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26
[[left margin]] SUNDAY MIRROR FEBRUARY 8 1942 C [[/left margin]]

Out of My Mind
By Katharine Brush
No Offense, I trust
(Some Personal Impressions)

FIORELLO H. LA GUARDIA: You want to put him in your pocket, or hold him on your knee. You also want to comb his hair, which falls down worse than Willkie's. When he makes a speech to any kind of audience, on any subject, the general effect is that of a coach giving a fight-talk to a football team. His voice grows a little shrill; he perspired visibly with earnestness; he gesticulates graphically with one hand, or both; he hunches his shoulders; and if he is seated he bounces up and down excitedly in his chair.
Even in repose-if you could even call it that-His Honor never relaxes. Listening to somebody else's speech, he fidgits ceaselessly. He toys with his spectacles, and then suddenly pops them onto his nose, and the next thing you know he has pushed them up on top of his forehead, as aviators do their goggles.

[[image]] Katherine Brush [[/image]]

This is his favorite place for wearing them, and he will leave them there till needed. Meanwhile his fingers worry away at his face perpetually; they romp around over it, in a pattering fashion; or they make designs. For example, one of his favorite gestures is to spread his fingers over his face (with his nose fitted into the V of the two middle ones) and play peekaboo with you through them. The effect is slightly pixie, and you feel like crying triumphantly, "I spy!" or "Come on out–we know you!"
***
DOROTHY THOMPSON: Whenever you think of her, it is as seen through a row of microphones' and this is true even when the microphones aren't really there...She has gray hair youthfully worn, and her clothes (including her evening dresses) are apt to be plain and simple and tailored-looking, without being in the least masculine...Her speaking voice is pleasant, and beautifully trained and modulated; you might call it pretty-but-positive; and she mitigated the extreme force of some of her remarks my means of a little chuckling sound in her throat...At the average party, all the women are awed by her (unless they're Clare Boothe); and the same is true of the majority of the men...
***
MAE WEST: We were on an eastbound train out of Los Angeles; and during the stop at Newton, Kansas, as all the passengers were strolling up and down the station platform, it developed suddenly that Miss West was one of us. There could be no possible mistake about it. The moonbeam-colored hair, those inch-long ersatz eyelashes, that roguish paste-white face, that costume – red silk shirt, long black wool skirt down to the ground, beige cap with rakish pompon, and mink swagger coat hung on the shoulders–could add up to be no other. People sprang up out of nowhere to stand gaping at her, and there was a rush for autographs that was well on its way to becoming a riot when the conductor's cry of "All aboard!" tore Miss West away from Newton, Kansas.
She was not seen again until we pulled into Kansas City, some hours later. Then it developed that her press agent was on the train; and that in preparation for this more important stop, he had obliged Miss West to do a lot of preliminary homework in the way of autographing. He now got out of the train himself with what appeared to be a pinochle deck of autographed cards, which he dealt out with lightning speed to everybody at the K. C. Station. This left Miss West free for the cameramen and the reporters, who were there in force. There was a great crowd anyway, small boys, excited men and women, a few soldiers, and the usual giggling bands of high-school girls. Various voices kept remarking that they'd forgotten all about Mae West–that she had't made a picture in how-long-was-it?–that she was all washed up, in fact. At the same time everybody fought with everybody to get near her.
We watched this mob scene from the observation car until the train pulled out (with Miss West waving genially to her public from the rear of it). She then swept past us, in a gust of perfume, and vanished from our sight. Not so the press agent, however - he lingered on among us - and it now appeared that he still had some of the autographed cards left over. At first he sat and eyed them gloomily - then he displayed them ostentatiously, and looked at all of us, with hope returning to his eye.
But nobody answered this optical plea, and nobody asked for one of the cards; and so finally the press agent took drastic action in the matter. He marched firmly through the aisle, pressing a card upon each and every one of us - be we dowager, or drummer, or priest, or potentate, or what. Without exception, and willynilly, we all got a message from Miss West - and it was the same cozy message, which we stared at helplessly.
Um-hum, you've guessed it. It was "Come up and see me sometime." 
(Released by Consolidated News Features, Inc.)

