Prankish Monkeys Best Liked
By Summertime Zoo Visitors
‘Four-Handed’ Folk Enjoy
Attention From
Onlookers.
Prepared by National Gr-v-i-anhlc Society.
Washington. D. C.—WNU Service.
In captivity monkeys are
always among the most pop
ular of animals. This may
be because the four-handed
folk have something approxi
mating a sense of humor,
prankish and perverted
though it often is. Their ca
pacity for mischief amounts
to genius, and they hold up a
mirror of caricature before
our human foibles.
Another reason for the pop
ularity of monkeys is the fact
that — like bears and ele
phants—they are interested
in the public. Those superb
■nobs, the lion, tiger, and leopard,
on the other hand, stare disdain
fully past the visitor who snaps his
Angers at them, says “Woof, woof.”
or uses baby talk. People like to
be noticed and recognized, even by
a monkey, and even when they
know that this Interest is largely
prompted by the hope of a peanut.
Monkey nature calls for careful
study, and is almost as baffling
as human nature. Pick up a mon
key. even a tame one, and he will
probably bite you. But hold out
your hand invitingly and very likely
he will climb aboard. He likes to
be the one to take the initiative.
Once well acquainted, he will prob
ably cling to you much of the time,
putting up a most outlandish fuss
when deprived of that privilege.
Sometimes visitors to monkey
houses are greeted by a display of
terrible teeth, particularly by the
baboons. This is often an indication
of special friendship, the equivalent
of a smile. Monkeys have been
kept in captivity since earliest
times, for they have always at
tracted the attention and interest
or people.
The Egyptians worshiped some
kinds, and mummified the huge
gray-mantled Hamadryas baboon of
the Sudan. The Hamadryas is a
forbidding creature and exciting to
look upon. One sees it in zoos
and often in circus side shows
where it sits sullenly in a cage
labeled "lion-slaying gorilla." This,
of course, is Just showmanship,
though this long-fanged baboon
could put up a fierce and efficient
fight against almost anything.
King Solomon kept monkeys, prob
ably the Rhesus, or Bengal variety,
which today is brought into Amer
ica by the thousands for exhibition
purposes or more frequently for ex
perimental work in biology and
medicine. Shylock’s daughter, in
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice,
traded her father’s turquoise ring
for a monkey, and Shylock, furious,
declared he would not have given
the ring for a wilderness of mon
keys. Most any zoo would, though.
Children Like Them.
Every child seems to want a
monkey. Recently a little mountain
girl from Virginia who in all her
life had seen no animals at all except
the domestic ones on her father’s
hillside farm was guest in the Na
tional Zoological park at Washing
ton. She spent a day looking over the
collection, and that evening she de
clared that if she could have any
thing in the world she wanted, it
would be a little monkey.
One of the duties of a *oo director
is to answer questions about pets.
Except just after the circus leaves
town, when people want to know
how to care for the chameleons they
have bought from the circus folk,
monkeys are the subject of more
inquiry than any other animal.
What kind of monkey does not bite’
Answer: It has not yet been dis
covered. What kind of monkey
makes the best pet? Answer: Al
most any young monkey; almost no
grown monkey.
Need Varied Diet.
How do you care for and feed
monkeys? Answer: They should
be kept warm and dry, free from
drafts, and with room for exer
cise, and fed on a varied diet of
fruits, vegetables, and cereals.
Some of them like an occasional bit
of meat, and a few are passionately
fond of insects.
Contrary to popular opinion, mon
keys do not often have tuberculosis.
Those that die are usually victims
of pneumonia or intestinal troubles;
A group of excited youngsters
and interested adults look on as
an attendant offers a cigarette
to a monkey at the National
Zoological park, Washington, D.
C. Monkeys are said to really
like and understand the interest
and attention given them by
human beings.
also perhaps, of homesickness and
the lack of certain foods obtainable
only in their native haunts.
There are so many different kinds
of monkeys that if you saw a new
one every day for a year there
would still be more than a hundred
you had not seen. Of course, no
zoo has anything like a complete
collection, as there are so many va
rieties and some of them cannoi
live in captivity.
