quake in March, 1933. Prof. Willis made his prediction on the basis of strains he had observed in various fault-lines; that is one phase of earthquake pre- diction. Bringing into a single prediction | system the strain observation method, | the tendency of strains to be relieved | along the big adjacent blocks, the cycli- | cal effects of sunspot pressure, the tidal effects created by the moon and an | orderly mass of readings from delicate | instruments properly located, seismol= | ogists hope to give us fairly good pre= dictions—and leave it to future in- vention and discovery to refine the whole process. Seismological ~ stations equipped with earthquake-recording instru- ments are rapidly multiplying in the United States. There now are 50 such stations in the country, while Government bureaus and the Car- negie Institution have a number of portable instruments ready to rush from stra c points to “cover” emer= gency situations involving opportuni= ties to obtain information. Such an emergency situation re- cently occurred in Southern Cali- fornia, when mysterious destructive fair-weather tides began arriving on a narrow strip of beach front. On islands off the coast and at points along the mainland portable instru- ments were placed in an attempt to discover what submarine catastrophe might have caused the great tides. There is a great co-tidal effect be- tween New Zealand and Southern California; along a narrow strip of sea the water tilts back and forth as though it were in a bowl that was being lifted at one end and lowered rhythmically. The rhythm was sud- denly stepped up, with great destruc- tion of beach property in both New Zealand and California. Tides Attributed to Storm. No readings of far-distant Pacific earth-crust movements could be ob- tained, and oceanographers finally ascribed the tides to a storm perhaps midway between New Zealand and California, off regular steamship lanes. If submarine earthquakes could be proved to be the cause of the great acceleration in the big co-tidal system, then permanent stationing of instru- ments at appropriate points might in some instances result in detection of earth movements as they occur, with prediction several days in advance of the arrival of destructive tides. In California every opportunity is grasped to study vibrations in the earth. Scientists want information on everything from characteristic shocks which will enable structural engineers to build better buildings, to data on the composition of the deeper parts of the earth's crust and even of the earth’s core. The’ latter data are particularly sought when the seismol= ogists study quakes occurring far enough around the world for the waves from them to have to proceed through part of the planet’s core. Because such waves behave as though they were passing through liquid, seismologists now know that the earth’s core generally is in what might be termed a molten condition, though it acts largely as a solid be- cause of the pressure of the crust upon it. Yet to earthquake waves it reveals its true condition. If you think you have never been in an earthquake you are just mistaken; you have been “in” thousands of them, though most of them were not felt by you. In the last 15 years there have been 10 emphatic earth- quakes in New York State, felt by thousands of people; there have been 29 such quakes in Illinois in the same time, 20 in Missouri, 28 in Tennessee, 16 in Kentucky, 36 in Utah, 17 in South Carolina, 15 in Idaho, 19 in Colorado, 17 in Oregon, 36 in Nevada, 37 in Washington and many others distributed through various States. A