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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 1950
Mister Kansas Agriculture Resigns From State Service
Topeka, Jan. 13—U.L.P.)—"Mr. Kansas Agriculture" retired today. That's J. C. Mohler—Jake to just about everybody—who is bowing out of the Kansas board of agriculture after a service of 58 years.
For the last 36 years the white-haired but bright-eyed little man has been secretary of the board, the guiding genius who has helped make Kansas the nation's greatest wheat state.
It was he who coined the slogan—"Kansas grows the best wheat in the world"—and he kept after the Sunflower State's farmers to keep making it hold true.
During his tenure, Kansas land devoted to the bread-grain increased from 4-million to around 14-million or more acres, and the state's wheat production climbed to one bushel of every five grown in the United States. In some years it was one of every four.
Tired now after the longest state service of any Kansan, Jake is stepping aside for a younger man. Roy Freeland, who has been Mohler's chief assistant the last five years, likely will get the job.
Jake Mohler is largely credited with building Kansas agriculture into a billion dollar industry.
Martin Mohler, his father, was agriculture secretary before him. The elder Mohler envisioned the shelter belt of trees for the mid-America state.
It was through him that young Jake, real name, Jacob Christian Mohler, went to work for the board of agriculture as a $15 a month clerk.
When the youth, aged 17, went into the agriculture department, corn was Kansas' staple crop. The Mennonites who settled central counties had just started to get their hard, red winter wheat established and accepted.
In the state there were no tractors, no corn binders, no combines, no rural mail routes. There wasn't a single silo.
Named secretary of the non-partisan, board in 1914, Mohler went to bat for Kansas farmers during and after the First World War when they experienced two crop failures.
He went to Washington and helped get a pool of five million bushels of wheat seed. A bumper crop resulted. Virtually the same thing happened in the 1920's.
Jake is hard of hearing. The deficiency was in its formative stage after World War I. Some believe it kept him from being secretary of agriculture under President Coolidge. Another Kansan, Dr. W. M. Jardine head of the state agriculture college, was selected.
$32,000 Curtain Raised In Hoch
The new 3,600-pound curtain in Hoch auditorium, which cost $32,000, was raised at 1:30 today for the first time.
Chancellor Deane W. Malott, E. B. Stouffer, dean of the University, and Raymond Nichols, executive secretary to the chancellor, watched the maroon curtain as it was tested in a series of complex positions. It worked perfectly.
Eleven electric motors lift the 13 panels of the curtain to any position in 30 seconds. The panels can be raised to any height up to 30 feet individually. Instrument control of the curtain is done in the east back-stage balcony.
"It has more material in it than any curtain ever made," said W. O. Bailey, employee of the Hubert Mitchell industries, who made the curtain. "It is almost exactly like the Radio City Music hall curtain."
An engineer called out different combinations of shapes by telephone to an operator in the back-stage balcony. The versatility of the curtain was demonstrated as it moved from one small opening at the center of the stage to form a large arc with the center section 30 feet high.
"It is very beautiful," Chancellor Malott declared as different colored spotlights played across the drapes.
"This will certainly increase the enjoyment of the audience," Mr. Nichols said.
A rose-beige cyclorama, wine-colored tormentos, grand draperies, and the royal blue concert curtain form the background for the preselected patterns of the new curtain.
Student's Mother Dies In Wichita
Mrs. Nettle Hill, of Wichita, mother of Otis Hill, business senior, and Gaines Hill, education sophomore, died early Wednesday morning.
Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday in the chapel of the First Presbyterian church in Wichita.
Bureau To Look For More Water In West Kansas
Kansas City, Mo., Jan. 13—U(P), H. E. Prater, regional engineer for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at Denver told the Kansas Contractors' association today that preliminary investigations would be started after July 1, 1950, to determine if there was water available in western Kansas for future use above the amount already appropriated.
Prater said that if investigations indicated such water to be available from Ellinwood west to the Colorado line, studies will be made to determine the possibility of developing potential projects for regulating surface flows, recharging ground water and expanding irrigation development.
"Areas to be fully investigated include that section adjacent to the Arkansas river between Hartland and Cimarron, Kan., the Modoc basin in Scott county and the Pawnee and Walnut creek basins" he said.
Prater said that bureau of reclamation development in Kansas has lagged behind progress which has been made in Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado but "with most of the difficulties now solved, there is every indication that you are about to see accelerated construc- including the Kaw, Smoky Hill and action activity in Kansas."
