Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Again the world prepares to celebrate the birthday of a certain young Carpenter. ***

He was crucified by, the Romans; and for that the Christian world has since held the Romans of that day in execration. Yet, after nineteen hundred years of studying His words and His works, were Ffe to come back today with the same philosophy- tf*:t

He would be beheaded in Germany; hanged in Russia; and forbidden to speak in all Italy.

No doubt the time of ;,""*", was wisely chosen. I sadly fear that even in this land of the free His message would fall on deaf ears today. Not that we are so hard to convince. But .getting a hearing is the difficulty. We would be entirely too busy to listen.

:frf* rkrkt

His pet commandments we have been obeying in great style of late. ttFeed my sheep." "Do unto others." t'Love thy neighbor." Surely, as never before in history, we have been following those philosophies. The poor we have fed as never before. The Golden Rule of helpfulness is a banner we have been holding high. I don't know whether we have loved our neighbor so much or not, but we have certainly taken an active and helpful interest in him, his welfare, and condition.

Pessimists to the contrary notwithstanding, I think the spirit of the world is improving. In certain specific territories there is unhappy festering, but as a rule the thinking people of this earth are kindlier than they have ever been; more helpful than they ever dreamed of being. What saith the poet?

:f{<t

"Their cause I plead, plead it in heart and mind, A fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind."

*:f*

There are rnore kindly people in the world today than there ever were before. Let us give thanks for that at this Christmas season. The people of this nation as a whole are better off than they were last Christmas. F'or that, also, make us truly thankful. We still have a long way to go and a lot to accomplish before rrre are out of the woods. But perhaps we should be thankful for that also. We ARE a people who forget quickly, and spoil easily.

In a city where there are ten thousand families on relief, there appeared conspicuously an advertisement for several men for good and permanent jobs. The advertisers got ready to handle an army of applicants. Instead, only a few made application. Not a single man on relief came to ask for one of the jobs'

The depressing fact is driven like a barb into our thought of late that it is going to take more than jobs to get the relief rolls perceptibly reduced.

In spite of the extreme difficulty of the situation-the really tragic difficulties in fact-one thing is definite and certain; there will never be any great reduction of the relief rolls so long as it is handled by the Federal Government. The fact that there are billions available seems to make entirely too many people unemployable. When the time comes when every relief donation is made after careful investigation of that particular case, and the wholesale scatteration of money is no longer indicated, there will be a change. :r*:k

A great army of unemployed is never going to be employed again, however. THAT is one of the problems that must be met. It is one thing to shake the bushel qf humanity and knock all the aged, the infirm, the crippled, the halt, the dependent, and the partly dependent-all into the relief basket. But how to get them back? Ah, my friends ! That is one problem that the future must work out. ***

You can shake a tree and all the over-ripe apples will fall to the ground. But try to shake them back into the places they came from ! It can't be done, of course. And THIS is the same proposition, exactly. We are going to have from now on an utterly unemployable portion of our population. How to confine it just to the present generation is the problem. But that we are going to have to care for THESE really unemployable people for the rest of their lives, only the fool can doubt.

Lots of discussion .0"..l il pro and con. At several recent meetings of lumber folks FHA has been the chief topic of conversation, and there are no loud and rousing cheers in evidence. The general impression from those

(Continued on Page 8)