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Show ) ' 7 OF MS S ' n m rM" - By ELMO SCOTT WATSON m TTINE 23, 1822 just 115 years ago-t-here was in Philadelphia a boy who was destined to me not only "the first artist of his time" but of the most versatile geniuses with the i n one and brush that this country has ever known. Kause of that versatility, Americans of a later neration owe him a great debt of gratitude. In I Edavs when the art of photography was in its made for them a pictorial record of contempo--r and scenes of historical interest which enCfn?LnhiC in their fidelity to fact. ' tack;a by Ind,ans on th Western Plains. (The original of this painting was purchased by Louis Napoleon, later Emperor Napoleon III of France.) GaviusCarrDarley name and three-.- : of a century ago the "parley," on a fas familiar to more L than that of any But with the both the artist of his been forgotten I'm known only to are interested in just the history. obvious " las the son of an Eng-- " f named John Darley, I to America soon after lof the Revolution. The Irley intended to have ek mercantile career L age of fourteen the j placed in a business Philadelphia. While em-l-a clerk, his talent for fbecame apparent and fr employes had many faugh at the caricatures of them and of idrew if these caricatures at-- e attention of the editor Saturday Museum who Jem, paying young Dar-rg- er sum for a few that he had dashed off foments than he could I week's work as a clerk. ed by his success, the "Leatherstocking," and had fixed in its mind a real concept of Cooper's "noble red man." Dar-ley also prepared a set of ekeches for Dickens' novels and caught the spirit of the English writer's immortal characters quite as successfully as any English artist could have done. While carrying on this work of book illustration, Darley was also engaged by a number of illustrat-ed magazines and newspapers and within a short time the credit-li-ne of "Drawings by F. O. C. Darley," or simply the name "Darley" on a picture, was as familiar to the reading public of that time as some of the well-know- n trademarks are to read-ers of today. Next he was em-ployed by the United States gov-ernment to make designs for gov-ernment bonds and national bank-notes and they were also used on a great variety of commercial paper. If you will dig into that old trunk up in the attic some day and find old promissory notes, receipts, etc., which are embellished with steel engrav-ings of Indians, symbolical fig-ures, such as "Columbia" and the like, the chances are that you will be looking at pictures which were made from drawings by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. In addition to his outline draw-ings, Darley also produced a number of other works, some in ington Irving's Rip Van Winkle' and 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow and after Judd's 'Margaret are among the best things of the sort that the century produced anywhere." "... Through all this period lithography was serving a useful subartistic purpose. Books on geology and botany, needing col-or, were usually thus illustrated; so were scientific government re-ports and the books on the In-dians. But the results, while of-ten excellent for their purpose, do not concern the student of art. For standard sets of American prose writers, notably Irving and Cooper, line-engrav- illustration seemed indispensable. It was, however, generally limited to a frontispiece or title vignette. "Darley can be tragically dra-matic, as in 'The Death of King Philip for the Artists' Edition of Irving's 'Sketch Book and course, by this time photography had been developed to such a state of perfection that it was possible to record, through the eye of the camera, history while it was happening. That is what Matthew Brady, the "first news cameraman," did from 1861 to 1865. But Brady could not be everywhere to photograph all the scenes worth preserving. Fortun-ately for posterity, the pencil and brush of Felix Daley admirably supplemented Brady's camera in preserving for it a pictorial rec-ord of that great conflict CivU War Pictures. Most famous of all of Darley's Civil war pictures is his "Sher-man's March to the Sea," steel engravings of which hung on the wall3 of so many American homes (in the North, of course!) until changing tastes in pictures-for-the-ho-relegated them to the attic. Nearly as famous as this picture was Darley's "Dahl-gren- 's Cavalry Charge at Fred-ericksburg" which attracted uni-versal admiration when it was exhibited at the Paris exhibition in 1867. Darley was already well known abroad by that time, for he had visited Furope in 1864 and added largely to his stock of pictures. Many of these were published in book form in 1868 under the title of "Sketches Abroad with Pen and Pencil." His water - color "Street Scene in Rome" was one of the outstanding canvases at the Centennial exposition in Phil-adelphia in 1876 which proved, for