500 Different Kinds.
Numbering half a thousand kinds,
monkeys occur on all the continents
except Australia, though in Europe
they are found only in Gibraltar and
in North America only in Mexico
and southward. Generally monkeys
are characteristic of warm countries,
but sometimes, as in northern Japan
and central Asia, certain kinds may
be seen disporting themselves amid
ice and snow.
Usually monkeys live in family
groups, sometimes few in number,
but often they flock in tremendous
tribes containing hundreds of in
dividuals. Some kinds sleep in hol
low trees, others in the open, per
haps curled up in a convenient tree
crotch. They are generally polyga
mous, sometimes monogamous.
There have been cases of a monkey,
bereft of its mate, pining away of
This picture shows two rare
Tarsius monkeys believed to be
the only ones ever imported into
this country. This particular
species must be fed every ttvo
hours and they must be kept in
a temperature of 85 degrees if
they are removed from their na
tive habitat in the Philippine
islands.
grief. Usually they have only one
young at a time, the baby clinging
tightly to its mother’s fur as she
runs or swings through the treetops.
Sometimes they bear twins, and
marmosets, low in the monkey scale,
on rare occasions, have triplets.
Two Main Groups.
The many families of monkeys,
leaving out the great apes (gorilla,
chimpanzee, orangutan, and gib
bon) on one end of the line, and the
lemurs, or half monkeys, on the oth
er, can be divided into two main
groups: Those of the New world
and those of the Old. The New
world monkeys have a monopoly on
prehensile tails, which they use as
a fifth hand for assistance in
climbing and swinging through trees
and also for picking up objects.
Their Old world relatives, in con
trast, use their tails only for bal
ance. The monkeys of the New
world also differ in having nasal
passages which are widely separat
ed and pointed outward and, with
the exception of marmosets, they
have four more teeth, two in each
jaw.
They have exactly the same num
ber of teeth as has man, and these
are sometimes highly developed into
vicious weapons of offense and de
fense. Smallest and most primitive
of the monkeys are the marmosets,
about the size of squirrels, which
inhabit the forests of nearly all of
tropical America. Their fingers are
almost like claws, and they are
the least monkeylike of alL
■_
NATIONAL
AFFAIRS
Reviewed by
CARTER FIELD
Recent polls show Gar
ner is away the most popu
lar of the Democratic con
tenders for the presidential
nomination . . . Polls are
very annoying to ISew Deal
ers; they want an investiga
tion . . . Recent opposition
to some of the President's
policies indicates that con
gress has got hack to normal.
WASHINGTON.—Friends of Vice
President John Nance Garner are
naturally delighted with the recent
polls showing that Garner is far and
away the most popular of the Demo
cratic contenders for the presiden
I tial nomination next year, not count
ing President Roosevelt himself. His
tremendous lead over New York’s
native son, James A. Farley, who
runs second in the polls, with every
body else way down the list, is most
impressive.
There is one angle of this, how
ever, which keeps the whole effect
from being perfect, from the Gar
ner men’s viewpoint. That is the
possibility that the effect of such
polls will cause Farley to become
a hundred per cent booster for a
Roosevelt third term. That, to the
Farley men, would be just about the
most terrible thing that could hap
pen. They are counting heavily on
Big Jim in the next 10 months—
not to aid Garner directly, but to
oppose Roosevelt and thus aid the
Texas candidate indirectly.
For some time now the Garner
folks have admitted privately that
their one big hurdle is Roosevelt
himself, not the fear that he might
support some candidate other than
Garner—that would not worry them
at all—but the fear that he might go
after the nomination himself. They
are sure they can beat anyone else
at the Democratic convention. They
think they can beat Roosevelt him
self, but when they begin to talk
about that there is a certain change
in their manners which indicates
that there is at least an element of
doubt.
