Random Editorial Ramblings

By Jack Dionne

I met a friend the other day who inquired very anxiously and solicitously how business conditions were in California. He'd met a friend back east who had come to California, and'who finally went back home and told everyione that everything was going to the bow-wows in California, business was rotten in every line, etc., etc., etc. That's the kind of unfair stuff that gets around about this state.

Athacted by wonderful reports about the climate, living conditions, etc., in California, a world of people flock out here who have no business here, find nothing that interests them, and then go back home giving poor old California black eyes because they didn't find chunks of gold ore lying loose in the streets. Either that or they stay here and cut the price to get a job, or go into some business that didq t need them, and cut the price to get business. It's questionable which is the*worst*for California-

Los Algeles, of course, is the place that gets the biggest run of newcomers, and therefore is the much discussed and much maligned district. People flock to Los Angeles by the tens of thousands. It isn't the fault of the city, and no refection on its prosperity because there isn't an affluent position waiting with open arms for every uninvited guest that drops this way. Yet that's the way it would seem, every time someone has to wire for money enough to go back home, the town ""fnT Hades.

Poor Los Angeles gets the blame for a multitude of things that are in no wise her fault. If any other city of her size did the volume of business or bought the volume ,of goods that Los Angeles buys, that city would be rolling in prosperity. Take lumber, as a fair example. And it IS a fair example. There are numerous other lines of busi'ness in Los Angeles in, similar position. If Detroit, for in€tance, would buy the volume of lumber that Los Angeles buys, the lumbermen there would be wild with enthusiasrn. But poor old Los Angeles, buying heroically as she does, gets the reputation of being a terrible lumber market.

Why? She buys huge quantities of lumber, pays the price .;asked, and uses it for building purposes. ft isn't the fault ,of the city if the lumber market is often shot to pieces,'here. Why pick on Los Angeles? The furniture business is the same way. The city is a tremendous consumer of furniture. 'The volume she buys would delight any other city of this size. Yet the furniture business has been in dire straits tere fot years, and Los Angeles is called a rotten furniture market, when the city isn't to blame. If she buys the goods, and pays the price asked, what more can she do?

The answer, of course, is that the business situation is like the individual situation. A lot of uninvited people come to Los A4geles, and because they want to live herc, they start in business lines that are already crowded, tt€y just jump in and root hog or die for the business in sight, and they help make business rottEn by overdoing it. You probably cannot name a line of business that Los Angeles doesn't patronize at least as stoutly as in any other city of this size in America, for Los Angeles does a tremendous business in EVERYTHING. Because the folks who sell the goods don't make a reasonable profit, is not Los Angeles' fault, is it? She buys the volume, and pays the price asked. Can she do more?

No, no, my friends ! Quit putting in knocks that aren't merited. Los Angeles is in great shape. She has been in that condition for years. She will be for unnumbered years to come. Don't doubt it ! Don't copper that bet ! Don't play Los Angeles short ! If you do it will be a lot worse than bucking the stock market the last couple of years. There is going to be a solid civilization all the way from where the mountains meet the sea at Santa Monica, to where the California shore line meets the Mexican line on the south. No doubt about that in the mind of any sane man, is there?

,N. * ,r

Much fun is had concerning Los Angeles' city limits. What matter where the city ends, and the next law-making municipality begins? What matter how you divide the lines? The buying power will be the same, won't it? There will be many, many millions of people in the Los Angeles buying district before long. There are more than two millions in that district now. They are an unusually high class of people, gauging them financially, economically, mentally, and from the standpoint of buying power. They buy more, spend more money, than the people of any other district in the country. They are people who have gathered here from the whole world, and most of them brought something with them -n? .lut* came.

You can just accept it as the laws of the Medes and Persians that Los Angeles today buys more things, spends more monerz, is 2 hetter market to sell anything in, than any other population of like size in the country. Think that over, because it's true ! That population is rapidly increasing, t-he name anil fame of Califor4iq as a place to live is snreading continually, and they will continue to come, to settle down, to add to the buying power. Of course, if the n".mber of SELLERS keeps pace with the growing numbr

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