once at least, that a prophet is not without honor in his own country! But for all. the fame that he won as a painter, Darley re-mained a great illustrator to the last. In 1886 he produced a not-able series of drawings to illus-trate Shakespeare's plays. Then two years later death stayed his hands. He died in Claymont, Del., on March 27, 1888. "Painting of scenes from com-mon life is of late appearance in America," observes Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., in the chapter devoted to "Genre Painting be-fore the Civil war" in the "The American Spirit in Art" (Yale University Press "Chronicles of America"), "The interest which our forefathers felt in themselves was not extended to their social and business relations. Appar-ently they were too busy doing, to observe themselves in action. Even the early illustrators, bar-ring a few political cartoonists, avoided genre at a moment when England and France were leaving the fullest and ablest records of their everyday affairs... The glo-- j v Ichabod Crane's School. again he was the only conceiv-able American illustrator of the broad humor and melodrama of Charles Dickens. Though later American illustrators have sur-passed him at certain points, he still remains the most universal illustrator we have produced.' ". . . The slight but telling touch of antiquarianism is characteris tic in Darley in historical illus tration. His broader humor is well exemplified in the vignette for Whittier's 'Cobbler Keezar published in 'New England Bal-lads' in 1870. Such a thing looks simple and even obvious, but such simplicity rests upon the most thorough preparation, as Darley's innumerable trial-drawin-and sketchbook notes attest. . .He was eclipsed in his later years by the new genera-tion of illustrators, but in a larger sense he left no successors." Great as an illustrator and lith-ographer, Darley had still an-other claim to distinction, in that he "naturally turned his I artist determined to is his life work. commission was to i number of humorous r a Philadelpnia publish-j- e. Darley was a keen ob-- t human life and his humorous situ-- 'i in telling jokes without sade him popular with who began watching "'wings. In this respect ' Z bst of a scho1 of 'J American pictorial which was to include ;'.E.WKemble, A. B. aver Herford and some nojern cartoonists. a Crane" Comes to Life. Darley moved to New ;? too years later the !, ,Union invited him Washington Irving's ' wrrtmgs. He prepared ;J Jagns, one depicting Van Winkle.. ;,fr "The Legend of fr; In the latter Lor! f?f the first time school teach- - ft? Crane, come to IS1?,33 delighted f ts in Irving's stories E?s ,ase interest i CtL rk and although E at took pS.and estab- - Morfe, J?ade outline PPared simiiar U-- Sylvester 'ibojfi. 9?e erest- - hadnM7, Slnce the NteSf-- P0555 more hS frstnyofhis ven ough f bU 0, hHawthrne's HyTl not or-- i! P ed when he &bished m 0 r e f"IchT!; and' as 0,C "Le Am time romantic hero, color and some in black and white, generally employing what is known as the aquarelle method in his work. He was one of the original members of the Ameri-can Society of Painters in Water Colors and a member of the Art-ists Fund Society of New York. In 1852 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. A Pictorial Historian. Of greatest interest to Ameri-cans of a later generation are his pictures of historical scenes. In these he covered the whole sweep of American history from Co-lonial days down to his own time. One of his most famous pictures is that of the wedding procession as described in Longfellow's "The Courtship of Miles Stand-ish- " which appeared in 1859. Noteworthy, too, were his paint-ings depicting scenes in the Rev-olution. They included such pic-tures as "The First Blow for Liberty," which shows a group of patriots firing from behind a stone wall at the British red-coats as they retreat from Lex-ington; "Washington at the Bat-tle of Monmouth"; and his stir-ring "Wyoming Valley Mas-sacre," showing an attack b y Iroquois Indians on settlers in New York and Pennsylvania dur-ing those dreadful days, made memorable by the romances of Harold Frederic, Robert W. Cham-bers and Walter D. Edmonds. Better known, perhaps, than any of these Revolutionary war pictures are those which Darley made commemorating the hard-ships and heroism of the emi-grants across the great plains of the West. Although idealized in some respects, yet it is prob-able that no other artist has come as near to depicting faithfully those days of the "covered wag-on" as did Darley. One of his pictures, "Emigrants Attacked by Indians," was among the four ordered by Prince Napoleon when Darley's reputation kad spread across the sea and it is often reproduced in books dealing with life on the western frontier as typifying that romantic era in our history. The next period in history which engaged Darley's atten-tion was the Civil war and he made many pictures descriptive of