V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

Hello, folks ! Yep-it's our birthday-our eleventh. ***

And it's the happiest birthday we have had for four long years because it's the first birthday in that length of time when we could look around and ahead, and confidently declare-"The world is getting better."

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This issue won't be very big, and it won't be loaded down with expensive things because we can't afrord them, but throughout its every page there will be a lilt of rejoicing, and of hope, and of faith; for the world is emerging from her long spell of depression and panic. And so is the lumber industry. The first industry to get hurt, lumber will be one of the leaders in the recovery.

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I didn't fully appreciate my book of nigger stories, "CULLUD" FUN, until recently when I began listening to a certain Southern literary gentleman with a reputation for story telling, trying to get some laughs telling darkey stories over a national radio hookup. Boy, does that man need "CULLUD" FUN !

Which reminds me of ;";J thing in the line of colored fun I have heard in some time. A friend of mine was visiting a Southern negro college and tells of seeing two young colored wolnen with books under their arms walking into the entrance. As they passed him, one of them remarked: "Susie, is you got you' Greek?"

Let us ofier a prayer ,; ;" l".rrr' of the old-fashioned book agent. I get so hopelessly sick of the sad line. of moronic "bull" that these present-day book pushers hand me when they get into my office, I could scream. Instead of that pitiful line of drivel about the special offer they have come all the way from New York to make me jrrst to get my cooperation and indorsement, I wish just once again, that a book agent would come in, spread his prospectus out on the desk in five seconds, and say, "Flere it is, Mister, a really grand set of books for seventeen dollars. cash or terms. Look 'em over, and tell me how you can get along without them." I'd love it. I'd buy the set from that sort of guy if I had to borrow the money and didn't want the books. I'm so nauseated with the other kind.

A few days since a man came in under a fake announcement of his purpose. He did not ask me if I would give him my time, or if it was the busiest day of the rnonth with me. He imposed on my intelligence with his pretense, and with his effort to soft-soap me. f wanted the books. f needed them. They were right in line with some work that I am doing. But by the time that bird had soaked up forty minutes of a very busy day I wouldn't have accepted the books as a gift. And it was only by the greatest possible control of my temper that I held back shoe-leather from him when he finally left. That sort of book selling is killing the book business, because I know that other business men must feel the same way about it that I do. When a man plainly discloses in his sales efrort that he takes me for a fool, he kills me as a prospect. And all the book sales talks I have heard for several years are based on the supposition that the prospect is thirty per cent less than half-witted. Give me an old-fashioned book agent once again.

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Ain't it grand? There's an instinctive feeling of getting-well-ness about the whole earth that seems inescapable. A lot of it is physically and economically measurable, and the rest is a something of the spirit-an improved morale, that, contrasted with the mental condition of a few short months ago, engenders enthusiasm. *:t>f

Friends returning from the East, and especially the city of New York, say that the right-about-face of public consciousness in that territory is nothing short of startling. It's like Rudyard Kipling's impressions of the Chicago packing plants, written when he made his one visit to this country years ago. He told of the fat porkers, hanging head downward and swinging in a continuous line down into the ,meat-making departments. "One minute," he said, "they were so amazingly alive, and the next minute so stunningly dead, that you could hardly believe it." ***

It's that way in the East, only in reverse. One day that part of the world was so stricken with the doldrums and so sunken in gloom, and the next minute so impressively hopeful and enthusiastic. Humans are that way. New York just typifies human nature; is just a good cross section of our whole people. The rest of the country will

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