..MONKEY BUSINESS''

Bg Jach Dionne

Perhaps more people have heard, read, and talked of "evolution" recently than ever before in the nation's history, because of the acute and spotlighted publicity given the trial of the school teacher in Tennessee.

Because few people have the faintest idea what evolution really means, what Darwin really taught and wrote, and just how it conficts with scripture, if it does at all.

The trial in Tennessee is just another one of those peculiar slants of the human mind that makes life so interesting to the onlooker. The same tendency that burned Bruno at the stake for saying the earth was round" and that it and the other heavenly bodies actually moved through space; and that persecuted Gallileo because his'figures, facts, and telescope proved the things for which Bruno died, is the thing that started the Tennessee feast of folly.

But the only commendable thing about it is that it is probably making a whole lot of people do some sober thinking, and when you do that you have benefited mankind dirrictly.

Also, it brings up a wonderful opportunity for again discussing one of our favorite topics-Evolution in Business.

For in business, at least, every man worth while....every thinking man-must of necessity be an evolutionist.

If we ourselves make no forward steps-if we but manage to keep from falling behind-we can still be nothing else.

"Evolution"-it really means nothhg else than "coming f1e6"-3nfl it is but a perverted and extraordinarily narrow mind that limits its meaning to that of the descentor ascent if you will-of mankind. (If we started with perfect Adam, and came to our present sinful, sickly, striving state, surely "descent" is the word.)

We might indeed, to use the jargon of the controversalists, define the old time lumber yard as the "monkey" of the lumber business, and to point with pride to the modern retail building material merchant as the present day development.

Evolution of lumber-coming out of-growing up-developing.

From the thought of material came the thought of the home; from that thought came the idea of plans; and from that thought in turn the thought of BETTER PLANS; and from that the idea of informing the public about these plans and materials. Then followed--evolved if you please-the ideas of places to show plans and materials; of thoughts about the greater care of materials; and finally, after years of development there has evolved out of the "monkey-in-a tree" lumber yard of yore, the sentient, vigorous, mentally ascendant human in the full glory of his life and achievements-the modern retail building material Emporium.

Perhaps to many minds that is the "fund" that is the attractive feature of fundamentalism.

We of this industry-an industry that is so basically evolutionary-so basically progressive-must perforce align ourselves with the true "evolutionists"; not in the very limited sense accepted by the people at large of some sort of physical history of mankind, but in itsREAL sense at the natural and proper march of man to better and higher things.

And in that sense-SURE WE ARE EVOLUTIONISTS.

The same sort and spirit of lumber service that we gave the stricken city of Santa Barbara, after the earthquake, is always available to all the lumber trade of California.