Word: worthlessness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Worthless." Secretary Wilbur's first step was to refuse to accept Field Chief Kelley's resignation and, instead, to suspend him. Mr. Kelley, slight, grey-haired, softspoken, has been a Federal employe for 25 years. Secretary Wilbur denounced his charges as "reckless and false," called him a "clerk." While Field Chief Kelley talked only of oil land sales, Secretary Wilbur confused the issue by talking chiefly of oil leases, none of which have been granted under the Hoover conservation policy. As to sales he said: "These oil shale lands aren't worth anything now. You couldn't sell a strip...
...Kelley's charges, as revealed by his World articles, was that the Department of the Interior, under heavy political pressure, had backed down on its interpretation of the mining laws so far as to validate worthless land claims of oil companies in Colorado. Under the old law a locator could secure full title to a 160-acre tract from the U. S. by paying $2.50 per acre, spending $100 per year on "development," proving substantially that he had discovered oil (or mineral) on his land. In 1920 Congress passed an act which substituted leasing for sale of public oil land...
...Worthless? Because no cheap method has yet been devised for extracting oil from the tough dark shale of Colorado, geologists estimate the production cost of such oil at $3 per barrel, as compared with current petroleum prices of $1 per barrel. Oil companies with foresight, however, have bought up Colorado shale land from original prospectors on the theory that eventually a cheap extraction process will be found. Denver records show the following holdings: Standard Oil of New Jersey, 20,000 acres; Union of California, 18,000; Continental, 10,000; Texas, 10,000; Prairie, 7,000; Deep Rock, 4,000; Pure...
...Standing) 44. At that point she ran away from home, letting it be understood that she had taken her life. In Act II-17 years later-she still looks 23, younger than her daughter to whom she returns incognito and from whom she steals the affections of a worthless young man. Then she disappears, reappears- in Act III-an octogenarian, a little tired, but still looking 23. Her doddering husband dies in her arms, she dies out of sympathy. The nurse (Haidee Wright), having evidently wished on the necklace for eternal life, survives. Only in the second act does...
Says he: Publishers Simon & Schuster have most successfully developed the art of "panicking" the public into buying their books-books often intrinsically worthless. Says Critic Notch: "Anyone who reads Trader Horn at a distance of years sees it for what it is: senile drivel touched up with loving skill by a third-rate novelist." Notch attacks the Book Clubs: "The intellectual appeal of the Book Clubs is simple, frank-and dishonest. . . . Here [in having well-known critics select the books] is a calculated misunderstanding of the critic's function: which is to produce good literature...