Evening Star Newspaper, April 24, 1937, Page 17

Books—Art—Music The FEATURES [ 4 WITH SUNDAY MORNING Foen EDITION ny Star WAS HINGTON, D. C., SATURDAY News of Churches APRIL 24, 1937, PAGE B—1 , UNIVESITY TO MARK EADE UNDER DR. MARVIN’S LEAD Real judicial atmosphere is given a moot court session at George Washington University the bench of Justice Joseph W. Law School by the presence on Cox of District Court. Students at work in the ’ o et university’s up-to-date physics laboratory. Dr. Marvin believes a good workman must have proper tools. GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GAINS| Faculty Has Expanded and Financial Resources Have Shown Con- | stant Growth, While Physical Equipment Has Kept Pace With Constant Demands of Modern Education. By Georga Maclean. HE measure of a president’s success unive: usually is his ability to get financial sup- | port from alumni and friends buys land, builds buildin he domain of an educa- ion, and the prestige of modern and attractive physical plant is invaluable to a university's reputation Obviously more important than physical equipment, however, is men- tal equipment, and the better money he president numerous the faculty. »m this standpoint alone, the rec- | ord testifies to the success of Cloyd Heck Marvin, M. A, Ph. D, whose tenth anniversary as president of George Washington University will be celebrated next week, principally by a banquet the evening of April 30 | & the Mayflower Hotel Taking the helm at George Wash- ington at the age of 38, Dr as been so successful & money raiser that the university's endowment has risen in 10 years from four hundred thousand to millions. In 1926-27itw $304,160, now it is in excess of $2,59; 948, The increase of $1,789,788 is an | increase of 222 per cent. Dr. Marvi eociated closely with his success as the university's financier. A business-man president, he is an economist, a former | professor of commerce. 'rHE vastly increased endowment ob- tained under Dr. Marvin's presi- dency has given the Capital a gen- uinely big university—big from the standpoint of faculty, enrollment and equipment. Since teaching prowess is the chief imeasure of a university's excellence or lack of it, gains with respect to fac- ulty are of primary importance. Dur- ng the Marvin regime the number of full-time faculty members at George ‘Washington University has increased 74 per cent, from 77 to 134. Of the latter, 61 hold Ph. D. degrees. The Ph. D’s in 1926-27 numbered only 24. The part-time faculty has decreased in the last 10 years from 264 to 258, indicating that the university is placing more reliance on instructors permanently associated with it. Twen- ty-one of the part-timers have Ph. D. degrees. Under Dr. Marvin the scale of facul- ty salaries has been maintained de- £pite the depression and consequent depreciation in university investments. Not only has the salar: maintained, but increas in some grades as high as 20 per cent, have been made. There have been no sal- ary reductions, although these oc- curred in almost every other univer- &ity the country, ranging from 10 to 40 per cent Dr. Marvin established a system of sabbatical leaves, which gives faculty members opportunity for study, re- search and travel. Eight sabbaticals have been granted for the coming year. So much for the faculty side of the picture. Gains in physical equipment have been just as imposing. Univer- Eity real estate has expanded from 155,988 to 290.598 square feet, an in- crease of 86 per cent. From $1,665.- 1751, the value of university real estate has grown to $3,151,765. FIVE buildings have been erected by the university since 1926-27— the medical laboratory building, the engineering laboratory, the biological science building, Strong Hall and Social Science Hall. University build- ings now total 26, compared with 19, two of which were rented, in 1927. Building area has increased 51 per cent, from 252,606 to 382,696 square KReet. Class rooms now number 81, com- red with 21 more than 10 years ago. eir seating capacity is 1,170 more than the 3,600 which could be seated in the 60 class rooms of 1926-27— en increase made imperative by the growth in university enrollment from 7,020 to 8,528. Much of George Washington's phys- dcal transformation was accomplished in the three months between the June, 1936, commencement and the opening of the 116th academic year on last Beptember 23. Returning students last Fall found three new buildings dominating the | At the southwest cor- | eampus scene. ner of Twenty-first and G streets rose the Hattie M. Strong Hall for Women, & modern dormitory residence with | mnone of the objectionable features of dormitories in the accepted sense of the word. Providing living quarters for more than & hundred young women, the seven-story building is 4 i the better and LL. D, Marvin | 's academic career is as- | scale been | | equipped with parlors, reception and reading rooms, & solarium, a recre- ation room and an open-air play space on the roof Near the corner of Twentieth and G streets is the new Social Sciences | Hall, which replaced the group of old houses formerly use. From Twen- tieth to Twenty-first street the uni- versity now presents a solid front Any of George