Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

A book of taxbills 'neath the Joshua bow, One bite of bread, a jug of desert water, and Thou Beside me moaning in the Poor Hous+ Att, Poor House, thou art near enough right now. :f:f*

Some wag wrote the above. Don't know who. Must have been in the Olden Days they talk about. No poor houses any more. Many erpensive substitutes, instead. In California they are going to vote soon on a proposition to give all the unemployed over 50 years of age, $30 every Thursday. Now some wag comes out with a counter proposition-$60 every Tuesday. He says he is offering twice as much and two U"tr ro:r":.

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Everywhere people clamor for something for nothing. Wise men used to say that the easiest thing to get people to do was to vote to do nothing. Today the easiest thing is to get folks to advocate getting so,mething for nothing. Senator Carter Glass says a liberal is a man who is willing to spend other people's money. We are living in that sort of a decade, in that kind of an atmosphere. Something for nothing is a germ that spreads rapidly and is almost impossible to segregate and destroy. ***

The other day there was a convention of Governors of the various states to talk over the problems of the Governorship business. And many of them rqrorted that labor was scarce in their respective states because the workers they needed were on relief, and proposed to stay there. Early in the depression and before the relief business came to stay in this country, we used to laugh at the many funny stories that came from England. A sample was that of the reliefer in England who was offered a job, thought it over carefully,'and then declined. He said he had decided to keep his independence. We laughed then. But we're not laughing now. The threatened permanency of at least half our unemployed is a shadow that will not down. The offer of jobs won't get them off. At least it hasn't been doing it.

Relief will some *i"" ;yi"!t.,"r, back to nonpartisan local committees. It witl be done for three vital reasons: First, to take relief out of politics with which it is today saturated. Second, to save a tremendous amount of money now being wasted. Third, to get the relief money only to the deserving. *:t,&

Can't help wondering if the tragedy that has corne to the Czechs would have happened if their President

Thomas Garrigue Masaryk had lived. IIe was the best loved man in the entire world, among his own people. When he died a year ago, his funeral was a demonstration of impulsive devotion seldom ever seen. No "demand audiences" like Mister Hitler's came to pay him their final respects. Two million people lined the streets where the funeral passed. It was raining and cold, but they stood for many hours, and not a sound was heard-except sobbing. Czechs, Slavs, Germans, Jews, Freethinkers, Fascists, Democrats, Communists, rich and poor alike, united in their reverence for a truly great mans_.,, It won't be that way when Mister Hitler moves on.

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"Give a man a home and something to do, and he requires little more," said a wise man. True.. And home building is going fo.rward in grand style in this country. Nationally speaking the home building business has picked up from ocean to ocean with the passing of the war scare crisis. It had sort of flattened out for a while, but is sweeping upward again. FHA figures reached a new high just the other day.

,N< rN< * ft was one Thomas Jefferson who said: "The merchants will manage commerce better the more they are left free to manage for themselves. Agriculture, manufacture, commerce and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left the most free to individual enterprise."

On October 2+ the new Wage and Hour law passed by the last Congress, goes into effect. At this moment-its coming is attended by thousands of unanswered questions that industry has been asking in order to be able to properly comply with the law. The administrative body is going to be very, very busy for a long, Iong time. When the law was first passed it was taken for granted that only those Southern employers who paid less than 25 cents per hour or worked men over 44 hours a week, were affected. Already we realize that all industry, ever5rwhere, is afrected to some extent. The full extent will only be known as the law goes into actual practice.

The new models t -"r* "r]r, "r" rapidly coming on the market. A whole lot is going to hinge on their reception. And when I say reception, f mean on how manv of them are going to be snapped up by the American public. If they sell well and freely, every other industry will be ma- terially boosted. If they fall in any manner flat, it will be a shock.

We have come to " .i*: ;"J the motor car is the chief measuring stick of our economic condition. In 1910 a four-cylinder car of well known make cost $5,500. In 1938 you can buy an eight-cylinder car of that same make for one thousand dollars that is at least twenty times as good and valuable a car as the fifty-five hundred dollar one was. That's the big reason for the outstanding position the motor car has taken in all our lives, whether we own and drive one. or not.

>F*>k

In l9l0 an auto statistician figured that a motorist paid about $17.50 per one thousand miles o'f driving on each Ford tire. Today the cost of driving a Ford tire is reduced to about 60 cents per one thousand miles of driving.

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If we had been able to cut the cost of Government to the extent we've cut the cost of tires, wouldn't it be grand? But we haven't. Government costs have gone up as much as tires have come down. In l9l0 the per capita cost of all agencies of Government in this country was abotrt $26. Today it is about $131, not including a national debt of about forty billions, and hidden taxes of tremendous altitude also not included.

The banks of the nation are piled high with lazy money again. It is interesting to read the published bank statements in local papers and notice that most of their deposits are in the form of cash on hand and Government securities. The unemployed rolls have been decreased a little in the last few months from the low of last winter, but not a great deal. The idle men and the idle money are inseparable. Until that money goes to work, those men will be idle also.

I was reading the files of this journal the other day and in this same column in August, 1929, I found myself writing the following: "Look about you at the world, and everybody is CREATING something. Everyone is working out plans for making their business more interesting, more useful, more beneficial, to the end that more people will use their products." Couldn't very well make that statement now, could I ? And that's the trouble. That's why all that money and all those men are idle. No spirit of adventure is abroad in this land in a business way, as there was when that was written. Most folks are doing the best they can with the business they have, but there is little spreading, little that is new, little adventure into unworn pathways. THAT is what is missing. It will return. And when it does-won't it be grand?

Fills a deftnite need in the construction or renoYation of a building or a home where convenience, service and cost ale prerequisites.