Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

"Corn prices highest in a decade due to drought scarcity," say newspaper headlines. And we have paid our farmers fabulous sums NOT to raise it. Back in the old Bible days God told His children to build great storehouses and in years of plenty to raise all the food possible and store it against the lean years to come. THAT scheme worked. But, of course, He was just an old-fashioned God, even pre-dated the "horse-and-buggy" days. That sort of advice would hardly be acceptable now.

"TIME" magazine,"fa"i f"lrff blasting a poor tittte siily movie woman by printing almost unbelievable excerpts from her diary, remarked that the destruction of diaries had become a sudden epidemic in Hollywood. Not really?

I knew that since the talkies came in an army of teachers had been laboriously drilling the art of speaking English into most of those alleged actors and actresses, but I had no idea that many of them had learned to write, too. Anyway, we know one who wishes she hadn't.

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"There are things in the breast of mankind Which are best in darkness and decency hid, For you never can tell When you've opened a hell How soon you can put back the lid." (Kipling) of course I've had an"*ruJrrarl.l experience in my own publications that "ADVERTISING AGE" speaks about. I've had people who didn't spend a dime a year with me raise unshirted Hades because some advertiser-without whose business I would have to suspend publication, perhaps-used some copy apparently reflecting on the nonadvertising protestant. With deep chortles of mirth I have had to remark to the protestor: "Mister, I'm sorry, but I am one of those weak humans who has to eat and, while you are furnishing me no grub, the other fellow is, so I not only stand for his copy-I am grateful for the opportunity of running it."

"ADVERTISING AGJ' .lo."l .n", lumbermen do a lot of worrying over disparaging remarks concerning lumber in the advertising copy of other folks, and suggests that lumber do some advertising itself, instead of worrying about what other people say. "Why not come into the park instead of looking through knot-holes?" asks the editor.

The question IS a reasonable one, and the suggestion pertinent. Of course lumber won't do it. Lumber is not COHESM enough to become COHERENT. I used to fuss and worry about it for many years, but not any more. Lumber SHOULD advertise, they say. On the face of it that seems a fact. But who is going to do it, and how? If you don't think that's a tough question, try and answer it.

Antilumber or anti-wr"U "U""*tsing is invariably done by some one or some group which is in a position to talk about a definite product and to market it wherever the advertising is read. fn lumber the various species are all directly competitive; none of them sells nationally with the possible exception of Red Cedar Shingles, and to group them all together and talk about "just wood" is a plain waste of money. "Lumber should advertise." O. K. But I'll admit I could never figure just how it can be done generally or nationally.

If I had devoted tfru "l-J "lo.rn, of time, effort, and