Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

I watched them tearing a building down, A gang of men in a busy town, With a "ho-heave-ho" and a lusty yell, They swung a beam and the side wall fell.

I asked the foreman, "Are these men skilled, As the men you'd hire if you had to build?"

He gave a laugh and said, "No, indeed!

Just common labor is all I need.

I can easily wreck in a day or two, What builders have taken a year to do."

And I thought to myself as I walked away"Which of these roles have I tried to play?

Am I a builder who works with care, Measuring life by the rule and square?

Am I shaping my deeds to a well-mad.e plan, Patiently doing the best I can?

Or am f a rivrecker who.walks the town, Content with the labor of tearing down?,'

s' HarP'

The best wise-crack of the season: Wdter Winchell says that no telephone pole ever struck an automobile except in self-defense. The best piece of entertainment of the season: A funny looking Hill Billy in.,,Mountain Music', singing, "I don't care what Mama don't allow.,' It's a wo'nderful spot in an awful picture. Probably seems all the better on that accounl

Saw two terrible cases of bad casting recently. One was Clark Gable playrng "Parnell." The other was Jim Braddock trying to play the part of the Champion in the Braddock-Lewis fight pictures. Fact is, Irish Jim could have come closer to Irishman "Parnell" than Gable; and big, husky Gable might have done a better job of heavyweight fighting than Braddock. Braddock had gallant courage-and that's all. And, come to think of it, that's about all Gable had in playing "Parnell."

There are approxi-"t"; ,rr,o* retail gasoline stations in the United States today. It is probably the most overdone propositio,n in our national merchandising picture. Yet it is estimated by an automobile authority that 1,500,000 motorists ran out of gasoline on our highways last year. Just carcless folks. rfrf*

HOLC has foreclosed on about 40,000 properties to the tune of about $10O,000,000. Most of the censure that followed foreclosures was undeserved. HOLC bought up about $3,300,000,000 worth of mortgages on homes and that money went into circulation when it was badly needed. The trouble was that during that time too many people got the idea that Uncle Sam was Santa Claus, and that just because he was payrng farmers NOT to rarse necessities he surely wouldn't expect a home owner to repay his mortgage loan. A large number of the foreclosures were against people who never intended to repay the government, and didn't try.

*t'f

When it comes to salesmen par excellence, my vote goes to the guys who sell these stop and go signal lights to country towns and villages. Almost an5rwhere you go, nowadays, yotr suddenly come upon a red and green light set-up, at some intersection. There may be just a gasoline station and a garage there, but the red light holds you as long as it would on the heaviest traffic corner in New York. They're everywhere. The smallest villages have them. You will see intersections where there isn't a car an hour crossing the main highway, but the lights are there.

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And you see small towns everywhere that, not only have the stop and go lights, but also have "No Left Turn" signs with them. You look in vain for the trafhc that induced such legal determinations. What these light signal salesmen say to the village fathers should be a thing sought out by salesmen everywhere, and seriously considered, for verily, those must be master sales talks. *** w. L. clayton, tt " cottlr, itr,l, ,"."rrtly returned from a trip covering South America, reports that the production of cotton is being rapidly developed in eveqr South American country where cotton will grow; as is likewise the case in other continents. It is interesting to report what Mr. Clayton says about wages in some of those cotton growing cotrntries now directly competing with us. In the great cotton growing district of Northern Brazil the going wage for

Four million pounds of ham and bacon are now being imported every month into the United States to feed otrr bacon and ham appetites. This, lest you forget, is the country that destroyed pigs by the hundreds of thousands, and has for years past been paying cash bonuses to millions of farmers NOT to raise hogs. They've evidently been going strongly into the meat curing business in other countries since we started our peculiar type of econo'mics over here. And doing well, too.

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