Hobson Exposed Japs Years Ago
MEMPHIS (UP). - "Japan has gone further toward making plans for war than any white nation has ever gone. She teaches 'hate the foreigner' and 'prepare for war.' In her preparation for war, she is locating on our Pacific coast and is filling Hawaii with soldiers."
These might have been the words of a patriot last year, a few days before Pearl Harbor and Wake and Guam. They were spoken in Memphis on the night of October 14, 1907. 
The speaker was Capt. Richmond Pearson Hobson, naval hero of the Spanish-American was and later Congressman from Alabama. 

Chemist Says War's Too Speedy for Gas
KANSAS CITY (UP). - Poison gas is not nearly as fearsome a weapon in modern warfare as the ordinary person thinks, according to Dr. Lloyd H. Ryerson, professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota. This war moves too fast and is too mobile to make practical the use of gas, in Dr. Ryerson's estimation. Places of concentration where troops are entrenched are the only likely areas for gas attacks, and then the advantage is not great, the chemist contends. 


MOTOR MIRROR
by GENE McCOY
 
In the Battle to Conserve Rubber
[[image]] 
[[caption]] Engineers of the General Tire and Rubber Co. have developed a group of scientific instruments through the use of which great quantities of rubber can be saved in keeping with the national defense effort. One of the devices is the "non-skid meter.
It accurately register percentage of non-skid wear left in a tire, and enables a dealer to tell whether the casing has reached the danger zone. The instruments are part of the Kraft system of tire renewing. [[/caption]]

DETROIT, Feb. 7. - To help meet the demand for trained men for war effort, the General Motors Institute at Flint is starting a new class is co-operative industrial and product engineering, according to Director Albert Sobey. 
It will open in March with one section entering the institute for the first month of academic training and the alternate section starting the first work period in the plants at the same time. 
High school graduates who finish their work at mid-year will be able to enter training almost immediately. Applications should be made directly to the Institute at Flint. 
Preferences will be given young men from cities in which General Motors plants are located, although men from any locality with good high school records, and recommended by school authorities will be given every considerations. 
More than 1,100 students are now taking parts in the cooperative program. Students spend one month in school and one month in the plant alternatively. 
General Motors Institute has been the central training agency of General Motors for 22 years, has a faculty of 78 members, and has trained more than 90,000 General Motors workers and supervisors. The position which the Institute holds in the war production program was typified recently when it was referred to as the "West Point of the General Motors arsenal."
A total of 15,909 men and women were trained in 1941, involving 1,485,000 man-hours of instruction. In addition, 6,473 individuals were trained by the plants through the Institute program. This doesh not include the operators trained for specialized production jobs in the plants - upwards of 50,000 - most of whom, however, were instructed by "trainers" trained in this program. 

What Torque Is
Horsepower as a measure of an automobile engine's performance is a fictitious value, according to David A. Wallace, president of Chrysler Sales Division, Chrysler Corp. Wallace suggests that engine torque would be a far better way of rating engine output and prophesies that when the industry resumes normal passenger car production, most car manufacturers will begin to talk torque, rather than horsepower.  
"Horsepower is an engineering term - a hangover from steam engine days," Wallace says. "Horsepower in itself is largely a measure of the energy developed. If a steam engine turns up ten horsepower, it gets ten horsepower at any given moment by barely opening the throttle. In a gasoline engine, in order to get horsepower, the engine has to be running.
"In a steam engine, energy is stored up - always on tap - but in a gasoline engine there must be explosions to produce power. In a gasoline engine when you close the throttle you stop the engine, whereas in a steam engine when you close the throttle you merely store up the energy. In a gasoline engine you have to increase the speed of the engine to get more horsepower. 
"What we're really interested in as car owners is not horsepower, but how much power the engine delivers to the driving wheels. The engineering term that describes that is 'torque' - the twisting or turning effort that an engine exerts which is converted into driving motion at the wheels.
"If you doubled the horsepower in a gasoline engine, you would not necessarily double the torque. In fact, there is a point when torque becomes less, rather than increases. As speed goes up, friction increases, and that lessens the amount of torque which the engine can deliver.
"Horsepower in itself is only a measure of the power available. It has nothing to do with the road performance of a car. The fact that we stepped up horsepower on our 1942 Chrysler models means little; it is the torque or turning energy that the engines deliver to the rear wheels which is of far greater importance."