its outstanding incidents. Of """ """"""" """" 4 ""l'""? ''rf-- fv - 'kjkl ; - mji . j I f ' J , ... ...,; . . J ' Last Letter From Home. The Dying Soldier-T- he ries of the style (in America) were not painting at all but in the -- lustration copious and always exedknt of . O. C. Darley. A Versatile Genius. And elsewhere in the same vol-ume are frequent references as for ex this versatile genius, hand now and then to caricature. We find him in young Donald G. Mitchell's 'Lorgnette' gently sat-irizing New York's excessive lion-worsh- ip of the Hungarian ref-ugees of the revolution of 1848. .. This is near the head of a long line of caricature dealing with the visiting or immigrant for-eigner. In due course the negro, the German, the Irishman and the Jew were to receive similar attention from our caricaturists." C Western Newspaper Union. SEEN and HEARD around the V NATIONAL GAPITALA By Carter Field V FAMOUS WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT . Washington. There Is more to the uneasiness of certain high labor officials to government fixing of minimum wages than is being made known. What some of them think about it down In their hearts would not arouse any enthusiasm if stated in plain English. It would not be good politics, and In politics a man who has become a labor leader is apt to know his way around. One objection is stated frankly. They are afraid that if the govern-ment fixes a minimum wage it will tend to become the standard wage. A good deal of publicity has been given to this. But most of it Is just talk. A good many workers suspect that the social security payroll taxes are more menacing to pay ad-vances than any governmental edict that not less than a certain amount can be paid for a definite Job In a definite place. Every once In a while there is a hint that the fixing of wages is a matter which should be left to col-lective bargaining. That comes pret-ty close to being the heart of the real objection. The same danger was realized by labor leaders dur-ing the NRA regime. Obviously if the government should eventually control all working conditions, parti-cularly hours and wages, the im-portance of union labor leaders would shrink considerably. There might even come a time when work-ers would doubt the wisdom of hav-ing highly paid union officials with liberal expense accounts. The gov-ernment would be doing the job that the unions set out to do and have been doing. There was a small contingent of the original brain trust which saw this very clearly, and welcomed the day when it would mature. They wanted all power lodged In the fed-eral government This line o f thought never triumphed. The time was not ripe for it. Moreover the election was ap-proaching and the administration did not know then that it could have been even if all the labor unions had been just as strong-ly opposed to it as they were In favor of it The point is that most of the Ohio Democrats have discovered, to their own satisfaction, that a majority of the voters In their districts are against the court packing bill; but that a majority of the Democrats In their district are for the Presi-dent Thus they are between the devil and the deep blue sea. If they vote against the President they are like-ly to be knocked off in the prima-ries by a New Dealer who charges them with having betrayed the cause of liberalism, fought our lead-er, and generally acted In a traitor-ous fashion. This, especially at the Farley machine Is apt to be very efficient In the primaries. Would Hurt Chances But If they vote for the President on the court bin, then their chances in the general elecUon are very poor indeed. Their danger there is that the general sentiment In the entire district among Republicans as well as Democrats, would beat them. If Roosevelt himself were running In 1938 the situation would bi dif-ferent. The President they still be-lieve firmly, Is simply magical as a vote getter. People would in many instances vote the straight ticket and thus the DemocraUc candidates for congress would be pulled through in most of the dis-tricts the President carried. But the President is not running. So they are frightened. They want to keep their $10,000 jobs. They like the perquisites, the feeling of Importance. Their wives like the social life of the capital. They do not want to be retired. Most of them, as a matter of fact could not earn anything like so much money at home. So they are doing their best to avoid either danger. They do not want this measure voted on in the House. And just because so many of them do not want it voted on, it probably will not be. They want the bill to stay In the senate until after the election next year, or until present interest in it dies away. But if they do have to vote against the President, the same political logic will lead them to votp for a great many more New Deal measures than perhaps they otherwise would. It would not do to put themselves forward as