Letters, Aug. 22, 1938

(5 of 6)

Contra this hearsay assertion, unsupported by facts, that France possesses the Paul Bunyan of banners, I advance the claim of Michigan to that distinction. . . .

On suitable occasions, the J. L. Hudson Co., biggest department store in Detroit, displays on its Woodward Avenue facade a gigantic Stars and Stripes, publicized by them as the largest flag in the world.

This enormous ensign, first unfurled on their building on Armistice Day, November 11, 1923 is 90 ft. by 230 ft. . . .

ROBERT H. STRUTHERS

Detroit, Mich.

Strike

Sirs:

You may enjoy a Gilbert & Sullivan touch to reports from Jamaica.

In June, on Blue Mountain and Morant Estates in the Parish of St. Thomas, the coconut pickers were on strike for a week, then went back to work at their old rate. The week before the strike they did twice their usual work so that they would lose nothing by a week of rest.

R. J. HOPKINS

Los Gatos, Calif.

Floy Floy

Sirs:

. . . I know I am asking a great deal of you but your position will warrant it. In deciding this, lay aside position and loyalty to your party and tell me from the fullness of your heart: What the deuce is a floy-floy?

PAUL E. LAMALÉ

Wabash, Ind.

Authors of The Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy, Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart, do not know themselves what the words mean. Said Slim: "We were sort of talking a new language." The dance they had vaguely in mind was to be done flatfoot. "When we put the floy floy on it, that was extra business. You got the whole dance right there; you're swinging. See what I mean?"—ED.

Traveling Salesmen

TIME [Aug. 8] has grossly misrepresented both my personal attitude toward the hundreds of thousands of U. S. traveling salesmen whose patronage make our own businesses possible and also has misrepresented the objectives of a very useful new public service which our Hertz dealers and the New Haven Railroad together have successfully launched.

Instead of this new business being designed to catch an occasional bit of expense account chiseling by an individual salesman, it is designed to benefit thousands of honest salesmen, many of whom have already found it much more convenient to ride in a comfortable air-conditioned train to the city in which they are to make their calls and there find an excellently conditioned car for their convenience, rather than bucking pounding traffic over long city to city jumps.

TIME says that, "no traveling salesman will ever get to heaven." Maybe so, but if TIME'S editors do not watch the honesty of their reporting more carefully than they have in this story about me, they will never be able to make their heaven observations at first hand.

TIME credits me with the origin of the Rail Auto Travel Plan. Fact is, various ideas of coordinating automobile and railroad transportation have been suggested for many years but the New Haven Railroad is the first transportation company to devise a plan of this character. Credit should go to the New Haven and to all Hertz operators in its territory under the able leadership of R. S. Robie, Hertz man of Boston.

EDWIN J. CAREY

Grand Central Motor Car Renting Corp.

New York City