Vagabond Editorials

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Well, I got my wishl Remember I wished that a Man from Mars might come down here and whisper to Mr. Roosevelt that the business people of this corinfiy are a wee bit down in the mouth, and that if he would get on the radio and clear away the clouds that seem hovering over them, it might get us a whole lot better winter than'the one in prospect?

Well, it happened. "TIME' says that when he got back from the Pacific trip, he heard a lot about business and industry having turned sour on the New Deal and he didn't believe a word of it. So he sent out a couple of good reliable reporters, one of them Raymond Moley, and told them to go talk to the business boys and see how they stood.

His reporters got so excited at what they heard every time they stuck an ear close to a business man's conversation that he had to buy them motorcycles to rnake better time. And, they told him that what he had heard rumored was not the half of it; that business was frightened, jumpy, critical, and desperately in need of reassurance, and that the reason why business had been slowing up through the summer was this mental condition.

So Mr. Roosevelt got right to his radio and made a talk. It wasn't one of his old-timey talks, though. Not at all. The same charming voice, the same well-chosen words, the same delightfully assorted phrases. But the old element of frankness wasn't there. ***

What did he say? Well, Will Rogers summed it up pretty well when he said that business asked Mr. Roosevelt a lot of questions, and Mr. Roosevelt answered, "Why should I tell you?" Only Will thought it was funny, and most business folks haven't appreciated the humor of it.

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There WAS some effort at reassurance, of a very general character, and that was helpful. But the questions business and industry have been asking have not yet been answered.

Well, come to think of it, what business is it of business folks anyway? All they have to do is furnish jobs for the unernployed-if they are ever furnished; and pay the.bills of the recovery efforts-if they are ever paid. That's all. {. {3 rS

It[/e have heard much of "freedom" and "liberty" lately.

It would be well to remind all these who would lay down rules regarding what liberty is, of the words of Brand Whitlock: "When you define LIBERTY you limit it; and when you limit it you DESTROY it." There is no truer statement than that in all of Holy Writ. And, no statement that we could keep in mind to better advantage right now. Laying down rules of freedom is ranging far afield from all that freedom stands for. * {<

In a certain city that I know of, the Rotary Club recently appointed a Fellowship Committee and instructed them to go out and call on the members at their places of business. They called-or attempted to call-on the head of a factory whose employes were on strike. The strike pickets stopped them, asked their business, and told them they couldn't go in. The Fellowship Committee said, "You must not have understood; we are the Fellowship Committee of the local Rotary Club and we want to make a fellowship call on a member of the Club." The spokesman for the pickets said, "And, you must not have understood us; you can't go in." And, they didn't. The Rotary Club bulletin wrote up the affair under the title: "My Country 'tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty?"

11 -Ply Doors Used in Penthouse

The beautiful 11-ply hardwood doors furnished by Davis Hardwood Co., San Francisco, for the panorama penthouse on the roof of O'Connor-Moffatt's department store in San Francisco, are getting a big share of attention from the crowds that are daily visiting the house.

An article in a recent issue of the San Francisco Chronicle describing these doors said in part:

"All the skill of long experienced fancy woodcrafters has gone into the fashioning of woods from a dozen countries to create these ll-ply doors of Zebra wood from South :\merica, Oriental walnut from Australia, mahogany from the Philippines, rosewood from Africa, grained timber from the Sandwich Islands, from the East Indies and from India.

' "fn the elaborate Davis plant at Bay and Mason streets, these exotic woods were carefully treated, thinned, taped together with the grain made to run crosswise to add strength, while painstakingly matched to suit the vagaries of artistry.

"This type of construction is the invention of the Davis Hardwood Co., specialists in artistic wood finishing.

"Not even the door Bill Davis made for the Emperor of Japan, for which a special baftleship was sent to San Francisco-and which is now in the Emperorrs palace<an.be considered a finer example of woodcraft than these doors."