a pon . si
»
“calamity howlers’’
from their hiding
fearful predictions.
Suicidal war, man-made deserts,
plagues and blights which will sure-
ly bring devastation to all farm
lands—these have always been
among the favorite topics of the
skilled and unskilled prophets. To-
day, the bombing raids and the un-
giving an added note
the old familiar war songs.
It is yet too soon to tell whether
rect, but only the booming of can-
non and the whine of shells could
ture halls and before microphones.
According
United States is being reduced at
such a rapid rate that the country
will some day reach the status of
food being available for every per-
son in the country, there will be
only about $15 worth.
Most widely spread of all the pres-
ent-day calamity-howling is the om-
inous prediction that the ‘‘dust
bowl” will emerge as an American
Sahara where only one-fifth of the
present population of
could possibly exist.
Few, today, raise the cry that the
end of the world is coming, as they
frequently used to.
The end of the world! That cry
that once struck terror into the
hearts of men, and which is still re-
membered when bombs and shells
to mind the fear-stricken days of
Mother Shipton.
Phoney Prophetess.
She not only predicted
of the world, but foresaw the Great
Fire of London, the deaths of kings
and princes, the invention of auto-
mobiles and steamships, the Amer-
ican Revolution and hundreds of
other world-shaking events.
The only trouble with Mother Ship-
ton was that she never existed, for
her famous prophecy was later
proved only a clever forgery, writ-
ten and supposedly discovered after
the described events had passed
into history. Nevertheless, for one
breathless night in 1879, nearly ev-
ery church in England was jammed
to the doors with the faithful, who
confidently awaited the end of the
world, as the non-existent prophet-
ess had foretold.
When William Miller shouted
“Doom” in the autumn of 1843, thou-
sands of America’s believers in the
Second Advent trembled, went
home, and prayed-—while taking the
last stitches and tucks in the res-
urraction gowns they were to don
that night. At 12 o'clock they went
out on the hilltops to await the end
of the world. They waited until
morning.
Then the Rev. Mr. Miller ex-
plained that his calculation—de-
rived from an assumption that the
2,300 Biblical days from the time
Ezra went into Jerusalem signified
2,300 modern years—was in error,
because of the time lost in the
change from Julian to Gregorian
~ He announced that the
| passed since 1844, and with them,
| the Millerites.
Another Doom Proves Dud,
In 1925 Robert Reidt of Freeport,
| Long Island, made Page One of most
world would end February 26, 1926.
Collision with a c«
ish this planet, he said
more was heard of Mr. Reidt until
1932, when he ‘revealed’ that New
York City would be destroyed at 11
o'clock Sunday night, October 8. The
appointed time came—and
room.
The cry of ‘Doom
up again in 1933 by Arthur B. Ware,
re
lets and announcements that the
earth would cease to exist on June
12.
Two years later Wilbur Glenn Vo-
liva, cult leader of Zion,
took up the torch of prophecy.
Voliva wasn't sure whether
world would end in 1935 or 19386.
The second group of calamity-
howlers—those who try to shake the
faith of pioneers with the cry: “It
can't be done!''—have pretty gen-
erally suffered the same disappoint-
ment that overtook those who pre-
| dicted the end of the world.
Calamity-Howlers Still Wail,
Even Columbus, who had to con-
tend with his share of scoffers, did
not envision the day when ships
with a net tonnage of 130,717,015
would cross between the Old World
and the New, as they did in 1936.
Nor did the Wright brothers foresee
the time when glistening liners of
the airlanes would chalk up a record
of 439,000,000 passenger miles in one
year, as they are doing now.
There are still many calamity-
howlers who defy history with pre-
dictions of dire happenings about to
occur,
In 1934 Professor Gustave Meyer
said that there would be an epi-
demic of scarlet fever of terrible
proportions in the United States
navy. Nothing to confirm this can
be found in navy medical records,
however, and the 103,000 men in the
navy rolls are ample evidence of
another prediction that went wrong.
A modern pioneer in the predic-
tion of calamitous events was R. P.
Hearne, noted British economist.
Writing for the London pictorial
magazine, The Sphere, he said in
the issue of October 10, 1920:
“Within ten years the power mon-
opoly of coal will be broken and it
will be broken not by political and
economic methods but by the ar-
rival of a new fuel which will re-
place coal! Long before our coal
measures are exhausted, coal min-
ing as we know it today will have
ceased, and the coal strike will be-
come as obsolete as coal itself.”
Some calamity-howlers arouse the
country with forecasts of slow and
horrible annihilation,
A moderate warning, which was
taken up and distorted with fear-
some results, was issued by Dr.
Mr.
the
Jacob G. Lipman. After exhaustive
studies with the aid of a corps of 30
WPA engineers and statisticians,
Dr. Lipman submitted a report last
June, which said, in part:
Warns of Soil Destruction.
“We have about 200 years to go
unless we start seriously conserving
our soil and renewing it where it
has been destroyed or impoverished.
The six most vital elements of the
soil, essential for our food supply,
phosphorus, potash,
and sulphur.
calcium, magnesium
up at the rate of many million tons
Granted that the American farm-
er has dissipated his resources, that
is not to say that behind the scenes
science is not perpetually on guard
floods and drouths
nagnified the devastation, but
constantly developed and improved.