too strongly against the President. That is not good politics. So the President may be triumphant after all! To Rejuvenate G. O. P. There is a movement on to re-juvenate the Republican party. So far the move is rather shrouded in mystery, but a man very prominent in the last campaign unUl he was virtually shelved by Chairman John D. M. Hamilton was in Washington a few days ago explaining to some senators he knew what he was try-ing to do in aiding the movement The main point of the idea, it seems, is to organize a large num-ber of huge Republican clubs, start-ing in the big cities. When cam-paign time approaches the Idea would be for the young Republicans in these clubs to work together, in the various congressional districts and also in the states, for district and state at large delegates to the Republican National convention. Assuming success in this, the idea then would be for them to take over control of the G. O. P. or-ganization at that time, and make it a live force in the country once more. There is at least one shrewd idea in the plan, however impractical it may appear to be. This is that the backers are in agreement that they must not try to foist any choice they may develop as to the candi-date for the presidency. Not Like Old Days It's very different from the good old days, when there were bosses that were bosses. It is just a little bit Interesting, since the death of the last of them. J. Henry Roraback of Connecticut a few weeks back, that some of the young Republicans are wishing the party had a few leaders who had the brains and strategy of the old group headed by Boies Pen-rose, even if they do think the new party ought to be a little more liberal. There seems to be no personali-ties particularly in the new move-ment which Is just as well at this stage, but there are quite a few See Danger There But the dangerous germ of thought is still there. The admini-stration Intends to march on its ef-forts to straighten out the waving up and down curve of business booms and depressions. It intends to con-trol business more and more, es-pecially in the matter of plant ex-pansions. With the regulation of wages and hours, not a part of the program for the present session of congress, the regulation of business comes closer. Sooner or later may come another move. It has not even been hinted, so far, but as a matter of fact it has lots of advocates, some of them inside the New Deal breast-works. For if governmental control Is to be exercised over business in order to avoid hectic booms and gloomy depressions with the idea being to keep the curve of prosper-ity in a straight line, with no ups and downs it will become impor-tant not to have cessations of work due to labor troubles. They are apt to play hob not only with produ-ctionbearing in mind that the goal of the New Deal is to have pro-duction geared down to the capa-city of the market to consume-- but with government revenues. The millions of taxes paid to the federal government out of the an-nual profits of the steel corporation, for example, and out of personal incomes derived from dividends from that company, might conceiv-ably disappear entirely for one year due to strikes which might turn the black ink figures of that company into red. All of which has labor leaders a little perturbed as they see the start made on government regulation of wages. Ohio in Congress The Ohio delegation Is an Interest-ing example of what is happening to the President on the Supreme court enlargement bill, and on in-surgency in general It is typical of most of the delegations from states which are normally Republican, and at present have heavy Democratic majorities in the Capitol Hill con-tingents. Ohio now has 22 Democrats and only 2 Republicans in the house, although if there is such a thing any more as a "normal" majority the Buckeye state should have about 200,000 Republicans. A month ago a confidential poll was taken of these 22 Ohio Demo-crats. It showed 13 of them were against the President on the Su-preme court issue, and only 9 with him. But Just a few days ago the 22 Democrats were again polled, and this time there were 15 against the President and only 7 for him! This does not mean that the two gentlemen who originally favored the President and later decided they would have to vote against him, bad changed their own opinions about the merits or demerits of the bill. It means that they had changed their minds about what was the safer thing for them to do. gentlemen whose names are anath-ema. Head and front of this last is Herbert C. Hoover. A close runner-u- p, for no other reason apparently than that his name is considered bad medicine politically, is Ogden L. Mills of New York, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury and gen-erally branded as an arch conserv-ative. It goes without saying that John D. M. Hamilton does not rate very high with the organizers of this movement If he did they would not be