Vagabond Editorials

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A generation ago the ice business amounted to almost nothing. Look at the number of men engaged today in all ramifications of the refrigerating industry, manufacturing, selling, supplying, equipping, etc., of ice equipment of all sorts. You will find it is a huge army, working every day in the year.

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A few years ago there was no flying industry. Figure the number of men engaged today in making flying machines, selling them, servicing them, operating them. You will find another nr*u

A few years- ago there was no radio. Today there are millions of them that require manufacture, sale, service, supply, etc., and another great army of people are employed in the radio business.

Look at the automobile ! You can hardly estimate the millions upon millions of people engaged in every ramification of that tremendous industry. An army of men building the plants and their equipment; an army of technicians always at work on the creative end; the manufacture of the parts; the manufacture of the cars themselves; their transportation; their sale; their servicing; their insuring; their financing; the huge army producing and selling motor fuel and oil; you can add many others.

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Before the spinning wheel came a few thousand people were weaving by hand. Now there are millions employed in that industry.

Before the day of the type-setting machine the number of people employed in the printing business was very, very small. But perfected machinery developed the printing business, and printing began in huge volume, ten times more books and papers and magazines being printed than ever before, and ten times as many people employed in the printing industry.

Take clothing. There are probably ten times as many people engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and sale of clothing than there were a generation ago, because of the mechanical marvels developed in cloth and clothes making. The day of the Sunday frock and the everyday frock, the Sunday suit and the everyday suit, has been Iong gone. And so it is with shoes, and hats, and wearing apparel of all sorts.

No doubt this listing could be continued indefinitely. Think of the number of people engaged in manufacturing and distributing all the products of our iron and steel industries, as compared with the number employed two decades ago, etc., etc., etc.

But Mr. Technocrat selects a few conspicuous cases, such as the ditch-digging machine replacing a hundred men with picks and shovels, and others of that ilk, and overlooks the untold millions of jobs that have been created by modern machinery and mechanical and power development. Using the same conclusion as did the old sage who decided that it was "a waste of lather to shave a pig," we will drop the subject of technocracy, and pass on to sof,nething else.

Forbes, who edits a good business magazine, says that the British have begun to spend more freely on amusements and non-essentials; and he wonders if we are developing that tendency here, also? Well, bless your soul, Mr. Forbes, where have you been all the time? The attendance at wrestling matches in this country in 1932 was four times that of any previous year; we had about fifty football games this past fall that drew gates of half a million dollars each; the movie theaters are doing a rousing business everywhere; the streets are filled with millions of joy-riding automobiles and the consumption of gasoline per car is increasing i we consumed more booze during the recent holidays than ever before in our history; on every hand there are signs of light-heartedness, in spite of the depression. Wonder where Mr. Forbes has been hiding his head?

The year 1933 will witness a sanguinary battle between two very able antagonists, "soft" versus ,.hard', drinks. The determined efforts to legalize beer at once, and then proceed to gradually throw the legal shackles off of still harder beverages, has been quickly reflectd in the value loss of soft drink stocks. Advertising will be used freely when the antagonists really line up for the race. Already the soft drink owners are preparing to pick up the gage of battle that has been thrown down. In spite of the oftrepeated remark that "people drink more liquor than ever since prohibition," it is nevertheless a provable fact that soft drinks have increased in quantity consumed several hundred per cent in the past fourteen years. And the soft drink folks are going to fight for their market.

How we have impro".U, ," ane old days and from as far back as our grandfathers can remember, mankind recognized as onp of his afflictions u/trat was. called La Grippe. You had a temperature, and your bones ached, and you maybe coughed and sneezed your head off. But we have modernized. We call it The Flu now, and the new name carries with it a burden of fear that makes it much worse than it was in its original package and under its original title. For which reason it does a lot more harm. We could change the name back to Grippe and save a lot of lives every winter.

Cover up with oak or maple that old soft-wood parlor floor. For the closet, something staple, say a full length door so that Madame, so bewitchin', can inspect her lovely self. O'er the sink, out in the kitchen, build an extra handy shelf. Build a play room in the attic and a swell, glass front buffet so her friends, with glance ecstatic, may inspect her plate display. Give her something really snappy and her home with comforts fill and Friend Husband will be happy to run in and pay the bill.

State Ass'n Signs up New Members

During the past month, the following firms have taken out membership in the California Retail Lumbermen's Association: Boulevard Mill & Lumber Co., Oakland; Freedom Lumber Co., Watsonville; Hebbron Lumber Co., Santa Cruz; McElroy & Cheim, San Jose; Bay Point Lumber Co., Port Chicago; Bay City Lumber Co., Oakland; Globe Lumber Co., Ltd., Los Angeles; Glenwood Lumber Co., San Jose; Shattuck-Rugg Lumber Q6., [pl2nd; LaFayette Lumber Supply Co., LaFayette; Diamond Match Co., Maxwell; Diamond Match Co., Esparto; Diamond Match Co., Galt; Diamond Match Co., Lincoln; Diamond Match Co., Corning; Diamond Match Co., Colusa; Diamond Match Co., Gridley; Diamond Match Co., Martinez; Diamond Match Co., Live Oak, and Diamond I\fatch Co., Anderson.

The Association reports that the Diamond Match Company now have twenty-three memberships in the State Association.

Purchase Grass Valley Plant

R. N. Johnson and A. I. Brown of Sacramento have announced the purchase of the Andreotti Lnmber Yard and Mill near Grass Valley, Calif. The business rvas established by Peter Andreotti several years ago. The business rvill be operated under the natne of the Grass Valley Lumber Co. Mr. Andreotti rvill contintte in the sas'mill business.