Hence another phase of the re
cent polls, which would seem to indi
cate that, at the present moment,
Roosevelt could not carry New York
state against a strong Republican,
is highly satisfactory to the Garner
workers. Their chief fear about the
delegates at the Democratic national
convention is that they may believe
that Roosevelt is the only Democrat
who could possibly be elected.
View It Unwittingly
Encouraged by Republicans
Curiously enough this view is be
ing given more encouragement,
though unwittingly, by the Republi
cans than by the Roosevelt fanatics
themselves. The point is that every
time a Republican leader sounds
off about the third term he creates
the impression that the Republicans
would rather have the Democrats
nominate anyone else than Roose
velt. Hence the logical deduction
that the Republicans believe they
would hve more difficulty beating
Roosevelt than any other Democrat.
To a man interested chiefly in
party success—as many of the dele
gates will be, because in the nature
of things they are men either hold
ing office or benefiting in some oth
er way from Democratic rule at
Washington—it might become very
important that the Republicans be
lieve Roosevelt would be the hardest
man to beat. It would give Roose
velt a strong ace in the hole in the
convention maneuvering.
The truth is that there is no such
positive conviction among the Re
publicans, though there is enough
fear that it is true to justify the
suspicion. The Republicans have
been concentrating on the anti-third
term tradition because they have
been believing rather firmly up to
now that Roosevelt would be the
Democratic nominee.
Embarrass Advocates of
Third Term for Roosevelt
New Dealers are terribly annoyed
over the recent polls, widely pub
lished throughout the country. The
move to have a congressional inves
tigation of such polls—as to how
they are taken, and particularly why
they are taken—was born some
weeks before the recent poll of New
York state, which has been more
embarrassing to the advocates of a
third term for Roosevelt than any
one other thing that has happened,
anywhere, any time, or on any sub
ject.
A very sound argument can be
made against the polls, due to a
queer characteristic of human na
ture. For some reason there are
lots of people who like to be band
wagon riders. They want to be with
the winner. This resulted in quite
an outcry from the Democratic
leaders back in 1916. It will be re
called that most of the eastern
i states, which reported fairly early
! on election night, went decisively
for Charles E. Hughes. Democratic
I leaders contended that something
: should be done about this on the
! theory that on the Pacific coast peo
i pie who had not yet voted would
j hear about how the East was going,
j and would be influenced.
To those of us who cling to our
views and vote for candidates, even
if we know they are going to lose,
this is hard to understand, but there
is no doubt that there is enough
truth in it to make it Important
There is another point. So far,
the polls that are now so embarrass
ing to New Dealers have been as
tonishingly correct. But there is no
proving that sooner or later they
will not come a terrific cropper.
That has been the history of all
other polls on elections which have
attracted national attention.
Up to 1916, for example, the polls
taken by the old New York Herald
were amazing in their accuracy. In
that year, every Sunday for months
before election, the Herald editors
apologized to their readers because
they had taken too large a percent
age of their totals in California.
As California was virtually two to
one for Hughes as against Woodrow
Wilson, the editors explained, this
improperly weighted their totals—
making them appear too strong on
the Hughes side.
Polls, Sooner or Lai or,
Come n Terrific Cropper
Most people have forgotten, but
that is the explanation of why the
eastern newspaper editors and po
litical writers were so gullible about
the early returns on that election
night, when, as a matter of fact,
newspapers of all shades of politi
cal opinion, including the New York
Times, which was ardently for Wil
son, conceded Hughes’ election.
That was the end of the Herald
polls. Big newspapers began after
that election sending their own cor
respondents over the country to in
vestigate political situations. But
then came the Literary Digest poll.
Its accuracy was uncanny for
years. In 1936, when every good
political reporter began to suspect
that there was something sour about
it, the poll none the less had the ef
fect of putting doubt in the minds
even of the most optimistic New
Dealers.
In a subsequent magazine article
Charles Michelson, shrewd director
of New Deal publicity, admitted that
he had spent a lot of money un
' necessarily to combat the last min
ute pay-envelope tax attack of the
G. O. P. forces. He expresses only
scorn for the Literary Digest poll,
but one wonders whether this ex
pense would have been approved if
there had not been a lingering fear
that maybe the Digest poll was in
dicating a ground swell which some
how escaped investigators.