Washington's 16,000 alumni will consider such improve- ments remarkable, in view of the fact that a decade ago the whole univer- | sity plant was composed of Corcoran Hall, Stockton Hall, the medical school and hospital and & number of converted residences along G street In 1930 the medical school build- ng, occupied since 1902, was com- | pletely reconditioned and new equip- ment was installed for the depart- ments of biochemistry, pharmacology, physiology, pathology and anatomy. [UNIVERSITY laboratories have in= creased in 10 years from 36 to 80 while offices number 168, as compared | with 82. The number of libraries | has doubled and the number of vol- umes in them has grown from 74,874 to 115.290. Other milestones in the progress of the university under Dr. Marvin in- | lude the establishment of three stu- nt social centers and the publica- tion of the quarterly George Wash- | inton Law Review, the semi-annual George Washington Alumni Review | and eight volumes published by the | University Press. The alumni direc- | | tory is in preparation | Moving in the vanguard of a general trend in American university organiza- | tion, George Washington under Dr. | Marvin has placed the work of the freshman and sophomore years in the | | Junior College, where more attention | can be paid the individual student ard | | where those who cannot complete a | four-year course can nevertheless ob- tain a well-rounded general education. | The university has attained during | the past 10 years the highest accredi- | tation, both for its liberal arts work and for its professional work. To re- gional accreditation by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Sec- ondary Schools has been added similar accreditation by the Association of American Universities, giving it the | highest possible rating. Similar recog- | nition for professional work, granted | by the Association of American Law | Schools and the American Medical As- | sociation, has been maintained. The most recent evidence of the | high quality of the university's work and its recognition by the academic | to come in the next 10 world generally has been the establish- ment there of & chapter of Sigma Xi, national honorary fraternity in science, | Moreover, the Phi Beta Kappa mem- bers of the university facuity have been invited to submit an application for a.chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.- 'HE record of the past 10 years, friends of George Washington feel, | can be taken as an indication of things There will be a further strengthening of the facuity. | Plans already are in preparation for a seven or eight story library building of set-back architecture, to be situated in the middle of the principal univer- sity block, fronting on G street. With- in a comparatively short time, too, the university will have an athletic field, with field house and a gymnasium equipped for almost any kind of indoor sport When alumni, faculty, tribute to Dr. Marvin next week they will be expressing the thanks of the whole ¢ A row of George Washington University’s new white build- ings containing the latest equipment for group study. y, students and | trustees of George Washington pay | George Washington’s scientific laboratories have undergone vast improvement in the past 10 years. Here is a fully equipped chemistry “lab.” e | | Among the university’s m science library shown above. Note the Chinese student in ground. any libraries is the biological Jores SUN TURNS COOK AND BAKER Smithsonian Scientist Tells of Ways in Which Solar Rays Serve Mankind—Solar Engine Interests Agriculturalists in Hot Lands—Heat-Storing Reservoirs Exist. B 'y Lucy Salamanca. AN the sun itself be harnessed to light our homes at night, run our engines, irrigate bar- ren fields and cook our meals? Impractical dreamers have sought madly for centuries to boss the sun’s | toiled to | rays. much as they have utilize the waves and tides of the sea for power, and change base metals into gold But today a scientist of distinction Dr. C. G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, tells of many ways in which solar radiation does the | | bidding of man and asks only if the CLOYD HECK MARVIN, M. A, Ph. D., LL. D, Whose tenth anniversary as president of George Washington University will be celebrated next Friday. —Harris-Ewing Photo. Dr. C. G. Abbot, secretary expense of the machinery involved will be prohibitive for general use, and if such machines can be built on a quan ion basis. If these questions are ever answered satisfac- torily, man for the first time will be dependent of exh le stores of and oil disappearing from the heart of the earth Abbot sets bef us, as the Tes 1915 of the Smithsonian Institution and inventor of the solar machine shown beside him. . | right angles to the rays of the such inventions as the solar cooker, culturists showed especial interest is the solar power engine, the solar flash boiler and the solar distilling ap- paratus, bearing witness to the prac- tical and material application of a unique and intriguing theory. Not so many weeks ago many of you in Washington may have listened in to a most unusua: radio program that went across the country over a na- | tional hook-up, broadcast by nothing | more than solar power. That day the sun itself took part in one of the most astonishing demonstrations of modern times. It beat benignly upon a curiou ‘ contraption set up in the Smithsonian | Institution grounds in Washington. Its | heat was concentrated upon three mir- | rors of aluminum products, each about 12 feet square. These mirrors were cylindrical and concave in form, mounted upon a frame which defined an axis parallel to the axis of the earth, the axes of the mirrors laying at right angles. The entire frame ro- tated about once each half hour, keep- ing the mirror axes approximately at sun. Each of the three mirrors focused the sun’s rays upon a glass tube, com- ! prising three tubes of glass, one inside | the other, with the inner tube contain- ing a black oil liquid which almost to- | | tally absorbed sun rays and withstood | a temperature of 640 degrees Fahren- | heit, without boiling or decomposition. | Hermetically sealed, the inner tube | preserved a vacuum, hindering the escape of the solar heat thus collected. All three focus tubes were connected | to a boiler and with steam raised to a | pressure exceeding 100 pounds to the | square inch, enough power was gen- ‘ erated to drive a small steam engine. This, then, was the solar engine that | sent a conversation out upon the ether | waves from the Capital. The sun had | indeed been given voice. | As a result of this demonstration | letters began pouring in to Washing- ton from the far corners of the earth. Men in the lands where the sun beat hot and fiercely upon plowed fields, men in desert spaces where only irri- gation could bring forth crops, men far and wide interested in utilizing verse—the sun itself—wrote to inquire just how this solar engine could be made to serve their own needs Most of the inquiries that came in to Dr. Abbot were from agricultural districts, since men who till the fields | are quick to realize that the forces | of nature, such as light and air, are prodigal and free. If only the initial of its wonder, they wanted to know about it. Another reason why agri- By William A. Bell, Jr. NE MAN among several wait- ing for an elevator snorted | as his eyes glanced across | the front page of a news- | paper he was holding. | “Look here,” he said, “that head waiter got 2,000 bucks from Harry Thaw for a punch in the eye.” He held up his paper for the others to see. “Pretty costly punch,” said one. t served Thaw right,” said another. “Well, I'd take a sock in the orb for a couple of grand,” said a third. A fourth said, “You could do both of mine up for less than that, and my mouth and ears and nose, too.” The man with the paper remarked that the waiter had asked $10,000. “They never get what they ask, though,” he added. He was almost right. They seldom do. A “census” of damage suits in the District during the past five years discloses, however, that juries here have not been ungenerous in their awards to plaintiffs, Unfortunately for this account, | newspaper treatment of such judg- ments has been cursory, partly be- cause the interval between filing of damage suits and their final disposi- tion has been a matter of many months, even years, and also because it is not within the realm of a news- paper to record the actual “damage” suffered by the plaintiff other than to report the claims of the litigant. The latter circumstance precludes comment on the “fairness” or other- " Big Balm Awarded for Bumps and Bruises Suggests That Juries in District Are Not Ungenerous in Their Verdicts to Plaintiffs. wise of the jury's liberality or tight- fistedness. SOME judgments have compensated for simple fractures and a few bad bruises more than have others for permanent injury or death. Injured feelings or “mental anguish” is no grounds for suit in the District, but such theoretical—perhaps a better adjective is “non-bodily”—damage as “injured professional reputation” has been the basis for one of the largest awards made by a Washington jury in local court history. The incident under discussion by the elevator walters is one of the latest of an imposing number of suc- cessful damage suits. Paul Jaeck, Swiss head walter at the Shoreham Hotel, reduced Thaw’s considerable capital by»$2,200 by convincing a Dis- trict Oourt jury that the slayer of Stanford White had given him a most painful “shirer” or “mouse” while allegedly misbehaving at a dinner party. The jury was told the blow was struck while Thaw held a lighted cig- arette in his fist, and it assessed the damage to Jaeck at $2,200. In a manner of speaking, more than $14,000 has been found on the sidewalks of Washington since 1931. Although the discovery was painful —perhaps, in some cases, permanently injurious—finders have been keepers. ‘The loser was the District Govern- ment, compelled to compensate in that amount persons who stumbled on faulty pavements and stumbled right into court with demands for damages on the complaint that the city fathers PEOPLE ARE LED TO BELIEVE THAT IT PAYS TO BE INJURED | had failed to keep the sidewalks in a proper state of repair. The latest instance of a sidewalk nose-dive was that of a Miss Ada Tanner, who fell in a depression at Connecticut avenue and R streets and last October was awarded $2,400 on her charge that she had suffered serious injuries because of the “negli~ gence” of the District Government. A spill on the sidewalk at Georgia avenue and Blair road won a judg- ment of $4,250 for Winton E. Disney in February, 1935. But these judgments were chicken feed in comparison with those won by a visiting Long Island couple in June, 1932. Mrs. Robert H. Leys, who did the falling, got more than $7,000 com- pensation for injuries received in a tumble on B street southeast, while her husband, who paid the doctor's bills, etc., got a separate award, the total “take” amounting to $7,700. NE of the most unusual instances of falls which have received the golden sympathies of 12 jurors was that in which the victim, Mrs.. Susie K. Ball, toppled into an open grave at the Cedar Hill Cemetery. Mrs. Ball set forth that while walking along a slippery cemetery walk in October, 1932, on her way to place flowers on the grave of a grandchild, she lost her balance and plunged into an exca- vation intended to receive a dead body, not a live one. Claiming internal in- juries and that she had swallowed dirt in such quantities as to cause “an ulcerous condition of her tonsils,” Mrs. Ball went into court. She came out, eventually, with $3,500. The ceme- tery association appealed, but the Jjudgment was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals, extra com- pensation being awarded Mr. Ball for “expenses and losses” in connection with his wife’s injuries. Medical practitioners of one sort or | another have been among the favor- ite targets of damage suits. Under the heading “Tooth Worth $1,000,” The Star of December 18, 1934, reports that “a sound tooth was valued at $1,000 by a District Supreme Court jury today.” The “grand” was collected from two dentists by a Mr. Percy L. Kise, who charged they ex- tracted the wrong molar when mining for a lower wisdom tooth. One of the defendants, incidentally, recovered threefold recently on an Irish sweepstakes ticket drawing. Earlier that year Dora E. Grubb was awarded $3,000—she asked $50,- 000—on her contention that she was burned while undergoing X-ray treat- ments. The defendants, an X-ray firm, fought the case for years. They won the first verdict, but the final judgment resulted when the jurors failed to agree and counsel for both sides decided to allow $3,000 damages. ‘The alleged carelessness of one phy- sician cost him $10,000, a patient prov- ing to the satisfaction of a District Court jury in March, 1934, that the doctor had left three pieces of tubing in an incision. A DAMAGE suit similar to the Thaw case as to circumstances and the amount of award was that brought two years ago by Charles Newman, a taxicab driver, against former Representative Francis T. Shoemaker of Minnesota. Shoemaker, ex-convict, successor to Huey Long and predecessor to Marion Zioncheck as congressional “bad boy,” beat up the hacker, it was charged. Newman said he was assaulted by the ex- legislator while halted at a red light, blocking the latter's car. He asked $25,000, got $2,500. Assault charges against Shoemaker resulted in a hung More Than Fourteen Thousand Dollars Have Been “Found” on Sidewalks of Washington Since 1931, According which brought a cash judgment for the plaintiff involved a former lieuten- ant of Capitol police, whom a Mrs. Elsie Jardine accused of striking her as she tried to prevent him from beating her son. A District Court jury thought Mrs. Jardine's claim was worth $750. Nearly $20,000 has been assessed against businesses in the past five years for accidents to women who faw'd down and went boom. For a fractured wrist, sustained when a chair in which she was sitting col- lapsed in an apartment house dining room, Mrs. Bella M. Hoefer collected $2,000. The restaurant concern said the cellapse was caused by a struc- tural defect which it hardly could have been expected to notice. But the Jjury said such faults should have been observed before Mrs. Hoefer sat down. Spinach leaves and grapes caused a $5,000 fall and a toy drum a $12.- 000 one. The former amount was awarded Mrs. Margaret Snead, who made a ground loop in a Connecticut avenue store after slipping on the aforesaid agricultural debris. She claimed injuries to the nerves of an arm and shoulder. Tripping on & child’s drum during the 1933 Christmas season, Mrs. Ida Lowe Kenney fell on some stairs in a downtown store, and was severely in- Jured—severely enough to persuade & District Court jury to award her $12,000 damages. DOOR-TO-DOOR salesmen who have been pitched out by ex- ssperated prospects may find either Bl * to Legal Records. encouragement or discouragement in the case of one Moncure Noble, whose reception when he called “on business™” at a local agency was anything but ap- propriate to his name. Not only was the greeting ignoble, averred Mr. Noble, but he was put upon by em- ployes and his arm broken. Appar- ently feeling that even on mid-August days such people should keep cool and not assault visitors, a jury awarded Noble $11,000 in a judgment against the company, which contended to no avail that the altercation was the re- sult of a personal feud. Frank Bonner, former executive sec- retary of the Federal Power Commis- sion, has been