V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

Somehow or other I can't believe that the word "holiday" will ever again hold out to me as much charm and allure as it used to do. I've found out that there are holidays and holidays-and some of them aren't really holidays at all.

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Spring is here, the grass is greening, the trees are leafing, the birds are nesting, the baseball season is opening, beer is back, and somehow or other the depression seems farther away than it has in a long, long time.

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What is depression, anyway, but a low tide that follows a high one? And what ever follows a very low tide, but a very high tide? Slowly but surely the tide is coming back in. I believe it, I feel it, I know it. And, I should addr NEED it'

A selling expert says that in the era of prosperity that will inevitably follow the depression it will become a recognized efrort in all merchandising organizations to make salesmen out of all their workers. Sure ! That's an entirely workable plan. But to make workers out of their salesmen-THAT'S the big job !

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That New York magazine that announced last year a policy of publishing no paid advertising, has gone out of business. So OUR plan of publishing just a very little paid advertising, proved best after all.

Someone asked a nationally known automobile manufacturer how the auto industry dared keep right on spending a lot of money for advertising during the past three months, in the face of conditions. His answer is a classic. He said: "If business is going to tr)ot, what difference does it make whether or not we put out some advertising money right now? and if business is coming back-as we confidently believe-we want to be out in front."

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Right in the midst of the "bank holiday" General Motors brought out a new motor car, and spent a quarter of a million dollars that week end alone, for advertising it. And that attitude helped the morale of everyone who was watching conditions-as who was not?

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They used to say that the difference between a banker and a pawnbroker was that the pawnbroker loaned his own money. Nowadays the difference is that the pawnbroker loans money. rF**

I'm afraid I will never be able to fully appreciate the business ability of the motor car industry until they quit advertising their products at a certain price "F.O.B. Somewhere Else." The assininity of quoting a price that gives the reader no information whatsoever hurts the advertiser in the rnind of every person who thinks. Why they keep it up, no man knoweth.

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When they get talking about "infation" lately, the matter is presented in such illusive fashion that I feel about like I do wheq I try to imagine the immensity and endlessness of space, a la Einstein. All I lrrow about it is that I have a burning desire to see cash in circulation in this country again. f want to get hold of enough of it to pay my debts with. I want to tear up a lot of notes that have my name signed to them. That's what rnost other men want. If they have to cut down the size of a dollar in order to enable me to do that-that's okra with me. If this be treason, make the most of it !

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Seldom do we concoct debts in dollars of one size, and repay them in dollars of exactly the same size, anyway. Sometimes we borrow a dollar that we buy with two pounds of butter, and when it comes due have to pay it with a dollar that costs four pounds of butter; and vice versa. For three years most of us have been trying to pay debls and the interest on debts. Those debts were made when certain grades and species of lumber were selling at $30'a thousand feet. \Me've been trying to get rid of those debts-or carry them-when those same lumber items are begging for buyers at $10 per thousand feet. And it's a tough game that has whittled most of us down to a thin nub. I'm entirely willing, speaking for myself, to get a chance to pay those debts with dollars of somewhere near the same size as those I borrowed. f don't want a dishonest dollar; I don't want a repudiated currency; but a little more even exchange wouldn't be bad. ***

A friend of rnine, an American who lives in Mexico, writes me expressing the hope that we will devise a dollar very soon that will buy a dollar's worth of living and hap piness in the United States, and yet sell for two pesos in Mexico, and a relative value in other parts of the world. He expresses the opinion that if we would just do that we would sell our surplus goods to the rest of the world, reduce our unemployment to a minimum, and get out of this trouble in considerable of a hurry. ***

He says that Uncle Sam used to play with John Bull and the rest of the world in an export game using gold chips. Uncle Sam cornered all the gold chips, refused to play for anything else, so the other boys, who had no gold chips but plenty of silver ones, begaq playing in a game by themselves, leaving Uncle Sam out of it. Now Johri Bull is sitting in a grand game, the sky the limit, and making plenty of money playing with the rest of the world with these silver chips, while Uncle Sam sits alone at his gold chip table, with nobody to play with. He says that with a dollar costing 3.50 pesos, none but the rich Mexicans can build with our lumber; and no American steel rnill - can compete with foreign steel mills for the sheet steel business of Mexico, for the same reason.

Tom Dreier has the right idea. He says that "unscientific tariffs rrrade by log-rolling politicians must end. There can be no security in a world where tariffs are made by amateurs governed by narrow selfishness and ignorance. The tariff question is no longer a local question. It is one that concerns all nations. Tariffs must be made by trained specialists who think in terms of what is best for the world. Is it fair to expect the men we send to Congress to design bridges or skyscrapers or ocean-going ships? We insist on having trained engineers design our ships and bridges, but apparently we see nothing silly in allowing a Congress to decide tariff questions. We might just as well let children play with giant firecrackers or bombs." To that I say "Righto!"

We put a tariff against shipments of Canadian lumber into this country a year ago, and f have seen facts and figures tending to prove that the lumber industry in this country has profited by this tariff-made exclusion of Canadian lumber. The fact that Canada immediately retaliated -as what red-blooded people would not-by cutting down her purchases of ALL commodities from the United States THREE TIMES THE AMOUNT that our tariff reduced her sales to US, enters not at all into the strange thinking of people who would tell us that tariff was a wise one. The lumber industry depends as much as any other industry on the general prosperity of the people of all this nation. And when an act is performed that prevents the sale of ONE dollar's worth of Canadian goods in THIS country, and THREE dollars'worth of American goods in CANADA-the lumber industry must in the long run be one of the chief sufferers. Yet there are people who would have us understand that this was a smart trick.

Whenever I encounter that sort of thinking I recall to mind the story of the train wreck .witness, which I have told for many years. This man testified at the inquiry into the causes of the wreck that he was walking along the railroad track where the wreck occurred, saw a train rushing headlong toward him on the same line of track frorn either direction, and turned and ran out into the middle of a plowed field from which safe place he watched the trains meet head on and pile up. The attorney for the railroad asked him: "Do you mean to tell me that you stood on that track, saw those two trains rushing at one another, realized what an awful thing was impending, and then, instead of doing something to prevent the disaster, you ran out into the field to safety and watched those trains pile up? Do f understand you to admit that?" "Yes sir," replied the witness. "But my God !" exclaimed the lawyer, "what did you THINK?" "I thought," casually replied the witness, "what a lousy railroad this is, and what a hell of a wreck they're going to have." ***

In the spring of,L929 the Federal Trade Commission began hearing testimony to discover whether or not a whitelooking pine that gfows in the State of California, and which from time immemorial has been designated and sold and used as "California White Pine" was entitled to use the term "white." With all the wisdom for which that body has become notable, the Commission decided that such use of the word "white" was wrong, deceiving to the public and injurious to competitors, and rnust NOT be used any longer in connection with this particular wood. I immediately expressed the opinion in these columns that the Commission was wrong. In the first place I figured the Commission is always wrong, and that it was safe to copper any of their bets. In the second place I object to botanical opinions governing business afrairs. Some botanist guy away back yonder decided that a pine tree that has three needle leaves is a yellow pine; and that one that has five needle leaves is a white pine. Just who gave hi.rn permission to arrive at that conclusion, deponent sayeth not. But it has been declared as a matter of truth ever since that the five needle leaf denotes the "true" white pine. t*rl.

Now the California White Pine tree is a three needle leaf affair, called by the botanists Pinus Ponderosa. Three generations ago they began cutting these trees in California, and finding that the fiber was essentially that of a pine, and that the wood was very white in color, they called it "White Pine;" and because they found it growing in California, they called it "California White Pine." Being a

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