The new polls are much more sci
entific, of course.
Actions Tend to Put Doubt
In the Minds of Voters
Congress has almost gotten back
to normal—after more than six
years of following the leader. This
has nothing to do with how much
President Roosevelt succeeds in get
ting his way despite the critical
tactics, first of the house, on the
TVA question, and, second, of the
senate, on the silver and devalua
tion questions.
Every member of the house vot
ing against the President on TVA,
and every senator voting against
him on silver and devaluation knew
that these votes would hurt Mr.
Roosevelt between now and next
June when the Democratic National
convention will pick the party’s
nominee for President.
The actions tend to put doubt in
the minds of the voters as to wheth
er the President is right on TVA,
whether he is sound on the mone
tary questions. They will form the
subject of crossroad store debates
all next winter, from Maine to Cali
fornia, with the only possible result
that the President will lose a cer
tain percentage of his supporters.
When the senate and house fight on
such controversial issues it is al
most beyond question that folks will
be found, here and there, who will
take the opposition side, no matter
what the real merits of the case
may be.
Since the President figures to a
dominating degree in the monetary
disputes, and since his attitude on
TVA is well known, the effect can
only be harmful to him. Some of
those supporting him up to these is
sues are almost bound to leave him.
This is almost an inexorable politi
cal law. It has nothing to do with
Mr. Roosevelt’s virtues or failings.
It proves nothing with respect to
them. It is just a thing which al
ways works.
Despite His Huge Majority
Former Leaders Opposed Him
This law works with especial rig
or against a President who does a
lot of things. Probably Calvin Cool
idge suffered less from it than any
President since the Civil war, but
the chief accusation that critics
bring against his record is that he
was a ’’do nothing.” Mr. Roosevelt
has done a lot of things. Nearly ev
ery one of them W'ent against the
grain with some of his supporters,
be they few or many
In 1936. despite his thumping ma
jority, a number of distinguished
former leaders of his party opposed
him publicly. The thing is cumula
tive.
Will H. Hays once said that the
function of the Republican national
committee was to "assimilate, not
eliminate.” The process under dis
cussion here amounts to a series of
eliminations.
The whole point of this is that ev
ery politician of enough importance
to have gotten elected to the house
or the senate appreciates this politi
cal axiom. So the boys in the sen
ate knew what they were doing when
they made a spectacular stand
against President Roosevelt.
(Bell Syndicate—WNU Service.)
WHO'S
NEWS
THIS
WEEK
By LEMUEL F. PARTON
"^EW YORK.—News of the ap
proaching retirement of Brig.
Gen. Harley B. Ferguson is a re
minder that it was he who super
. . vised the rais
Retinng Generating of the bat
Could Regulate tleship Maine
Flow of Afton J H%vana i1”
bor for the
U. S. government in 1910 and 1911.
In the service for 42 years in
the engineering corps, he prob
ably has won more shirt-sleeve
battles against all the disasters
of the Anglican litany than any
other army officer with a gift
for achieving the impossible.
He will be 64 years old on
August 14 and there is talk that
he may be upped to the rank of
major general before the bell
rings on his finish fight against
the elements.
He is the Hackenschmidt of flood
grapplers, winning one fall after an
other against the Mississippi. He
has been president of the Missis
sippi River commission since 1932;
member of the board of rivers and
harbors since 1930 and is also a
member of the St. Lawrence Water
way board.
Back in the days of “manifest
destiny,” starting in 1897, the
young second lieutenant got his
first practice workouts in the
mud and miasma, floods and
elemental and human catastro
phe in the Philippines and Cuba,
and with the army swampers
tidying up China and providing
relief after the Boxer uprising
around the turn of the century.
If the “destiny” involved get
ting things shipshape in a hurry,
he always made it a lot more
manifest than it might have
been otherwise. He was chief
engineer of the China expe
dition.