planning so comprehensive a campaign to steal the organization. If they could influence Hamilton to do what they want the movement would not be necessary. Or, to put it another wayk Hamilton would be leading it e Bell Syndicate. WNU Service I WHO'S NEWS I THIS WEEK... By Lemuel F. Parfon New Income Tax Ferret. WASHINGTON. The more took It pretty hard when Prof. Roiwell Foster Ma-gi- ll became special assistant to the secretary of the treasury, to ex-plore tax-dodgi- and point out the dodgers. He was known as a conservative, and he Is a son of the distinguished Hugh Stewart Magill of Chicago, who, as president of the American Federation of Investors, is bracket-ed more with the haves than the have nots. The treat-em-roug- h crowd here wanted Harold Groves of the University of Wisconsin for the tax Job. Economic royalists are Mr. Groves' favorite clay targets. Secretary Morgenthau Insisted on bringing in Professor Magill. as an authority on federal taxation, and as a man who ought to be able to uncover hide-out- s and get-awa- In the Income tax maze. The Magill report on tax evasion spurs a drive for a general overhauling and tight-ening of the Income tax law. Presi-dent Roosevelt, in his last press conference, made It clear that the swing on e was entirely premeditated and that a congressional investigation would follow. This writer gathered, at the conference, that action would be Im-mediate and overt, possibly start-ing with the President's return from Hyde Park. , Hold-ont- a on the Magill appoint-ment are cheering the Columbia professor today. There la no Indica-tion that he pulled his punch In hla fact-findin- g Inquiry and the Presi-dent seemed to think he had enough ammunition to sink one or all of those $100,000 yachts, allegedly used for tax write-off- s. Professor Magill might be one of those "six men with a passion for anonymity" for which the President yearned when he was telling about the Brownlow report. Naturally a tax expert Isn't garlanded or spot-lighted like the politi-cians here, and that Is all right with Professor Magill who has been busier than a gopher burrowing through the treasury tax under-ground the last few months. , He Is surprisingly human for one of his profession, with nothing des-iccated or actuarial about him, and , has made a pleasant field day out of his tax evasion study. Professor Magill is forty two years old, a native of Auburn, 111. He was graduated from Dartmouth and from the University of Chicago, as a Doctor of Jurisprudence. He was a captain In the World war and began the practice of law In Chicago in 1920. He was on the University of Chi-cago faculty from 1921 to 1923 and has been with Columbia since 1924. He was adviser to the tax com-- y mission of Porto Rico In 1928 and Is the author of several Impressive, , and to the layman quite bewilder-ing, books on federal taxation. Conservatives on the Supreme court turn liberal Certain congress-men talk like sockless Jerry Simp-son and work like the Common- -. wealth Edison. The conservative Professor Magill gets a big hand on the left Past performance doesn't seem to be the guide and indicator it used to be, here in the capital. .. Social Security Advances. IT'S "Anchors Aweigh" for the security board, as the Su- - . ' preme court hands It Its clearance papers. Arthur J. Allmeyer, In the chart room, bad the course already mapped. Plans for Immediate wide extension of the scope and activi-ties of the board, In six fields, are announced. This extension will bring several additional million persons under the act. Mr. Altmeyer has burrowed in dry statistics for years, coming to the surface as director of novel govern-mental financial operations probably unprecedented in history. He is a r native of De Pere, Wis., the son of Dutch parents, an alumnus of Wisconsin university, a former sta-tistician of the Wisconsin tax com-missi-and chief statistician of the , Wisconsin industrial commission. In 1933, he was made chief of the , labor branch of the compliance dl- - vision of the NRA, and later was appointed second assistant secretary of labor. He Is the author of several books on subjects in the field of labor law and governmental ac-counting. O Consolidated News Features. WNU Service. Fish Walks on Its Tall The wahoo is a tropical game fish averaging five to six feet In length, and weighing in the neighborhood of fifty pounds. It Is a hard fighter, and very difficult to land. Hooked, it "walks on its tail" along the sur- - face of the water, as the angler tries to haul it to his boat, accord-ln- g to the curator of fishes at the Field museum. The wahoo is shaped somewhat like a mackerel. It has an extraordinary backbone with special engineering features consist-ing of a latticework of unique bones which brace the spine in such a way that the fish cannot bend its body up or down, and is extremely limit-ed in bending sideways. The scien-tific name of the fish is Acaathocy bium Petus. ' 1 |