Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

No matter how grouchy you're feeling, You'll find a smile more or less healing; It grows in a wreath

All around your front teeth

Thus keeping your face from congealing.

Thought of this rhyme *. .an"t day when I heard an address by a distinguished old-timey Southern Democratic attorney who is touring the South of late, talking sardonically, sarcastically, but most humorously, about present conditions as he sees them. It is not a political speech, but is made to large civic gatherings, and keeps the faces of the crowd "from congealing" in amazing fashion, The speaker himself never cracks a smile as he talks. But YOU do when you listen, you howl.

His idea is that """ rlarJr"t* "orraitiorr" are much like Jeff Thatcher's well. A stranger riding along through Kansas saw what looked like a most peculiar stone inonument standing strangely in the middle of a field. He stopped a farmer and asked what the monument was. The farmer said: "That ain't a monument. That's Jeff Thatcher's well. A cyclone came along the other day and turned it inside out and upside down." The speaker I refer to thinks that's what's happened to us.

His theme is that at i" "",r"rr] ,. ,ro* putting the lazy, the shiftless, the unintelligent and the unsuccessful on top, and beating down the frugal, the workers, the thinkers, those who do something and get somewhere. He thinks we have apparently changed our national ideals; that there is no longer reward for merit; for ingenuitl i for productiveness, for the progressiveness on which this nation was built. He thinks the debtor is favored, the creditor maligned; the man who holds a mortgage is in bad repute, while he who fails to work and pay is given relief. Owners and employers are the forgotten men, he thinks, and legislation aims to defeat his kind, and put deuces instead of aces as high cards in the deck. You might think this is a solemn theme. But this gentleman kept nine hundred men in a good old Southern city in stitches, laughing, as he related it.

Of course r particular" "";; it because r so thorough- ly agreed with him. The rest of those present seemed to do likewise. My own feeling is that the outstanding headache of these times is the thundering of men who have DONE NOTHING against the men who have DONE MUCH, and the wonderment expressed by some people that the DONE MUCHERS do not seem to enjoy it. w. J. cameron tells rr: ;;"y School publication designed to rouse a moral conscience on social and economic affairs, which recently declared that one family having more rooms in its house indicated that some other family had fewer roorns. Which is the same thought exactly that these "mal-distribution of wealth" preachers announce. "Doctrine like that," says Mr. Cameron, "is no better than economic voodooism; yet those who spread it fancy they are contributing to a better social order."

One of the current ,"rli"r-,n", I violently object to is the much-mouthed talk about the "mal-distribution" of wealth in this country, which is the juiciest text of the present-day demagogues. The theory is that the reason that Smith has so little money is because Jones has so much. So they thunder against Jones.

The same school " an"*n3 should I say thoughtlessngss!-qrsuld conclude tfiat the reason Smith is so hopelessly lazy is because Jones is so abundantly energetic; or the reason Smith has such an ugly mug is because Jones is handsome. One is just as sensible a conclusion as the other; and both as stupid as the contrast between the Smith and Jones wealth.

You would think to n; .;"- tear at this rag that they had discovered a deliberate conspiracy of injustice toward Smith and on the part of Jones. Yet, to believe that one person has less because some other person has more-that one man's success is based upon another man's failure-is economic illiteracy. It is jupt plain ignorance of all the fundamentals of economics and of life.

"IIow can we account ,", ;" l"ruu "or""u of this pitiable economic illiteracy?" asks Mr. Cameron. And he answers:

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"It seems to originate with those at either end of the economic scale who have never had the discipline of earning their own living. Earning a living is so important a part of education that those who have missed this advantage, be they idle plutocrats or idle paupers, seem to suffer the same serious psychological deficiency. As a result of meeting or avoiding this work, people seem to gravitate toward one of three circles-the creative, the contributive, or the covetous.