awarded libel judgments against newspapers amounting to a small fortune. Suing in the District for compensation for allegedly libelous articles which “brought Lim into dis- grace and seriously injured his pro- fession as an electrical engineer,” he won $45,000 from the papers, $9,000 for each of the five articles that caused him grief. Bonner's basic salary as secretary of the commission had been $3.500. His suit was in the courts ap- proximately six years. Therefore, had he remained with the commission, his total income for that period would have been $21,000, or less tnan half what he recelved from the District award alone, to say nothing of sub- stantial judgments obtained against publications in other cities. Affirming the $45,000 judgment re- turned for Bonner by a District Court ‘jury, the Court of Appeals refused to discuss the reasonableness of the large the most miraculous agent in the uni- | cost of the contraption were the price | | that irrigation can be undertaken at | any convenient time, whereas electric | power cannot wait upon shifting clouds or the whim of the weather man, while people remain in darke ness. Power that can be utilized to irigate the fields can be turned to ace co! whenever old Sol decides to shine. From Hawaii and Jamaica came re- | quests with regard in irri means of solar engines: fr | Peru, Chile, Italy, Spain Africa, Greece and India let flooding how they could use solar power for charging storage batter others for cooking th ; 8 others for heating or warming their homes. And Dr. Abbot was able to ly that actual experiments had been conducted with a great measure of success along each of these lines. North rs came e was, for example, this matter of cooking by the heat of the sun. In ion with Smithsonian expedi= | tions to Mount Wilson, California, & solar cooker has been employed, which n only served all purposes | of daily cooking. but could be utilized at night as well “We cooked all our meals by means of the sun's ray Dr. Abbot ex= plained, “and the contrivance was | such that enough heat was stored up so that we could cook continuously | night and day for weeks at a time | About 50 years ago a solar device | was used in India for cooking pur- poses, but this instrument had no reservoir for storing the heat col- lected and thus could only operate when the sun was shining. When Dr. Abbot began his experiments in Mount Wilson in 1916 he desired to devise some menas of storing solar heat in a suitable reservoir, at a | temperature that would permit all cooking operations, such as stewing, preserving, boiling and baking meats and bread. He also wished to devise an instrument that would permit use after sundown. | This meant combining a solar heat | collector with a high-temperaturs reservoir, into the back of which two ovens were to be let. In the words of | Dr. Abbot, “It seemed best to con- centrate the solar rays upon a metal tube communicating to a reservoir at some distance above the collector. The scheme 1is exactly that of a common bath-water heater, merely substituting concentrated sun rays for a fire as the source of heat “In this way the hot fluid, expand= | ing, rises into the top of the reservoir, | while the cooler fluid at the bottom | flows downward to the heat source in | replacement. A continuous circulation | of hot fluid would thus maintain the temperature of the reservoir. We | used engine-cylinder oil, as this fluid can be heated to temperatures some- what above 200 degrees centigrade without boiling, flashing or strongly evaporating.” ‘The cost, beyond the initial cost of the contrivance and the negligible cost of the ofl is nothing at all for operation. The same oil has been used for 10 years in the Mount Wilson solar cooker and will doubtless go | on being used for many years to come, | as the only demand made upon it is that it circulate. The problems in connection with catching the sun's rays and utilizing | them are interesting. Cylindrical mir- rors were used and these had to be made to rotate from east toward the west at the same rate as the earth's daily rotation from west to east, in | order for them to follow the sun. These cylindrical mirrors were mount= ed upon an axis parallel to the earth’s axis. The mirror had to be made rather long from north to south, to minimize the seasonal loss of sunlight. The mirror was made then, 121 feet long and 7!, feet wide, and mounted with its long dimension parallel to an axis pointing to the North Star. It was framed on sections | of structural steel to make it rigid. To make the mirror brightly reflecting was another problem that faced Dr. Abbot. At first he tried out strips of tinfoil, a foot wide, with which he covered the steel with the aid of shel- lac. The result was very unsatisface tory. “As the mirror warmed,” explained Dr. Abbot, “the shellac evaporated | and puffed up the tinfoil, spoiling the shape of the reflecting surface. We pricked many of the blisters and rolled the surface down, but, though we used this at first, in 1916, the shape of the mirror surface was not satisfactory. Moreover the tinfoil tare nished, losing its high reflecting power, “This defect was cured when the (Continued on Page B-3.) ] { (Continued on Page B-3.)