The upper two-thirds of Kansas, Republican basins, is the scene of present bureau construction activities. Of the Cedar Bluff dam near Ellis, Prater said the contractor by Dec. 1, 1949, had completed 32 per cent of the work in 18 per cent of the contract time.
He said that it was expected that construction work would begin on th Bostwick unit in Kansas during fiscal year 1951. "Primarily, the bureau's program in Kansas is to conserve and develop the water resources of the state," he said, "not only for irrigation, but also for municipal and other beneficial uses.
"Demands by municipalities and industries for greater water supplies are increasing rapidly. Pollution abatement also is of great significance and this problem is receiving considerable attention in current bureau investigations."
It's Happened Again
Brookline, Mass. — (U.P.) — Mrs.
Gertrude Portnoy, 27, wasn't too excited when she gave birth to a daughter in an automobile en route to a hospital. The same thing happened five years before.
Forrest C. "Phog" Allen today today released the following statement to the students:
"I want to thank the students for their unified and unquestionable loyalty to the members of our basketball team. Now, I have I see a situation to this one. Hawks, most of our games and having played but two games at home it seems to me that our Kansas students are possessed with the finest in college spirit.
Dr. Allen Praises Student Support
"This fine attitude is reflected in a splendid morale which our basketball team possesses at the present time. It showed in the second half of the Nebraska game when those young Kansas players refused to give up. Time after time they came surging back and were stopped only by the final gun.
"Our boys still have faith in their ability to make a successful season out of this campaign and it is our fine Kansas student body that we owe this debt of appreciation. The boys aren't playing for themselves but for their school."
Shirley Nelson Given Scholarship
"The Gamma Phi Beta Christmas Gift scholarship represents an admirable step taken by a student group on the campus," Miss Margaret Habein, dean of women, said. "I look forward to the time when more of our organized groups will find it possible to establish similar awards."
The Gamma Phi Beta scholarship has been awarded to Shirley Joan Nelson, College junior, from Salina. The scholarship is made possible each year through funds raised at Christmas to help some woman student in the spring semester. This year's award amounts to $108.
Engineers' Society Elects
Maxwell Ravaldal President
Maxwell Ravndal, engineering junior, was elected president of the American Society of Civil Engineers Thursday.
Other officers elected were Virgil Holdrege, engineering senior, vicepresident; Francis Rees, engineering senior, corresponding secretary; David Carpenter, engineering senior, recording secretary; and Raymond Olson, engineering senior, treasurer.
A movie, "Drama of Portland Cement," was shown to the society. Forty-six members attended the meeting. Mr. C. K. Mathews, Kansas City, Mo., was a guest.
British Sub Sinks But Crew's Fate Still Unknown
London, Jan. 13 — (U.P.) — Royal navy divers found the smashed submarine Truculent 54 feet below the surface of the Thames estuary today, but there was no immediate word of the fate of 58 men believed to be inside.
Fifteen men of the 76 aboard the craft were rescued last night shortly after it was rammed and sunk by a Swedish freighter in 54 feet of water in the Thames estuary outside London. Three bodies have been recovered.
Radio messages from a fleet of more than 50 rescue vessels clustered around the Truculent's marker buoy said it was believed that at least some of the men trapped in the submarine still were alive.
The Truculent was rammed by the Swedish freighter Divina while running on the surface in a calm sea in clear weather shortly after dark last night. The submarine sank immediately.
A vast fleet of rescue ships were rushed down to the area, some 17 miles northwest of Margate. One was the Reclaim, a brand new diving and deep sea rescue ship. Another was the destroyer Finisterre, carrying a decompression chamber from Portsmouth.
The 1,090-ton submarine carried 18 dockyard workers and a crew of 58. At dawn the admiralty said that 58 men still were missing and believed trapped in the submarine.
The Margate lifeboat, that had searched the waters in the area of the collision for possible survivors all night, radioed at dawn that it was standing by the marker buoy. "There are believed to be sur- 'll aboard," the lifeboat's
Divers from the Reclaim went down just as the first light of dawn flickered across the Thames estuary. They were hoping to establish communications with the trapped men.
When the wrecked sub was located, the men trapped in it had been there for 18 hours. The rescue fleet believed some of the men were still alive. Of the 76 originally aboard the Truculent, 58 were crew members and 18 were dockyard workers who had gone along on the trial cruise after a refitting.
A submarine marker buoy carried by the Truculent was found floating in Thames some 17 miles north-west of Marget shortly before dawn today.
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