Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

My friend, Fred Austin, sends rne the best advertising gag of the season. He was in Chicago the other day, and was walking along Michigan Avenue when he saw a jostling, laughing crowd of people staring into a shop window. Naturally he drew near to see what it was all about. The window proved to be that of a ladies' apparel shop, and they were displaying some sort of new-fangled fixings in lingerie, adapted to the purpose of making the lady with the scrawny bust look plumpish.***

But it was not the demonstration that had the crowd in guffaws. It was the big sign that accompanied the demonstration. It was that self-same sign that you see over the door of the wayside highway. garage alf the way from San Francisco to New York, and from New Orleans to Canada, this time adapted to an entirely new cause. The sign read: WE FIX FLATS. ,ltF*

Reminds mc, for no reason at all, of the very frank and humorous answcr that a certain celebrity gave a friend of mine. The celebrity is a most decided blonde, inclining to the Harlow type of hair color. My friend said to her: "Miss So-and-So, you don't look at all like I expected you to." The blonde celebrity wanted to know why. "\ilell," said the visitor, "I thought you'd be a much older woman, and a brunette." "You were right," said the screen celebrity, with a grin, "f AM."

**:t

Business improves ! And what I mean it irnproves in no meager fashion, but by great forward thrusts. A month ago in this column f expressed the conviction that the destruction of AAA would have that immediate and measurable efrect. It seems to have accomplished that purpose already. Business seems to be better, definitely and splendidly better, in all directions. ***

The lumber business is stepping high. If all the things I read are just half facts, and all the things I hear are just half true, then we are looking into the dawn of a real building day, and a real building material market. Those reports are nation-wide, and confined to no spot, territory or lumber species. The stick of returning building interest is tarring them all.

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The return of confidence in the sacredness of property rights has more to do with the present signs of improve- ment than any one thing. The recent titanic blows that have been struck in defense of the Federal Constitution have lifted a deep pall frorn the souls of those in this country who own property. The man who owns something wants to be just as certain that he owns it and that his property rights will be protected, as he has been since 1776. And now that he is being given continual assurance that property rights retain the odor of Constitutional sanctity, he is ready to do something with that property.

All of which means *l*.b,I*ess, more emptoyment, more prosperity. There are great improvements yet to be ,rtade, but they will come. It costs approximately three times as much today to load or unload a thousand feet of lumber on the Pacific Coast as it did two years ago. Higher wages, shorter working hours, and the almost complete elimination of labor efficiency is the answer. That, of course, rnust change. It's going to take no small battle to bring it about. The law of "don't work" is a law that sinks deep into the souls of men, and eradicates slowly.

*:frt

I talked to a contractor the other day, who operates in a Soutrhern state. He told me almost the same story about his business, the huge increase in the cost of his labor, due alrriost entirely to reduced efficiency. I remember one rernark he made, as follows: "fn the old days men got to be foremen in our operations by the merit route. The man who out-worked and out-thought his fellows in the ranks, was made a foreman. I am wondering where my foremen of the future are to come from. No one tries to be conspicuous by his efrorts any more." Those things must, and will, change. There are, no doubt, innumerable industrial activities that must change from wage and salary methods of paying their rnen, to piece work, paying according to earning.

* rt ,1.

The contractor I have just quoted told'me many interesting things along this line. When men apply to him for jobs he says to them: "llere is a job that will pay you so rnuch a day; or I will give you the job on a piece-work basis, and I'll guarantee that if you work diligently you can make half again as much as I am offering you by the day." And he says he gets absolutely no takers on the piece-work offer. Those things, of course, must change. The law of leisure, the get-something-for-nothing phil-

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