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Show WHO'S ifV? NEWS TH1S T WEEK iiissMiiiMdM'iMAi-l I By LEMUEL F. PARTON Consolidated Featurea WNU Feature!. NEW YORK -A few years ago, Thomas Alva Edison offered Dr. George Washington Carver, the Negro scientist. $100,000 a year to Ex-Slave Budding oratory and Bulwark Against carry through ci . . . Mr. Edison's Slavery by Axt, researcn ta the making of synthetic rubber. Dr. Carver refused. He said he had too much to do on his peanut research, re-search, and wrote: "God didn't charge for his work in making peanuts pea-nuts grow, so I won't charge for mine." Dr. Carver, at 78, now Joins the experimental laboratories of the Ford Motor company at Detroit. It was in 1938 that Henry Ford visited Dr. Carver at Tuskegce institute, and thpv sine have heenme warm personal friends. Both Mr. Ford and Mr. Edison were deeply interested inter-ested in synthetic rubber. It is not unlikely that rubber was discussed on that 1938 visit and it is a wide open guess that Henry Ford has taken an even more timely interest in rubber and has enlisted the services of one of the greatest living authorities and skilled miracle-workers miracle-workers in plastics and synthetics the aged Dr. Carver. Dr. Carver never has patented patent-ed any of his innumerable processes, proc-esses, or gained a cent from them. They Include making peanuts a $61,000,000 crop and developing from them more than 300 saleable products, Including In-cluding not only foods, but paints, stains and linoleum. Dr. Carver was born in slavery, near Diamond Grove, Mo. He was traded for a horse, found his way into freedom, added scores of millions to the annual crop output of the South. He was 20 years old before he learned to read or write, and, with this new and prized equipment walked and worked his way to Minneapolis, Min-neapolis, Kan., and odd-jobbed his way through high school and through the Iowa State college of agriculture agricul-ture and mechanical arts. Soon after his graduation, he Joined the faculty of the above college and went to Tuskegee institute in 1896, where he is now director of the department of agricultural research. Simpson college gave him an honorary degree de-gree in science, the Royal Society of Aris oi L,onaon voiea mm memoer-ship memoer-ship and he was awarded the Spin-garn Spin-garn medal in 1923 and the Theodore Theo-dore Roosevelt medal in 1939. He is a kindly, stoop-shouldered old man, with white hair and Iron-rimmed Iron-rimmed spectacles. He is unmarried unmar-ried and deeply religious. He is apt to answer questions about his work by quotations from the Bible. REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT C. GIFFEN, commanding our navy task force,- joining the British to keep ship lanes clear and blockade Admiral Giffen Old faVI'Ski Hand at Sweeping Job in the c . r First World Sea Lane, of Foe, war Um.t the navy's oITicinl report on his performance: per-formance: "Capt. Robert C. Giffen was awarded the Navy cross for distinguished distin-guished service as commander of the USS destroyer Trippe, escorting and protecting vitally important convoys of troops and supplies, and in offensive and defensive action vigorously and unremittingly prosecuted prose-cuted against all forms of enemy naval activity." Unofficial accounts of the day went Into much more detail about the young captain's skill and courage in chasing submarines subma-rines through mlnc-strewn waters. wa-ters. Toward the end of the war, he commanded the I'SS Schley in the eastern Mrdlter-ranean. Mrdlter-ranean. In 1927, he commanded command-ed the USS Sacramento, was commended for distinguished service with the Asiatic fleet and In 1928 and 1929 commanded command-ed the destroyer division of that fleet. His other honors Includ the Victory medal, with destroyer destroy-er clasp, the Yangtze service medal and the Navy Expeditionary Expedition-ary medal. Admiral GilTen was born In Westchester, West-chester, Pa., in 1830, studied at De La Salle institute In Chicago and Notre Dame univeisity and was admitted ad-mitted to the Naval academy from Nebraska In 1903. In 1937 he took command of the USS Savannph. On the German short-wave recently, recent-ly, we heard a fake American voice telling the world that our nnvy was manned mostly by frightened youngsters young-sters who didn't know port from starboard and all of whom would be expeditiously bumped oft by Nazi subs. Admiral GifTen is an old hand at answering this kind of talk with guns. He isn't given too much to talk, expressing himself most effectively effec-tively In a chart room or on the bridge. Just in passing. It may have been this Nazi short-wave which led the Japanese to stirk out honorable neck recently. |