Dr. P. D. Peterson, agricultural
expert for the Freeport Sulphur
company, is one of those who de-
bunks the terror of the dying soil
‘‘History, if nothing else, should
teach that dire predictions of soil
exhaustion are risky,’ he says, “‘be-
cause the same acres have been
farmed and refarmed for centuries
in Europe and are still producing
abundant crops."
He declares that American acres
should be more productive rather
tific prescriptions in the form of bal-
anced fertilizers and chemical com-
pounds which enrich the soil are
being added to the century-old prac-
tice of crop rotation.
nitrogen, phosphorus and potash,
and animals, Dr. Peterson explains;
soils deficient in sulphur will not
such deficiencies are being met by
adding sulphur to the soil, either
alone or in fertilizer mixtures.
Fungicides and insecticides,
the situation, he says.
Still other modern “‘wolf’’ criers
point out that in 1936 nearly 100,000,-
000 bushels of wheat were “burned
away'' as great, stifling clouds arose
from the Dust Bowl.
Farmers of the great wheat belt,
however, have refused to yield to
panic, and they are giving the most
effective answer yet devised to the
calamity-howlers, by taking the
steps necessary to overcome the dif-
ficulties in their path. They are
using such simple and logical de-
fenses as picket windbreaks and
ranks of trees. They are plowing
furrows at right angles to the pre-
vailing winds, so that the sweep of
the storms will be broken up,
Incidents such as these may com-
bine to prove that calamity-howlers
do have a value in dramatizing the
menaces which threaten mankind.
While whole countries are mentally
thrown off balance by their fulmi-
nations, enough heat is generated to
weld together the constructive ele-
ments in the community. This was
seen in large-scale enterprises for
reclaiming the soil, and may be
repeated if the howl becomes loud
enough, so that new measures for
healing other ills will be forth
coming.
© Western Newspaper Union,
Bl
FoR RA of dre koh kA oN
DUST
Movie « Radio
%k%k By VIRGINIA VALE kk *%
ARY GRANT is all set to be
the busiest actor in Holly-
wood for the next year. Now
working with Katherine Hep-
burn in “Bringing Up Baby,”
3 2 2 20 26 2 26 2 2 20 2 2
to ‘Love on Parole,” with
Miriam Hopkins, after which
he will support Ruby Keeler in
her first R. K. O. picture.
Columbia pictures hold a contract
with him also, and will have sev-
eral stories ready
for him just as soon
as he finishes his
stint on the R.K.O.
lot. And somehow or
other, Cary expects
to find time to play
one of the leads in
Pe
duction of the ever-
popular romance,
“Graustark.” If you
heard him on the air
recently with Irene
Dunne, giving ex-
“The Awful Truth,”
Cary Grant
you don't need to be told that it is
anf
Practically all of the motion-pie-
Twentieth Century-Fox
have the Ritz brothers with their
hilarious antics, and Paramount has
signed up the Yacht Club boys to
sor Phones
Hollywood producers wish that
plump girls were fashionable. In-
sistence streamlined figures
causes them no end of worry. Many
of the stars noted for their beauty
and chic have to live on strict diets
in order to stay slim, and when they
are working on a strenuous sched-
ule they get so run down that they
have no resistance to colds Re.
on
Lombard, Alice Faye, Joan Craw-
ford, Virginia Bruce, Simone Simon,
and Zorina, the lovely Russian danc-
er who is soon to make her debut
in Goldwyn pictures.
anil
Bing Crosby, who always Insists
that he doesn't know anything about
music, or about anything, in fact,
but race horses, received an hono-
rary degree from Gonzaga college
in Spokane, Wash. He was a stu-
dent there before he joined Paul
Whiteman's rhythm boys and got
launched on a radio career. Inci-
dentally, Bing gets so much fun out
of his radio appearances that he
would like to be on the air more
than once a week.
we
Radio and picture stars have their
favorite performers, just like the
rest of us. Rudy Vallee insists on
having Jack Oakie in the picture he
will make for Warner Brothers soon.
2
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’ ; Shh EY 12 to 20 (30 to 40 bust). Size 14
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JH ERE'S something new in the
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Pride in Perfection
ere
side,
success. Jack Benny would like to
gram permanently-—thinks he adds
a lot of laughs.
sf
Beverly Davis, the four-year-old
cap dancer who risks breaking her
neck in the Ritz Brothers pictures,
she goes to parties.
party she was not going over so
well, because instead of laughing at
right anyway.
Beverly to play a part.
wn Penn
Closest friends of Douglas Fair.
banks, Jr., thought that his great
in “The Prisoner of
had cured
hiin of all ambitions
to be a producer in
England. Douglas
says they are wrong.
As soon as he fin-
ishes playing oppo-
site Ginger Rogers
in “Having a Won-
derful Time,” he
will be off to London
again to be the big
boss of a production
company. In the fu-
ture he will spend six months of
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Remember, please~when you take a Smith Brothers Cough Drop
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Smith Bros. Cough Drops are the only drops containing VITAMIN A
This is the vitamin that raises the resistance of the mucous
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LIFE'S LIKE THAT By Fred Neher