V.sabond Editorials

By Jock Dionne

"What col,ors will men wear this winter?" asks a style advertisement. The answer is easy. The same colors they wore last uTinfsl-unless they dye those old suits.

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When business gets hot again around the retail yards I think we ought to adopt the stock inquiry of the attendants at these modern gasoline service stations, and say to each customer who drives in-"FILL HER UP, MISTER?"

Here's a "kick." , ** I "1""1 .n" other day from a retail lumber concern, the Kendrick & King Lumber Company, of Duncan, Oklahoma, and across the bottom of the check was plainly written these words: "WASN'T the depression Hell?" Not ISN'T, you understand, but WASN'T. I loved that!

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"There are no naked Kings," said Napoleon. "Take off their clothes and their trappings, and they are just men." .That seems to apply well to our American kings of recent years. The depression rernoved their kingly trappings, and their superiority disappeared also.

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I heard a famous artist argue once that human modesty really is nothing of the sort; it's just consciousness of imperfection, he said. If we thought our bodies were perfect, we would walk naked and unashamed; and there would be no such thing as modesty or immodesty. Which only convinced me that artists WILL argue. i***

, Do you know that the number of suicides in the United I Strt"" since the depression started exceeds by about five thousand the total number of American soldiers who were killed or died from wounds in the World War?

Do you know that *n" ;r; War cost this country ' twenty-two billion dollars; while the depression has cost many times that amount in the dwindling and shrinkage of , our national wealth, and the loss in wages and earning I power of our people?

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And the World War is over, while the depression-not nearly as bad as it was a few months ago, but a sad and serious situation yet-still goes on. In other words, this depression is a much more serious business than the World War.

Unemployment is admittedly the major problem of the depression. Also, it is the most distressing product of business collapse, and the most serious obstacle to business recovery. Today we have nearly twelve million unemployed in this country. Add their dependents, and you discover that about twenty per cent of our entire population is without means of support.

No use talking friends, there can be not the faintest hope for the return of prosperity to business until we get a lot of these men to work. It is as idle for business to hope for recovery while this cancer of unemployment is eating into the very vitals of the nation, as for a human to hope for a return of health with twenty per cent of his body paralyzed.

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We can only start rebuilding business when we start rebuilding men; and we can only start rebuilding men when we get them jobs, put them to honorable employment, let them start earning their daily bread, and thus restore their morale.

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The most vital thing that has faced this nation in a genslafisn-rnere vital than any problem of the World Waris to get as many back into living jobs as is humanly possible. We are now facing the opening of winter, a time when unemployment, with its attendant lack of food, clothing, a4d shelter is infinitely more tragic than during the summer season.

I am strong for this Share-the-Work movement that is being instituted nationally at this time through the Banking and fndustrial department of the Federal Reserve Bank System. Give it your aid, when it comes asking for assistance. ft does NOT apply in any fashion to people living on barely a subsistence wage. It simply seeks to persuade employers and employees of this nation of the wis-

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