V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

Youngsters often say things that, coming from grown folks, would be sacrilege. One of my good friends has a six-year-old son. About a week before Christmas the youngster said to his father at dinner one evening: "Dad, who is the biggest man, Santa Claus or Jesus Christ?" "Why, Son," said the father, rather shocked, "there is no comparison; of course Jesus Christ is the biggest." The kid scratched his head thoughtfully. "Well, Dad," he said, "I guess that's all right for you, but if you don't mind I believe I'll just string along with Santa Claus." ***

According to the papers, Mary Pickford has at last decided to divorce old Doug Fairbanks. f guess she must have seen his recent moving picture, Don Juan, and decided, as I did, that he is a total loss.

And now Donald ni"r,J"tjrr"1rr, o* and makes advance threats about something the Saturday Evening Post proposes to print from the pen of General Hugh Johnson. Don't take it seriously, folks ! It's just the present head of NRA trying to bring his predecessor back into the limelight, and help him out a bit. He probably figures he'll be wanting someone to do that for him before long.

{< :F ,( rf r was encouraged o; ;" l-nr"r",or,, r was getting two weeks ago, I am doubly "high" today. I don't remember a January fifteenth when everyone seemed as optimistic and enthusiastic about the future as they do right now. The physical reports of various sorts and from all directions are tinted with brightness. ***

How these front page folks do disappear, don't they? The biblical illustration of the greatness of Joseph, and the next chapter telling of the new ruler "who knew not Joseph," is as up-to-date now as it was then.

The feeling of all thinking people seems to be that we still have some great problems on our hanCs that have got to be handled, but everything is moving so definitely in the right direction that we must be on our way.

*>k*

A man once asked a colored teamster of army mules what the initials U- S. branded on the fank of each mule meant, and the darkey replied that it meant ,,IJn Safe." It would be decidedly unsafe to try to declare just what the lumber situation is today. The dropping of price fixing from the wholesale end of the business, and the very. probable early dropping of the same from the retail end, is something of a shock that does not settle itself in a hurry. Everywhere there is a disposition to buy lumber. But the foundations have been shaken, and no one knows what "the market" is, and what the price will be two weeks from now. So the entire indr)stry is jockeying; watching, waiting, listening, and hoping. I would only say that no real harm has developed as yet, and general hopes are high. The industry is highly optimistic, and watching for the appearance of a real business rainbow.

"The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief," President Roosevelt told the houses of Congress in his message of January sth. I heartily applaud that decision. Furnishing governmental relief is like paying government pensions. It is a thing that grows, and grows, and grows ever more. A generation after the Civil War the federal pensions were growing and swelling. And, with every day that passes federal relief demands grow. Improvement of business conditions, relaxation of financial stringency, and apparent return toward normalcy and business health, affects the relief situation not at all. The thing grows and spreads. And, unless we stop it now, it will be with us always.

Getting people off relief is exactly like trying to rescue and return the feathers from a pillow that has been cut open in a gale of wind. There must be drawn a line of definite demarkation between those who are totally unemployable, and those who are not. Means must be employed for caring for those who can never work again, and have no means of support. That burden cannot be dropped or transferred. But the large majority of people now on relief must be placed on a working basis, somehow and somewhere, and the spreading of relief demands must be vastly reduced rather than ingreased. Otherwise we will soon find ourselves facing a situation much more serious than business depression.

In all times, good, bad, and indifferent (the three comnrising in all what we are pleased to term .,normal") there is a certain percentage of dependent and unemployable people. They comprise the aged, the ill, the infirm, the indigent, the crippled, etc. They used to be taken care of

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