V.sabond Editorials

Bv JacL Dionne

What a place of refuge from the heat the banks have been this past summer. You could feel the chill the minute you walked in! And when you walked out? Boy!

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There is a good one going the rounds about the banker who, up to four months ago, used an ear trumpet to hear. Last spring he sold the ear trumpet.

You can't even borrow lt"l"r.* oklahoma on an oklahoma guarantee, any more. You know what an Oklahoma guarantee is, don't you? "If I don't pay you I'm a Soand-So."

And then there was " ;";": man who was convicted of an insanity charge by a unanimous vote of the jurors. He had tried to borrow money at a bank on his open note.

Somebody's kidding ,":";"1 Every day the Government issues a warning through some mouthpiece that credit has got to be extended to the American public by the banks. And they tell me that the bank examiners say to the banks-"Tighten up !" just like they were doing a year ago. Just what IS the sitcheyashun, anyway? ![/ho's fooling who? And why?

For many rnonths I n"J " ,"a ., fun telling the story of the deaf guy who was told he would get his hearing back if he would quit drinkinB, and he refused because he said he liked the things he drank better than he did the things he heard. And along came Samuel G. Blythe and told it in a recent Saturday Evening.Post article.

Looks like we can't all "*i" * *rrnrn ten minutes time I talked to two highly intelligent men. One said-"If Henry Ford doesn't sign the Code I'll never buy another of his cars." The other said-"If I were in the market for a car I'd buy a Ford even though I didn't want one, because Ford is the only man with intestines enough to get out in the open and fight this effort to put union labor in control of industry."

Arthur Brisbane, world's most noted editor, says that the American Federation of Labor has adopted NRA as one of its departments.

General Johnson, in a recent address, declared that the impression that the NRA has surrendered to organized labor was "engendered largely by the defection of a misguided assistant." Well, General, that "misguided assistant" must certainly have been a most plausible person. A whole swarm of outstanding editors besides Brisbane seem to have come to the same conclusion. And they base their opinions on specific instances rather than glittering generalities. rve tried hard to put ;y i-Jr"".ro" of NRA into concrete terms. I couldn't quite make it. The other day a friend of mine did it for me. He is one of the brainiest men I ever knew. So I asked him his impression, and he said: "It has me in a daze. My mind tries in vain to understand it. My reason fails to comprehend it. Yet in some fashion, past my understanding, I have a blind faith that it will succeed. So blindly yet hopefully I play 'follow the leader'."

General Johnson devoted a considerable portion of this particular address to lauding his old boss, Barney BaruchThere seems to be some slight difference of opinion on THAT subject, too, I judge from what I read lately.

I printed the "Favorrr" ,arr/ of the darkey who got his working hours reduced and his pay raised and who wanted to know who started the "Nigger Relief Association." Ten days later some bird stole the story verbatim from this paper and sent it all over the world via,Associated Press without giving us a bit of credit, although he took it word for word. People just ain't honest no more !

But NRA doesn't "r*"j;"Jwhat the darkey thought. In our neighborhood there is a gasoline station that used to employ two colored men at car washing. They had a flourishing business. The price was fifty cents a car. The darkies got eight or nine dollars a week. But they were eating. The local NRA came along and the boss signed up. He had to raise the darkies' pay to $14, and the price of car washing to one dollar. So he raised the pay of one man, and laid the other off. At the end of a week he laid off the second one. No one would pay a dollar for car washing. The car washing business at that station has simply disappeared. Two darkies are out of jobs.

Yet how completely the philosophy of NRA is misunderstood even by many who are working hard to put it over. As an example: well-meaning people in the movie industry are putting out attractive "shorts" to boost NRA. Right now in every movie they are showing one that pictures a young song writer trying to write an NRA song, with a vision of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson to aid him. He asks them to explain NRA to hirn, and George Washington replies: ,.ft would divide the available employment among a greater number of workers and give every man a living wage."

But that was the exact philosophy of Share-the-Work a year ago, and NOT that of NRA as I understand it. I made numerous addresses in favor of the Share-the-Work movement. That movement said to the employer: ,,If business falls off, do not lay off men, but cut down time and divide the available employment and income between all your crew, thus giving them all a chance to eat." We said to industry, "If your business falls off ZS per cent. instead of laying oft 25 per cent of your employees, reduce their time and their pay 25 per cent (unless that falls below a living wage) and keep all your people employed and off the streets." Share-the-Work did NOT increase the expense of the employer. It simply spread the belief that it was better for 100 men to get $80 a month, than for 80 men to get $100 a month, while the other 20 walked the streets hunting jobs that could not be found.

NRA asks no question as to available employment or income. It says to the employer, "Cut down working hours, employ more people, and raise wages.,' It tells the employer that this will increase his cost, and that sacrifice on his part is required, but that in the end the nation will be rescued by the increased buying power that will be created by putting people to work, and they will be able to buy from him at the necessarily increased prices. There is really NOT a very close relationship between Share-the-Work and NRA philosophies. The first was an emergency effort to keep unemployed people off the streets, and called for sacrifice by employee and employer. The second is a tremendous and daring effort to break the chains of depression by an arbitrary effort to create employment and buying n"l"t; *

I like the things my old lumber friend, Jesse Jones, is doing and saying better than I do the emanations of any other Roosevelt aide. He has a mind that works like a Corliss engine. When he speaks, he says something.prac_ tical. Ife is essentially a practical man. Theories do not appeal to him like a tried and proven fact.

The "brain trust" ," r".U" t'rl of afr"orists, economists, and such like. Jesse Jones knows business, knows finance, knows industry, and knows men. He is a self-made man. ff he went broke today through some general cataclysm he would have it all back again in no time. He knows how. The average economist would starve to death in the midst of plenty' ,f * ,(

Jones says NRA won't work unless we get money and (Continued on Page 10)