"The first or creative circle we cannot account for. Fortunately every generation that fows into the world brings a very large proportion of individuals possessing creative ability. We mostly hear of those who possess it in superlative degree, but creative minds are everywhere, in every countryside, village, town and city. These are the beating hearts.of the body social. They can SEE and they can DO. They may be the two obscure Wright Brothers in a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, but they work away at one of the invisible doors of a never-before-opened chamber of knowledge, they turn the lock, and by that act a thousand other locks are turned and the energies of ten thousand minds released and the whole race rushes in to possess a whole new world of aviation. You can multiply that by every field you know, and by fields as yet unknown. The miracle of unfolding life and enlarged power, always accompanied by increasing activity and real wealth, is constantly occurring. You will never hear it said in THIS circle that if one has more, another necessarily has less; those who live here know that the more anyone has, the more EVERYONE has." Thanks for that nice sermon, Mr. Cameron. rt continues: "frigher

Another false belief t, ;" n*"""a day that does much to kill human ambition and halt leadership in worth-while directions, is the belief that this machine age has killed jobs and created unemployment. I was just reading a page advertisement of the Bank of New York & Trust Company, in a business magazine. That ad says: "The increasing use of machines in industry has not destroyed jobs. It has created them. When automobiles were made virtually by hand and the price was high, few people were employed in the motor business. But as mass production methods reduced prices and expanded the market, employment increased. Today the motor industry, directly or indirectly, accounts for the employment of one person out of every six at work in this countrY."

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always followed increasing use of machines. When the United States was using $23 worth of machinery per capita, Great Britain was using only $10 worth and paying one-third the American wage. Germany was using $9 worth and paying one-fourth the American wage. China was using five cents lvorth and paying one-twentieth the American wage. It costs American industry approximately $8,000 in capital investment to buy the machinery and tools needed to provide a job for each worker. In some industries, such as railroads, the capital investment per worker is as high as $26,000. Eighteen of the major industries of today have been wholly developed since 1880. They would not be in existence except for technological advancement. Thode 18 industries today account, directly or indirectly, for the employment of one out of every four people at work in the United States."

Endless proofs of this sort may be offered to show that the machine age creates jobs and more jobs, raises wages to a poirlt never drearned of in countries where men and women work with their hands exclusively, and develops a manner and condition of living unattainable except through the machine age. ***

Take automobile tires, just for example. Twenty-five years ago a set of tires cost about $175, and would run about three thousand miles. They were hand made, and there were not many of them made. Then came mass production. Today about one-tenth of the cost of a set of tires twenty-five years ago will buy the average motorist's tires for a whole year; nearly everyone can afford to buy them, and tens of thousands of men are employed in producing, manufacturing, selling, and servicing them. Machines did that, as they did hundreds of other miracles to make life more worth living for the average man, and to CREATE JOBS.

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Human ingenuity hasn't gotten really started yet. I believe with Henry Ford-the most sensible man of the present generation of Americans-that the human race will accomplish more in the next fifty years, if given a decent chance, than it has in the last one thousand. I like to think that I live in a land where the glorious concepts of the productive mind are still in their infancy, and where generations and centuries of inventive genius of every worthy kind beckon us on to'higher ideals, and to greater Progress.

And now, just as much is being printed and said about a period of peace between government and business, and about business being encouraged in order that it may employ more men in real jobs, come two major decisions by the National Labor Relations Board that will send the heart of every employer right down into his shoes. The

Board has decided in two cases that sit-down strikes are legal and that employers who hold against sit-down strikers are in wrong and must pay.

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In California strikers invaded a plant, took forcible possession, dispossessed the owners and refused them admission, and held the plant. The Board holds these men to have been within their rghts, and orders the owners to reinstate them with all back pay. No doubt we will now see thousands of employers hurrying to put on extra men in their plants in the face of this encouragement, and sthers who own idle money will be wild in their enthusiasm to put it to work to help employ men? Truly it has been said thousands of times of late, that every time business tries to rear its head, it gets kicked in the face. Yet it is urged to invest more money, employ more men, and "take up the slack." ,t<

Along with ninety-odd per cent of all the city newspaper editors and columnists in the nation, I believe that the present depression is entirely unnecessary and could be terminated almost automatically by taking the heel of politics from the throat of business and finance. But scared capital and harassed employers will never "take up the slack." If sit-down strikes are legal, then there is no America left.