V.gabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

If you have looked on life and found it good-then you are a success regardless of what the measuring sticks of jingling dollars, and of bungling human acclaim, may say. And many of the saddest and sorriest failures in the lexicon of life are men whose worldly goods are piled high, or whose names appear daily in the public print.

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My chief objection to theological orthodoxy is based on the fact that I can conceive of no heaven, lacking the friends of this earth.

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Let us not forget that our tomorrow's are just the fruits of our yesterday's, and what we gain next month will depend largely on the character of our plans THIS month.

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It looks like squeezing's the thing. The world raised more tomatoes than it would eat fresh or canned; so they got to squeezing the juice from them, and teaching people to drink it. And look at the tomato business now. The pineapple supply is far greater than the demand. So pine apple juice is now taking the same route as tomatoes-and with much success. Orange and grapefruit are other examples. And worse than all these-think of sauerkraut ! They created a demand out of the whole cloth for that truck. Why not tree juice to save a drooping industry? Why not? I'll bet half the trees in the country will produce better tasting juice than sauerkraut-and probably just as healthy. Who knows? Maybe the "juice of the Pine" is a sovereign cure for all human ills ! "F ir juice" may have tomato juice lashed to the mast. Why not "Redwood juice" instead of the old-timey "dago red" with restaurant meals? ***

Don't say "it can't be done." There may really be something in it. You'd have said the same thing about a lot of our other food fads a short time since. I'll bet you can make better things to eat and drink out of wood than many of the products the food faddists have foisted upon the public in the past few years. Who knows what a little experimentation might develop? Squeeze the juice out and make health drinks of them; pulverize the remaining pulp and make breakfast foods. \ll/e haven't made much of a success of makint trees into lumber. Let's eat 'em and drink'emt

It's really folly to talk about how difficult it is to sell things in these kind of times. Remember that several of the most conspicuous successes the merchandising world has ever known have been accomplished during the past three years. It's what you sell and the way you go about selling it that counts.

Or, maybe we've got to get after the public with our wood color schemes. They say, you know, that color has played a greater part in the merchandising of materials in the past five years than ever before in history. \Me've got the natural color schemes in our woods. Yellow Pine, White Pine, Red Fir, Yellow Fir, White Fir, Red Cedar, Redwood, Red Gum, Black Gum, Blue Gum, White Oak, Red Oak, and so on ad infinitum. They say the public is extremely color conscious. Let's show 'em we've got the colors to choose from.

Maybe some of .n""" :,r;..ltor," aren't entirely practical. Maybe we can't make 'em eat and drink our wood products. I say "Maybe" because f don't admit that it can't be done. But at least we can try a lot of things until . we find some n.ew ideas. That's what all the other industries do. We need to ask more questions about our own business, and stay in there and pitch until we find the answers. We 4eed Kipling's philosophy, when he says: .,f have six honest serving men, who taught me all I knew, their names are what, and why, and where, and when, and how, and who?' Let's poke our nose into our own business in the next few years, and see if we can't discover important truths there that we never suspected before.

Seeing in the immediate future the possibility of "a paint market of huge proportions," many of the big paint manufacturers of the country are bulging out right now on a big paint merchandising campaign. Yes, friends, that market of huge proportions is there. It's there for paint, and it's there for lumber and other building materials. The fellow who sees it first, and tackles it best, will get the most of it. Remember the fellow who saw Jones drowning in the river, and ran straight to Jones' employer and asked for Jones' job? "Too late," said the employer, "I just hired a man for that job." "Who could it have been?" asked the appli- cant; "I just saw Jones drowning a minute ago." "I gave it to the guy that pushed him in," replied the employer. You've got to be on the job these days.

I'm more than willing ,h; Jr"rrorr" who selts things shall get a price that gives him a decent profit; yet I cannot help offering the fervent prayer that the courtesy and eager service of depression times might survive, and continue into the more prosperous seasons that are ahead. I'll have to admit that the apparent eagerness to serve on the part of all public contacts, are very, very pleasing to my soul. ***

I love the rosy smile on that hotel clerk's mug when I appear in the door with my grip in hand. I like "Which side of the house would you prefer?" in place of the oldtimey "Please check your bag and we'll get you located later in the day." I hope that NEVER comes back. And when he says "Our rooms with bath are $2.50 or $3.00 a day, which would you like?" I could shout for joy when I think of the way that some bird used to haughtily ask five to seven dollars for that sarne cubby-hole. There are some aspects of the depression that I never want to wake from.

That's why Henry Ainsley's "I Like the Depression" made such a hit everywhere. A lot of the things that have happened appealed to most of us. Our wives and daughters tell the same story. Personally f want to see everyone make a decent profit. Without such conditions we can have no peace or happiness. But when my wife used to pay $12.50 for a hat, the entire cost of which-raw materials and workmanship combined-was never possibly more than four bits, it used to make rne hopping mad. I hope THOSE days never come back. They were never fair. ***

, Some of my friends keep saying, "We must get back to a seller's market." I say O.K.-with reservations. I don't want that smiling Hebrew lady to ever again stick my women folks for one thousand per cent profit; or anybody else in any line to get back into the hold-up game. I trust some supernal governor becornes attached positively and permanently to our business engine to keep us all from making asses of eul5slyss-and of others.

Naturally, I know "".;", nie that will happen. The pendulum will swing backwards, everyone will be working, money will be plentiful, the desire to spend will possess the human race, and all of us nachal-born Jesse James will go back into the hold-up business. Now and then a man says to me, "When this thing is all over we must all