Truck Maintenance
"Victory Maintenance" is the name to GMC's nationwide program of periodical truck inspection, servicing and general rehabilitation, according to J.P. Little, vice-president, directing sales for General Motors Truck and Coach of Pontiac, Mich. 
"Practically every automotive manufacturer has some plan for the repair and maintenance of motor vehicles during restricted production," says Little. "Scientific maintenance for dependable performance and longer truck and tire life is receiving greater consideration by operators, both large and small.
"In the GMC "Victory Maintenance" program are several major elements, designed to take care of practically any situation with which the truck operator may be confronted in his efforts to maintain his truck equipment at peak efficiency. 
"First, there is the Company's Preventive Maintenance Plan, originated by GMC back in 1928 and being used in many of the larger truck and coach fleets throughout the country to keep their equipment on the job with a minimum of time out for the service. In addition to protecting the life of the truck and covering such necessary operations as regular lubrication and adjustment, preventive maintenance reveals in advance the need for repairs or replacement of parts, thus reducing the possibility of breakdowns on the job or costly loss of time on the road. Essentially, this is the same system used by one of the nation's largest fleet operators, where total yearly travel as high as 260,000,000 miles is recorded with road failure reduced to an average of only one in 165,000 miles. 
"The second feature of this program consists of a series of group overhaul operations designed to put new life back into the truck. This phase of the plan will be of particular importance to light duty truck operators faced with the possibility of having to operate their trucks over a long period. Provision is made for the complete replacement of entire groups of engine and chassis parts which experience has shown should be replaced at periodic intervals for lowest maintenance cost and freedom from more costly repairs at a later date."

Tire Numbers
Recommendation that motorists throughout the Club's territory immediately record the serial number of their tires and keep the record in a safe place is made by William J. Gottlieb, president of the Automobile Club of New York. 
"By this means you will be able to give police exact identification of the property in the event of tire theft and they will be able to return the tires to their rightful owners when they are recovered," Gottlieb pointed out. 
"There is a different number for each individual tire; this can be found on the tire's side-wall - usually near the name of the tire manufacturer. Unless a record is kept of the tire serial numbers, it is difficult if not impossible for the police to locate owners when tires have been recovered. 
"There are other steps that motorists can take to protect themselves against tire thievery. 
if your spare-tire key is separate from your ignition key, make sure that your spare is locked and that you carry the key with you when leaving your car on a parking lot. If at all possible, it is, of course, wise to keep your car in a locked garage at night. 
"These measures of protection against theft, coupled with slow and careful driving and proper tire care, particularly with regard to proper inflation, will go far toward getting the maximum mileage out of the tires now being used by the nation's motorists. With the prospect for getting additional tires very cloudy, to say the least, it is of the utmost importance that every motorist conserve his rubber equipment by every practical means."

Transcription Notes:
[[image: Katharine Brush]] [[image: Engineers of the General Tire and Rubber Co. have developed a group of scientific instruments through the use of which great quantities of rubber can be saved in keeping with the national defense effort. One of the devices is the "non-skid meter." It accurately registers the percentage of non-skid wear left in a tire, and enables a dealer to tell whether the casing has reached the danger zone. The instruments are part of the Kraft system of tire renewing.]]