Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Ahaze on the far horizon, The infinite tender sky, The ripe rich tints of the cornfields, And the wild geese soaring high. And all over upland and lowland, The charm of the golden-rod, Some of us call it AutumnBut others call it God.

Yes, sir, Autumn is with us. And Thanksgiving stares us in the face, when we sit down to the festive board to partake of that great American bird of whom the poet wrote: of course there are " ;J tJt or a-"ricans who won't have as much to be thankful for on Thinksgiving in the line of things financial as they would have had before the stock market broke, but personally speaking I'm thumbing my nose at the bulls and bears both. They didn't cost me a nickel. Not directly, at any rate. Of course, what hurts that many people hurts all the pe6ple indirectly. In that way we all suffer. rndirectly all business:, ;".: by the present business situation. f have been surprised at the large number of newspapers referring to the present situation frankly as a "slump." Of course, the lumber market generally has slumped with the rest of the market, and in that way has given us all in this line of business, things to wrinkle our brows about. *t<*

For to feed the hungry pilgrims, He suffered and he bled, And yielded up his plumage To make a feather bed.

In a jittery world the stock market slump has scattered a lot ofjitters around the country. We jitter easily because we had never entirely recovered from them. We have been prosperous, but not peaceful. Our volume of business has been good, but innumerable clouds kept us frorn being too happy about it. So now the folks who own stocks are doing some squirming'

Personally I'm getting ready for a mighty. good business year. I see a lot of friends grabbing pencil and paper and figuring all sorts of things that might happen, and sometimes f think we would be better off if all the pencils and tablets were thrown in the lake.A busy pencil can figure anything, uP or down. rt may head off "o*" ol ol, ,lur"ruralidiocy. Just the other day a man who handles automobile financing, sat for an hour and told me of their problems, of people buying motor cars who cannot even afford to walk, but buy them just thesame. Installment buying is again being carried to extremes that border on the idiotic conditions prevailing before 1929. A littlejolt that puts our feet back on the ground may be timely. r likethis one: He ;" :"J of our modern schoot of thinkers. His philosophy was that the machine age is destroying everything, causing unemployment, upsetting the economic balance, and stuff like that. He stopped where a tremendous modern machine was digging a great trench ata rapid rate. "IIow many men with shovels does that machine replace?" he asked the contractor. "One hundred," was the reply."Why don't you junk that machine and put one hundred men with shovels into that trench?" asked the modern thinker. "I can think of a better one than that." said the contractor. "What's the matter with ten thousand men with teaspoons?"

I may be over-optimistic, but I'm hoping that the stock market slump may be helpful. It may teach us something. ft may head off some of the government spending and giving, head off some of the new tax and new regulatory threats, may take some of the pressure off of business that has had business worried continually, regardless of apparent prosperity. If it will do that, it may save us from worse things farther down the creek.

I am sure the modern ,irrrrl"r**"*ed wroth at that suggestion, not realizing that it was his own philosophy, stretched a few points. Sam Jones used to say that men often put their light under a bushel, and the light goes out. Then someone tips over the bushel and discovers that the light is out, but the owner of the light accuses him of putting it out. Tltat's what the contractor did to the modern thinker in this case.

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