Vagabond Editoriafs

(Continued from Page 6) working men is twenty-five cents a day. Ordinary household servants get one dollar a month, and skilled cooks get twodollarsamonth.

The tide of the New Dealer stories rises rapidly. Fully half of all the alleged funny stories going the rounds are that way. Only twice before have I heard such a flood of stories. Years ago Henry Ford and his Model-T caught the nation's story-telling fancy. Later Mae West grabbed the spotlight. But at the rate the New Dealer stories are coming along they will outnumber both those others. *+*

The alphabets have not been overlooked in this story tide. One story is about the relief administrator who wired Washington for a thousand shovels for his relief crew. Washington allegedly wired back: "All out of shovels; tell them to lean on each 'other." .:F**

But none of the New Deal stories is funnier and few of them as tellable as the o,ne that went the rounds when NRA first showed up, about the darkey who got his first taste of governmental benevolbnce, and raised his praiseful voice in appreciation of this "Niggah Relief Association."

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One of the good old hard-shell Southern Democratic nE$'spapers editorially chides Mr. Roosevelt for ,,remaining neutral" through the violence of the steel strike. I know what he means by "neutral." Like Mussolini in the Spanish War. ***

So much conjecture has arisen all over the land about Vice-President Garner leaving Washington in the thick of the Congressional melee, that I asked an old Texas friend of Garner's what he thought about it. His answer was very simple and direct. "I reckon," he said, .,that Jack got sick to his stummick." f reckon he reckoned right.

,frf* r was much disapnoir,.Ja ; ;"- highty publicized government expose of rich income tax evaders. It has proved the biggest "dud" in recent years. Nothing new, and nothing startling has been developed as this is written. The public soon went to sleep on the tiresome efiort to drag into unfavorable publicity situations, a few individuals. It has been a rather sad spectacle.

And speaking of neutrals, there seems to be some difference of opinion as to who is the most neutral in the present steel strike, Miss Perkins or John L. Lewis.

But in the midst of the;"":J cry about rich men dodg- ing taxes, the United States government issued to the public in Jung eight hundred millions of dollars worth of brand-new and entirely TAX F'REE government bonds. By so doing we furnish more and more rich men a haven of refuge against the tax collectors, and create another bulge of nearly a billion dollars in our balloonistic national debt. Thus does our government wax wroth on one side of its mouth against loss of income taxes, and then promptly proceeds to remove nearly a billion dollars of American cash from the income tax rolls. Truly the well advertised "lunatic fringe" grows broader.

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The right of an honest citizen to work and support his family, has been questioned in this nation for the first time during the last few weeks. The Governor of Pennsylvania was told that if he did not call out troops to prevent several thousand men (who lived there and worked there and had families to support) from trying to go back to their regular jobs, that tlere would be "butcheryrr 41d "massacre." And that official yielded, and called out the troops and stopped them. And there arose such a clamor from all parts of this land that he turned right about face very quickly. This nation must have spoken with tremendous force to bring such a change.

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Most men will agree stoutly with William Green, President of the Arnerican Federation of Labor, when he said on July 8th: "The violation of agreements, the seizure of public propefty, violence, riots, and uprisings, can have no place in the social, €corsmis, and industrial life of America." Too bad that statement couldn't have been made weeks ago by the government of this co'untry. It would have saved great loss, and griet and bloodshed. ***

A mighty battle looms on the Washington horizon over the proposed hour and wage regulation legislation. It is what the Saturday Evening Post calls "madhouse legislation." "Nation's Business" says of it: "It brings about an industrial rwolution, the swing from written law to law by political appointees. Its counterpart is to be found in the nationalization of wages and hours as in Italy, Germany, and Russia." And of course the boys who want to see politics get a death grip on business, already contemplate further regulations that woulll inevitably come, such as regulating rates of profit, and certainly price fixing. It puts industry generally into the hands of a group of five men with life and death powers, and they responsible only to the President. Even General Hugh Johnso,n says that NRA was only a Little Red Riding Hood compared to this Big Bad Wolf.