V.gabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Longfellow wrote something once about the fellow whose voice and manner were gentle, yet who made you feel "that the velvet scabbard held a sword of steel." He must have been related to the suave banker.I heard about. A friend of rnine says he went to this banker determined to secure a loan. The banker received him with such courtesy, such tact, such diplomacy, such friendly interest that my friend was out of the bank and two blocks up the street before he realized that he HADN'T GOT THE MONEY.

{. tli * t& * rl.

He must have possessed something of the quality that Mrs. Bess Gearhart Morrison tells about. She says they held a national hog calling contest, and a certain man was declared the national hog calling champion after many try-outs. The champion was asked to explain what it was that won hirn the championship, and he answered: "It isn't the noise I make; it's the APPEAL I put into my voice." There's a big thought there, you building salesmen.

This actually happened in a lumber office. One of the sales force came out of the "big boss"' office, and announped to the gang that he had been "on the carpet." "We'll have to get up a pot and buy the boss a new carpet at the rate we're going in there lately," remarked someone. "Nor" said someone else; "now that we're all barefoot the carpet don't wear much." .*:t* ttA real rnan," it has been said, "is glad to live, but not afraid to die." Our hearts sicken at the number of once happy and useful citizens who manifest by window-jumping and pistol-pulling that they derive no gladness from living, and have no fear of dying. **{r

Not knowing what I was going up against I sat down in a movie theatrc the other day to see a picture of Old Rome. Before I knew it I was watching ihe torture of little children, the bestial butchery of men and women, and other horrors too numerous to rnention. When I get to be President I'm going to keep these Hollywood fanatics from foisting such barbarisms on the world if I have to call out the militia. The next thing they'll be photographing detail scenes from the Spanish Inquisition. It couldn't be much worse.

***

Technocracy is the science of using foolish facts and figures to scare foolish people. Now the tide turns, and with the same vehemence with which Technocracy was indorsed for a few months, it is now being "disparaged and denied, belittled and belied." The anti-Technocrats are having a field day. That really isn't the right way, either. Technocracy is not something to be refuted and disproven. It should be treated-like any other mental disease. *** rl.

Speaking of the modern inventions that have furnished employment for worlds of people, consider sinus. And halitosis hasn't done so badly. Both of them are furnishing employment and business for thousands upon thousands of people. You never heard of either of them a few years ago. This sinus business has become a better graft than chain selling. Once they discover your sinus for you, and start digging and prodding around in that deBartment, you're on the regular contribution list for life. Every time you get the slightest cold from then on, it's five dollars a treatment for you.

'|. .* r8**

"Prosperity," says a wise man, "will not be revived on Wall Street, but on Main Street." True t And the cure for the depression will not emanate in Washington-nor from the men we send there. Every man in our law-rnaking houses is doing his best, I'm sure. They mean well. But, with no intelligent mark to shoot at, they fire wildly in the air, and hope to hit something. Some of these days it will be all over; and no man will be able to say-"I had the vision." When the disease has run its coursg we will get well. But no doctor will be due the credit.

I believe the railroads are today teeming with revolutionary ideas with regard to themselves that will in the next few years, solve their present grievious problems. There isn't a railroad executive from San Francisco to New York who hasn't definite ideas about new and interesting things that the railroads can do. The boiling down of these multitudinous opinions will result in railroad systems with everything new except the tracks. I can see it coming. Faster, better, newer, different, and infinitely more elastic service and equipment will be the answer. Five years from now will see railroading revolutionized in every possible fashion. There will be entirely different types of cars, locomotives, and other equipment, schedules will be frequent and elastic, freight rates will be low, all Pullman cars will be air conditioned and cooled (and probably all passenger cars the same way) and there will be new and still unheard-of changes in every department. These changes will come with lightning rapidity once they get started. Automobiles have improved more in the past two years than in the previous twenty. Railroads will do the same.

8**

Another thing about the truck versus the railroad is that the traveling truck becomes an itinerant huckster, buying here and selling there. That is forbidden the railroadsthank God. It rnust be forbidden likewise to railroad competition. Otherwise the railroads will have to go into the mercantile business, buying here, and selling there. How would you like that, you merchants? ***

Supposing the railroad crews were to disregard the ordinary rules of safety one-tenth as many times as does the average truck driver, do you know what would happen? So many disasters would occur that there would not be enough boards and commissions on earth to conduct half the investigations. Think it over.

:F*{<

Frank D. Chase, a nationally known architect of Chicago, addressed the American Wood Preserver's Association convention in Chicago the other day. In my judgment it was the strongest utterance the lumber industry has heard since last spring when Mr. f. N. Tate, of St. Paul, delivered a marvelous utterance on the subject_.,Is the lumber industry worth saving?" Every word Mr. Chase said should be treated with respect, and subjected to the closest scrutiny. For that reason we are devoting much of the space in this now slim publication to reprinting that entire address. It wil give you something to think about. *{.*

Boiled down, the gist of his opinion is that treated wood is the sole hope of the lumber industry. He says we should devote our entire attention to discovering how to treat wood against fire, rot, and termites. lfe assumes that this is entirely possible and practical. He says that when we learn to so treat wood, the whole building world will open wide for its use and application, for everything from build_ ing basements to sheeting skyscrapers.

And he expresses the entirely friendly but equally defin_

(Continued on page 8)

McCormick ships operate on dependable schedules direct from McCormick mills in the heart of the Northern timber country. \07hen you place your order with us, the time of arrival-and that's mighty important-is not left to guess-work. You'll know!