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Show f BiiiyrfiTiniT i wi V rn ' il WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. Not all the news these days has to do with fighting fight-ing and contention among the nations. na-tions. On a week-end run to Wash-.... Wash-.... , ington, this Plant Wizard to w r j t e r found Brazil to Grow Brazil borrow- Goodwill Fruit in2 Waleter Tf " nyson Swingle, America's 68-year-old plant wizard, in a unique and friendly deal which obably will ring more cash registers regis-ters than would Mussolini if he swallowed all the Balkans in one gulp. Busy all over the world for 40 years or more, Mr. Swingle has created enough new wealth with his plant conjuring to build a sizable battle fleet. Brazil, getting on Uncle Sam's cuff for $120,000,000, breaks precedent among debtor nations by immediately getting busy in a long-range long-range effort to set up a favorable trade balance and get square with the export-import bank. She thinks Mr. Swingle can show her how to grow many things which we urgently urgent-ly need. Furthermore, she intends to become entirely independent of aggressor nations, not by ersatz or by a strong-arm economy, but by scientific utilization of her natural resources in soil and climate. Mr. Swingle departs for Brazil with the sanction and co-operation of the department of agriculture. His expenses ex-penses are paid by the Brazilian government. Tung oil trees, rubber and quinine will get Mr. Swingle's immediate attention. Brazil thinks that, with some expert coaching by Mr. Swingle, she can bring all these through as negotiable assets in interest or amortization day. It looks to this observer like a sunny break in the blizzard of screwball economics eco-nomics which has been sweeping over the world. The above will be just a starter. Mr. Swingle's Swin-gle's research will cover virtually virtual-ly the entire range of Brazilian agriculture and forestry. A native of Pennsylvania, a botanist, bota-nist, educated at the Kansas State agricultural college, he became an "agricultural explorer" for the Unit- T J M I J ed StateS gV" Toured World ernment in 1902 In Search of workingin near- PlantsforU.S. y ev?5y co""" try rn the world. He brought Egyptian cotton to Arizona Ari-zona and Acala cotton to California, and helped establish the date industry indus-try in the latter state. In Florida, he achieved miracles of hybridization hybridiza-tion in citrus fruits. He added immeasurably im-measurably to the knowledge of pol-lenization, pol-lenization, hopped up the seeing power of the microscope, and, in French, German, and English, wrote authoritative treatises on plant pathology, cytology, taxonomic botany bot-any and citrus propagation. His fame is widely international and he is a member of every important scientific sci-entific society in his field. A homespun American, he is as clubby as a suburban gardener, garden-er, exchanging garden lore over the back fence with his neighbor. neigh-bor. His export of ideas and seeds and cuttings has yielded vastly more goodwill and tangible tangi-ble wealth than our exports of scrap iron, and his imports have run up into billions. TWO years ago, it appeared that John Logie Baird, the mop-haired garret inventor who took the lead in British television, was running scc-ond scc-ond to other in-Sunset in-Sunset Red and ventors. The Morning Gray; postmaster gen- AStartonWay eral ruuled against him in picking the Marconi-Emi system for the British Broadcasting corporation. corpora-tion. But now his system is working work-ing in London motion picture theaters thea-ters and his representatives are here to install it in several Broadway houses. The son of a Scottish country parson, in an old tweed coat and slacks, he lived meagerly in a dark soho attic and worked with a set of carpenter's tools, a vacuum vac-uum tube and a few magnets, with no results. When he started start-ed thinking his way through a problem, he went to bed. He had been in bed a couple of weeks, when, almost despairing, he saw a red sunset through the window. That suggested a takeoff take-off from the infra-red zone of the spectrum. On February 3, 1928, he flashed a picture across the ocean, a ghost face flickering on the wall of the dark cellar of A. M. Hart, of Hartsdale, N. Y. In the old days, his trousers were patched, his hair was a brush heap, and he usually had one sock drooping. droop-ing. Now, as president of Baird Television, Ltd., he is slicked up a lot and. according to all accounts, is becoming a magnate. "Sunse' led and morning gray start the irav eler cn his way.'' ConsoliriMcd News Features. WNU Service. I |