Vagabond Editorials

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Chas. F. Kettering, Vice Priesident of General Motors, has been saying and writing some fine truths of late. He says, 'for one thing, that a lot of executives have become separated frorn their jobs by too much glittering furniture and office equipment, too many secretaries and yes-men, and he predicts that from now on they'll get closer to their jobs, like executives used to be. I guess Mr. Kettering means that they've been like the colored brother who said he thought_he COULD catch up with his work but he hated to get that close to it.

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In an article in The Saturday Evening Post Mr. Kettering says that the hope of business is in progress, change, new developme'nts, new processes, and that a business thit closes its mind to these things is like a tree that says to itself, "there is no use of my putting on new leaves this year; I am strong enough as it is; there is no use of rny going through all this again." We all know what would happen to that tree. If Mr. Kettering had been thinking of and shooting right AT the lumber industry, he couldn't have hit a surer mark. For, when vy'e start climbing the hill again, this industry more than any other great industry, must seek the road that Mr. Kettering po,ints o'ut"or else," as the slang phrase goes.

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General Moto,rs, with which Mr. Kettering is importantly associated, is making the greatest sales effort, the greatest advertising efrort, the greatest research effort in its history. If it had, for the past three years, followed the exanoples of many other industries, it would have been down, out, and almost forgotten right now. A fine lesson it teaches the rest of us.

While most busin"r, ,J ":"J the ax in alt its departments, operations, and activities, General Motors is using CONSTRUCTIVE tools instead. An ax is a fine thing for tearing down, but who ever heard of BUILDING with one?

I must have a single **O *r*, and a mighty weak one at that. For to me a general sales tax is the only sensible and equitable tax; and I have never heard or read a single argument against it that seemed to me to savor of the faintest intelligence. So that's how I stand on this taxation thing.

"How do you stand on a lumber tariff?" asks a friend of mine. I guess he thinks I won't answer. Foolish friend ! The tariff is to every man what it means to his own pocketbook. Some of the rnost brilliant men I know say we will never know prosperity until we kill the high tariff, and make it possible for other nations to buy our goods and pay for same with THEIR goods. And then other brilliant men reply "Piffle" and other insulting things, and can prove to me that the exact opposite is the truttr. ***

My sawmill friends in Washington and Oregon want a lumber tariff to cut down their Canadian competition from British Columbia. My sawmill friends in the NorthMiddle-West don't want any lumber tariff on White Pine. If I lived in Washington or Oregon I would probably favor a tariff, and if I lived with my White Pine friends I would oppose one, I suppose. The only tariff I seem to be deeply interested in is one against everything that comes from Russia, and I want it a million miles high, with electrified barb-wire and tons cif broken glass scattered along the top. So that's how I stand on the tariff. Ask me another. +:F*

There is one bill before the U. S. Senate that I heartily approve of ; the Oddie amendment to the Senate Revenue Bill. It proposes a 50 per cent ad valoregn tax based on American prices, on all Russian goods imported into this country. I think it our sacred duty as patriotic Americans who love our country and hope to see it endure, to keep Russia and Russian goods out of the United States, and I'rn in favor of a4y method of securing such protection. I'm in favor of it for the same reason that f would prohibit mad dogs, hydrophobia polecats, venomous reptiles, poisonous beverages, and death-dealing genns, from being shipped over our border lines. If we have to pull the whole dad-blamed lynch-pin out of our diplomatic cosmos to accomplish our purpose-I still favor it.

The manufacturers of a certain typewriter ribbon increased their sales fifty per cent since the depression started. How? By putting up their ribbo,ns in a wonderfully attractive little container that looks for all the world like a lady's vanity case. And, since most of those who purchase and select typewriter ribbons are women, the thing was easy. Wonder how we could wrap up some lumber to have that effect?

Vibrating machines are having a big slump. A few years ago they sold like wildfire. The depression? Sure! But not just like that. Hundreds of thousands of folks were using vibrating machines to reduce their fat who today are getting the same results by mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, washing the car, doing odd jobs of painting, sweeping, washing, cooking, walking, eating plain food in decent quantities-and in various other old-fashioned and honorable ways. With all due respect to the folks who made money making vibrators, and are now losing their business, the great sale of their machine testified in unmistakable terms that this country needed a panic-had to have ong, in fact.

These are strange times, my countrymen ! And we see strange sights ! Perhaps none stranger than the sight of the world's crookedest political organization-a veritable Lazarus covered with sores-sending its own dapper mouthpiec+himself 'facing trial for bankrupted integrity -to pl6ad for the liberty of a man. And that plea was made to another man who once rode at the head of a patriotic parade, heard a tremendous explosion, and rode back to find forty or rnore of his friends in a shambles of death and destruction. Justice had immediately sought and found the most dangerous anarchist in that common- wealth-a ma4 who lived only to teach, preach, and practice violence-found him guilty, and locked him up where his venom could do no further harm. To distract attention from its own deeds, that political leper of the East' carried a hippodrome to the West. What a gesture ! What a startling reflection against the intelligence of a state' and of a nation!

"From now on the young men will take charge of the affairs of the world," said a writer recently, and thought he was announcing something new and novel. Why, bless your soul, this has always been a young man's world; it always will be. Shakespeare wrote "flamlet" at 36. Lord Byron had established fame and fortune and was dead at 36. At 30 Lord Clive had conquered India. At 27 Napoleon took command of the Army of Italy. Alexander the Great had conquered the world,'sighed for more worlds to conquer, and was dead at 33. At 32 Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. At 3l Webster was holding his own with the intellectual Titans of his time, Clay, Calhoun, et al. Whether in art or literature, war or statecraft, comrnerce or industry, the great bulk of the world's best work has been done by men for whom life's shadows were still falling toward the West. Youth boldly faces the unsolved enigma of the future; age turns its face regretfully to the past.