He started fighting floods in Mont
gomery, Ala., in 1907 and through
the years commanded army engi
neering works, defensive and ag
gressive, at Milwaukee, Cincinnati,
New Orleans, Vicksburg, Pittsburgh
and Norfolk, Va.
In the World war, he was chief
engineer of the second army corps
in France. He went to West Point
from his home town, Waynesville,
N. C. His son is a commander in
the navy. He has two daughters.
_a_
Dr. PAUL POPENOE, geneticist,
biologist, and student of family
relations, who has given much of
his interesting career to clinical
studies of home life, discovers that
women are ag
rr omen a Close gressivepro
Second to the posers and that
N. W. Mounties 70 out of 85 ®et
their man. This
is his finding in his survey of this
hitherto unexplored field of statis
tics.
Dr. Popenoe is director of the
court of family relations at Los
Angeles. A specialist in the
daily squabbles of married life,
he has been effective in settling
many of them. He says it is a
good idea to write down all your
wife’s faults, check them against
your own, and then burn the
paper. You should keep the
family budget straight, refrain
from nagging, and keep yourself
and everybody else around the
house interested and never
bored. As a geneticist, he
thinks it is a fair bet that we
will become a race of “super
idiots,” whereas we could be
super-Einsteins if wc could use
collectively the sense that God
gave geese.
He is a native of Topeka, Kan.,
educated at Occidental college and
Topeka university. He was a news
paper reporter in Pasadena and Los
Angeles before he became a biolo
gist and sociologist.
BIG, ruddy John M. Carmody,
known as “Powerhouse John,”
takes over 2,500 PWA employees un
der the new arrangement by which
AI pitt A D he assumes a
New h WA Boss ioacji compared
Belittles Atlas to which Atlas 1
With His Load would be iust
toting a tennis
ball. Leaving the Rural Electrifica
tion administration, he heads the
new Federal Works agency, which
takes in both the PWA and the
FWA; also the bureau of public
roads, the building operations of the
treasury, the U. S. Housing author
ity and many other Herculean en- !
deavors.
He is a rip-snorting Irishman
with a booming voice, employ
ing section boss technique in
getting things done. He was for
many years an editor of the Mc
Graw Hill Publications, making
his career in industrial engineer
ing. In earlier years, he man
aged coal companies, factories
and steel mills.
He has been with the New Deal
six years, first with the NRA and
later with the NLRB. He has a
Pennsylvania farm background and
attended Columbia university.
(Consolidated Features—WNU Service.)
All Sandwiches Aren’t on Rye
This peruked gent, the British
fourth Earl of Sandwich, threw
tremendous gambling parties in
his castle tivo centuries ago. He
began serving steaks between
slices of bread so his guests
could grab a bit ivithout leav
ing the roulette wheel. He
should have copyrighted the
idea; today the sandwich is also
an industrial institution.
Picture
Parade
For example: The two gen
tlemen at the left are known
as “sandwich men” and they
advertise anything from hard
ware to hamburgers up and
down main street. Sports
men have their “sandwich
boats” in the famous Oxford
Cambridge bumping races. At
least four towns (and the Sand
wich islands) owe their names
to the gambling nobleman.
In industry the word “sandwich” means
a lamination (or division into thin plates
or layers) of materials such as wood, glass,
paper, metal or rubber for greater strength
and efficiency. One of the most spectacu
lar of these sandwiches is the new steel
and-rubber wheel for railway cars. Photo
above shows the rubber “sandwich” being
placed in the wheel. The cross-section at
the right shows how the rubber inserts
prevent metal-to-metal transmission of
vibration from rail to axle. This new
process received one of its most successful
applications in the new subway cars at
New York.
The first “sandwich glass” was named after Sandwich, Mass., a
Cape Cod settlement whose formula for beautiful colored glass is
now lost. Modern sandivich glass is safety plate glass for automo
biles. In the above photo girls at the Libbey-Owens-F ord plant
place paper-thin plastic filler between sheets of plate glass. A
new “filler” has just been perfected which has four times the
strength and resilience of former fillers.
Finished “sandwich” glass, a far cry from the carts ideal