Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

"He may have been safe, as you state," says Bill, "Bgt I called him out, and he's out until It's snowin' in Hell, an' there's sand in the sea; That's the kind of an umpire I am," said he.

' That's the kind of an umpire Senator Morris Sheppard, of Texas, needs to be right now, as Chairman of the Senate Committee that's trying to keep fraud out of our lovely elections. Just before the election in Kentucky he fired a blast about how awful the thing was in that and other states. ft must have been terrific to get that quiet, conservative New Dealer that het up.

What he needs to tell the story is the superlatives they use in the moving picture business. You know the movie folks have learned to express themselves tersely and forcefully. If a picture is awful bad they just say "ft stinks." Not a pretty term, but it has'become common usage because it tells the story so well. One movie man said to another: "How is Blank's new picture?" The other one said: "It's so terrible it don't even stink." {.*rt

That's what Senator Sheppard was evidently thinking about the way Kentucky voters were being suborned. But is it surprising? Can you turn loose unheard of oodles of money and the power. that oodles of loose money carries with it, without terrific corruption? Not unless a new race has suddenly been born. Political morality has undoubtedly sunk to a new low in this nation. Corruption and cash go hand in hand. They always have. They do now. They always will. The more cash, the more corruption. And, since money is thrown about today as never before since this old world was born, the corruption holds its ratio.

{. rNi :f rF**

Senator Sheppard is no mental giant. But he's clean and he's honest. So his further remarks and acts as he digs into t-he American political boodling situation, may be watched with definite interest. He has a job that requires a lot of intestinal stability. The cash that creates corrup tion, likewise resents inquisitiveness. And unlimited cash may easily create an immovable wall.

Of coursg I think that political honor in America sank to an all-time low when the Senate, last spring, voted against making the political misuse of relief money illegal. The men who voted tfiat down will never live to forget it, I am sure. For, according to my lights, when you vote AGAINST making a thing ILLEGAL, you vote to LEGALIZE it. Or am I wrong about that?

Not all of my friends:*:" L.n-" that the lumber business is going to be as good this fall and coming winter as I have enhusiastically predicted. Which changes my opinion not in the least. And with each week that passes the evidence of improvement becomes more definite. I think we will have a swell lumber market all over this country by early winter. And, since the actual driving force of the billions of cash will then be just getting in their work in good shape, the winter should be good in spite of the closed building season in Northern territories.

You can't turn l,oose 1",*rr*s of dollars without creating a tidal wave of cash that will sweep across the country in every direction, and invade every stratum of business. It is doing it now, and the cash flow is hardly started. So far the improvement is largely psychological. It will become more physical and financial every day.

**{c f want to drive home again the thought that the last time we dumped billions of dollars into our national veins, there existed a deep crater of depression. It required a large part of those billions to bring the business and financian situation to the ground level. Today we have no such condition. The money will have tp build only from the level in which we now'find ourselves; a lsvel far above that which prevailed when we tried that other lend-spend campaign. So it will work.

It is still just pump-priming, of course. Whether it will create a fow of genuine business by the timE the money is exhausted, remains to be seen. I have no desire to discuss that phase o'f the matter. Every man has his own opinion about that. But this is pump-priming on a scale that no pump has ever known before. No gallon can is being used to prime this pump. We're detouring a whole river instead. This might be called sublimated pump-priming.

Of course I am convinced as I have always been, that taking the thumbscrews off of business and off of money owners would have done everything this lend-spend campaign can do, and more. But since we did not see fit to take off the thumbscrews and have gone ahead with the pump-priming, I fail to understand how it can possibly fail to develop again such times as we were having in the early summer of 1937; perhaps even better.

**:1.

There is going to be plenty of building, plenty of building materials will be bought and paid for, and the lumber and allied industries are going to enjoy a very brisk andI hope-profitable business.

And that's as far ", ,'ri ,"r", in the prophesying business in this issue. I heard a lumberman do some prophesying the other day though, about things that are interesting to the industry. He declared that it would not be at all surprising to him if, in the very near future, we would see a man in uniform stationed at every sawmill to see that the Federal laws are complied with. He mentioned the wage and hour law, the approaching conservation investigation by the government, and the Labor laws, as instruments that might easily bring about such a situation. He was addressing the Western Pine Association convention in San Francisco.

*rl.*

And now there is abroad in the land the pertinent query from all industry, to wit, who and what all does this new wage and hour law affect. When it was in the brewing most folks in industry took it for granted that it affected nobody but those working more than 44 hours or paying less than 25 cents. Now all sorts of opinions and predictions are emanating from Washington on the subject. Looks like ALL industry, North, East, South, and West is going to be affected, and that salary folks who were never thought of when the law was being made, are likely to come under the hour per week provision. But Washington experts are already predicting that plenty of expensive record-keeping is going into effect throughout the land the day the new law becomes operative. It is already a certainty that the wage and hour bill is going to be found wending it way into places never dreamed of when it was being framed. Wait and see.

*:1.*

The cement industry for the first six months of this year showed a heavy falling off in production and sales as compared with last year. There is a slight pick-up noticeable of late, but the cement folks are still scanning the horizon, hoping for a lot of HEAVY building to show up, that will eat up a lot of cement. Personally, I think it looks like a copper-riveted cinch that cement sales will take a considerable bulge in the next ninety days, and that the last