V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

A banker told me the other day that a lg32 "millionaire" is a man who has five thousand dollars and no debts.

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Here's the way Wall Street figures financial values: Any man whose assets inventory 25 per cent of what they did three years ago has shown extraordinary financial ability; a man whose assets inventory 35 per cent is a worker of miracles;. and a man whose assets inventory 50 per cent is an infamous liar.

Three years ago ,""r, oi"rt lr, .r,ury possible occasion of their winnings. Today, with as much gusto, they boast of their losings, their debts, their Helluva fix. Reminds me of the guy that boasted of how well a straight-jacket fitted him.

Some business philosopher has remarked that the Red Flag isn't one.half the menace that the yellow fag is; the yellow flag that too many businesses have flown at their mastheads testifying to the world that they have quitlost their nerve.

I'm mighty proud rf ;" ,"r"0* folks generally. No other line of business has taken it on the chin more desperately than lumber, yet the average lumberman has his chin up, his shoulders back, and is ready to stop you on the street corner at any hour of the day or night and tell you the latest depression joke. They're rubbing salt in their own wounds, but they're taking it with a grin, God Bless 'Em !

I've liked these lurnber folks all the days of my life, but f never liked them as well as f do today. They've been shot, stabbed, poisoned, drowned, and run over by steam rollers in the last three years, but they're in there pitching, and they'll be there when this damnable situation is over, ready to help the staggering world with her problem of building for the future.

They took their liquidation earlier than most others, and they've talren their puqishment in copious quantities "through the nose" for three straight years, and they haven't whined. Most of thern ane working harder than they ever did bcfore, thinking straighter than they ever did before, and using their wits and their ingenuity to the greatest extent that Providence provided them.with same, to the end that they may help terminate these dire days by their very efrorts. * d<

Folks, the party's getting rough

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Many times of late I've heard or read where someone raised up on his hind legs and proclaimed aloud the fact that it's time to throw out the politicians, the economists, the "eminent financiers", and all the other boys with sissified ideas as to how to save the country, and let a lot of rough, tough, two-fisted, hard-riding birds take charge of things and get us out of the fix we're in.

I've been wondering for some time just how long it would take this country to arrive at that conclusion. ,f:i*

Charles Edison, son of the great Thomas, is out with a signed article in which he assails "you 'lily-livered' mariners who sit with furled sails in Snug Harbor reading weather reports from Washington and waiting for the time the seas are smooth before venturing forth; sit there until the bottom, drops out of your boat through dry rot and your cargo. distributes itself upon the bottom of the bay !"

Nice work, Charlie! (Y:r U.* a"O if I call you Charlie, do you Charlie?) I'm ready to ride with you on your remarks generally though f'm afraid f'll have to aslr you to change that boat disease from "dry" rot to some other kind. Boats DO rot, f'm told, but it isn't the "dry" kind that gets'em.

While agreeing *ith M:. *r*" and various others who are thinking and talking along the same lines, I'm afraid I'll have to let nly friend, Bill Horsley, of Seattle, with his "Royal Order of Hairy Chested Men" express my ideas along that line. His opinion that "these days, tough as they may be, will make hair grow on the chest of them as is worthy of growing hair", and that "the rest of the boys can go home because the party is over as far as they are concerned" anyway, has "done said it all" as the nigger said.

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