Trying to be jocular, but Hulda, too, was depressed that Christmas. It was indeed a miserable winter. Extraordinarily cold, everywhere. For a week or two, the papers had been commenting upon it. Zero weather around New York and all out through Indiana to Chicago. A succession of gray, snowy days--gray afternoons with the twilight seeming to come in mid-afternoon. And at nearly eight o'clock in the morning it was still the twilight of dawn. The newspapers commented on that, jocularly remarking that the weather man was making our winter days very short this year. The weather, in truth, was so abnormal that it occasioned an increasing newspaper comment. Even by Christmas, Canada was enveloped by constant sub-zero temperatures, which occasionally swept down as far as Virginia with heavy snowfalls. Florida, in December, had its greatest freeze since 1888; damage to the fruit was enormous. In the West Indies, an unprecedented cool wave was experienced. Everywhere in the north temperate zone was the same. And from South America we had the reverse reports. The summer in Rio and in Buenos Aires was unusually hot. Cape Town reported an abnormal spell; Australia and New Zealand were sweltering. * * * * * For every unexplained condition of annoyance something must be blamed. In the United States some enterprising feature man gathered the information that authorities considered the radio broadcasters were responsible for the bad weather. The World Press sent it out, and it was widely used. Many persons--so it said--had addressed the Anglo-American Radio Commission and other governmental radio agencies stating that the myriads of ether waves--the "electric waves"--sent out by the broadcasting stations were the cause of the extreme weather conditions. The "ether" was disturbed, so it was claimed; who could say what dangerous floods, blizzards, torrid heat, wind storms, and icy blasts might not be caused if this radio condition were not checked? It was suggested that the world governments take action to restrict the output of broadcasters. Newspaper jealousy of us, of course! It had been growing for years, ever since those early days when we first engaged in the audible dissemination of news. Our organization now was prompt in repudiation. The Amalgamated Broadcasters Association appealed immediately to the Federated World Weather Bureaus. Within a week we were enabled to broadcast that the weather bureau physicists were emphatic in their declaration that the weather could not be blamed on radio waves. In order to affect the weather, radio would have to exert an influence on temperature, humidity or barometric pressure--which emphatically it does not do. Even in radio laboratories where the waves are most intensely produced, there never has been any such recorded effect.