V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

Some of my readers may have suspected by this time that I'm not entirely a New Dealer when it comes to assuming that the old order of things were, all lousy and we're taking up a new way of living, and thinking, and doing it on a permanent basis. In the words of the Apostle (I forget which one) that's all mush. Whenever we get into trouble we get those phoney ideas; and when we get well we forget them. The world's been getting better fast. The last generation has seen a finer world to live in, a higher philosophy of living, more fellowship, more tolerance, much sympathy between man and man, a better understanding, and a rnore admirable social arrangement all around than the world ever knew before. All this "social revolution" talk is the bunk, and ought to be deleted. There's a red tinge to every word of it, I don't care who utters it.

The law of the ,r.-r*,"1 ri; fittest is going to go on as it always has. It's as imperishable as the law of gravity. And, the law of supply and demand is going to con' tinue to rule business and economics as it always has, and no silly, modernistic effort at repeal is going to last long enough to have its picture took. The only way to beat the law of gravity is to stay put. The only way to beat the law of the survival of the fittest, is to build oneself more fit. And, the only way to beat the law of supply and demand is to commit suicide and get out of the picture' *

I don't want to see cornpetition eliminated. I don't want to see industry regimented. I don't want to see human ingenuity worth any less of a premium than it has for the past generation. I want to see the man who can think, and do, and work, and produce better than the other fellow, get the gravy. I want to see him tolerant of the weaker man, and help find a place for him in the picture. And, this he has been doing during the past generation more than ever before. But I object to having this great nation with its innate love of brains, and virility, and efficiency, and usefulness put under any plan or way of living that will rnake those characteristics less valuable than they have been in the past. We're never going to plant the people of this country in even rows like corn, the weak and the strong, the active and the inactive, the useful and the useless-all gauged alike.

This depression is getting over. It will pass in spite of anything that can be done to prevent it. And, when it ends, we are going into a glorious era of thinking, and hustling, and producing, and selling the like of which w6s never known before. "Social revolution" my eye! When anyone pulls that sad bull on you, just say to him: "Go to work, you sorry rascal, and forget it."

**+

Whenever I hear or read the opinion that human invention and the "machine age" has put millions of people out of work and created the present economic depression, I feel that I have just met one more man with an atrophied brain.

*rF,f

What a pitiful thing it is to believe that because we have slipped into the trough of a business wave again, human ingenuity must cease, human brains must cease to function inventively and creatively, and we must go back to raising our own food, spinning our own clothes, and living Chinese fashion from now on. Surely, in all God's creation, nothing could be farther from the truth.

***

Human invention hasn't really gotten well started yet. All worth-while invention brings benefit to the human race; and only the man who cannot see the forest for the treesthinks otherwise.

***

I like to think that I live in a world and in a land where the glorious conceptions of the productive mind of man are still in their infancy, and where generations and centuries of inventive genius of every worthy kind beckon us on to higher concepts, and greater progress.

*'t*

Human kind is so queerly constructed that whenever we get into trouble there are always men who go out seeking for the cause thereof; and such seekers always succeed in finding things that aren't there at all. We have plenty of apparently intelligent men in this country doing tbat now.

*** t*{.

"Mass production is the cause of all our troubles," they would have us believe. But they fail to explain why it was that we had long and terrific depressions in this country before mass production began.

And, naturally follows the cry "there never will again be sufEcient gmployment for everybody because of the machines." But whenever I hear that opinion I look for the axe the fellow has to grind. There are always axes to be ground when such false philosophies appear.

I am more and more """"r*"U that when we finally get rid of this depression it will be because we have ali found more to do, and have begun working harder than we have worked in years. 'We're going to WORK ourselves out of this depression, rny friends, not LOAF ourselves out.

Some of these days *:'rJ gJi'g ,o wake up and find that such philosophy as "scrap your modern machinery, cut down your working hours and raise wages to the 'nth degree" will be sufficient qualification to get into any first class insane asylum. ***

You could fiU this entire volume with provable examples of what modern inventive genius and the machine age has done to CREATE JOBS. I venture to say that you can take from the prophets of evil who furnish us with their depressing propaganda a dozen of their most impressive examples of what machines have done to put men OUT of work; and check their added total against the number of men that the MOTOR CAR and OIL industries alone have CREATED JOBS FOR, and it will be found that these industries have more than ofiset all the combined genuine losses in other lines that can be substantiated. More than all of them put together !

The motor car industr; ,:, l"**, and wagon making on the bum; and employs a hundred men where those industries employed one. ,< >f >k

Gasoline and oil succeeded oats and hay for fuel for transportation and put more men to work and more money in circulation than the hay and oats business ever dreamed of. ***

The spinning machine succeeded the hand spinning wheel. "The Old Spinning Wheel" is a mighty pretty ballad. But the spinning machine put hundreds of thousands of additional people to work.

There are probably t"r, tiriur*", -"rry people employed in the production of materials and manufacture and distribution of clothing today as there were.a generation ago, because of the mechanical marvels developed in machine cloth-making. The day of the Sunday frock and the everyday frock, the Sunday suit and the everyday suit, went with hand weaving. And, so it is with shoes, and hats, and wearing apparel of all sorts. Machines did that.

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