Vagabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

A peaceful Christmas to you, my lumber and building friends ! A very happy and peaceful Christmas ! ***

What do YOU want for Christmas? I asked myself that question, then reached for the old rhyming harp and here's what I got:

Please Santa, when you hitch your deer

This Christmas Eve, and start your sleighing, Let me just whisper in your ear

This little helpful thought conveying: For painted toys or youthful joys, No prayer of mine you'fl hear arising, But slip around among the boys, AND FILL MY SOCK WITH ADVERTISING. ***

Then, the spirit of rhyming being upon lne, I asked, "What does Mr. Lumber Dealer want for Christmas? And here's the answer: f;m ready to hustle-

Send me orders, Mr. Santa, send me orders, Santa Dear, For f've been'order hungry, this many and many a year.

I'm ready to sweat-

I'm ready to fight for-

The blrsiness I get-se

Send me some orders, a big batch of orders, I'll thank you, dear Santa, for orders. **rt

Then I thought of my many mill friends, and I couldn't leave them out of the rhyming jumble, so here 'tis:

Oh Santa Claus ! Please set my saws

Efficient and emphatic; So I may then, the homes of men

From basement build to attic.

The trees I cut, my mill to glut, Are sighing to be serving-

The sons of man; so help me, "San" And keep my saws from swerving. ***

The football season is just ending. Football is a boon to this shell-shocked, wearied world- It is a grand sport for those who watch, and for those who play. Football teaches young men the value of things that will last them all through their lives. ,Fo,r instance, they learn ttre fine re- turns that come from an investment in clean living; they learn the value of cooperation; they learn the great worth of enthusiasm; they learn that men and teams who won't be beaten, are hard to beat. They likewise learn that it takes strong men to be good losers; that hard beatings temper the quality of men and football teams. The lesson the young man learns in football, he carries with him all of his life.

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Political columnists at Washington have loudly pro. claimed of late that Morgenthau of the Treasury and Jones of the R. F. C.-long reported as great financial rivalshave "buried the hatchet." Where? Not in each other's backs?

**:f

The hundredth anniversary of America's patent system was celebrated in Washington on November 23rd with a huge banquet. A committee previously appointed for the purpose announced on that occasion their selection of the twelve greatest inventors in American history, as followi: Robert Fulton, steamboat; Eli Whitney, cotton gin; Charles Goodyear, virlcanized rubber; Samuel F.'8. Morse, telegraph; Cyrus Hall McCormick, grain reaper; Elias Howe, sewing machine; George Westingho rse, air brake; Alexander Graham Bell, telephone; Thomas Edison, electric lamp, phonograph, motion pictures, and other devices; Ottmar Mergenthaler, linotype machine; Charles Martin Hall, process for making cheap aluminum; Wilbur Wright, coinventor of the airplane.

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And which, think you gentle reader, is the greatest of these-the greatest benefactbr to humanity? Personally, I guess f'il have to string along with Thomas Edison. By the way, the committee that made the selections was a secret one, so. that their choices might not be subject to controversy, so far as the committee members themselves were concerned.

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I incline to the belief that no list of great inventors is complete which fails to include the inventor of the internal combustion engine, and the inventof of the gasoline tax. Those two birds put the world on wheels. They built the modern motor car, and'the.roads and bridges for the cars to run over. And what would this world be without them? f esk you?

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God made the world, the lovely world, Made every bush and tree, And the gasoline tax that builds the roads So we can go and see.

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Hey ! What's going on around here ! A few weeks ago Mister Du Pont was being pilloried by the New Deal press for giving a lot of money to try and beat Mister Roosevelt. And now Mister Du Pont's gal and Mister Roosevelt's Junior are fixing to get married right soon. And right after that we find that that awful Mister Hearst (who was praised to the skies in 1932 for swinging the California delegation to Mister Roosevelt in the dead-locked Democratic convention, thus making him President, and then cussed off the earth in 1936 for trying to beat him) has done gone and hired Mister Roosevelt's son-in-law and daughter to ttln on€ of his most important papers for him. It's hard for a country boy to keep up with these things. ***

You see, the newspaper Mister Roosevelt's kin-folks are going to run is the one in Seattle that has been closed for the past several months by a strike of a bunch of folks who supported Mister Roosevelt one hundred per cent in the recent election. Now if they could just fix some sort of hook-up with that guy in San Francisco who apparently starts and stops all these maritime strikes whenever he gets ready, we, in the words of Groucho Marx, would be "getting somewhere." Let's join together in prayer.

Doctor Tugwell, chief of the brain-trusters, quits his government job to become an executive of a conservative multimillionaire industrial institution which makes and sells molasses. Doctor Tugwell's friends will remember him as the author of those two famous phrases, "the more abundant life," and "economic royalists." fle now joins one of the latter to enjoy more of the former. And his enemies will refuse to forget his imrnortal lines: "I will notrz roll up my sleeves and re-make America." What a rare gift is modesty ! *rl.*

In the molasses business Dr. Tugwell enters a new school. No philosophy of scarcity there. To make better and cheaper molasses and sell it at a profit, is the main idea. But he will get a chance to employ his unquestionably keen mind for the first time to practical things, and who knows? Wonder what would happen if he forgot his changed situation and asked the directors of the molasses company for seven hundred million dollars to improve the housing conditions of their New Orleans employes?

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And Joe Davies goes to Moscow as U. S. Minister among the Russians. I used to know Joe well in the old days, and he was a swell guy. Bet he still is. Maybe he'll send me some postcards of the big swimming places in Russia. I'll never forget hearing Will Rogers tell about his visits to them, or his chuckle when he made that famous remark that "I'd probably have seen more of Russia if I'd seen less of some Russians." When they peel off to swim in Russiathey peel off.

Henry Ford, who has done more to raise wages and intelligently encourage the increase of wages in this country than any other ten men combined, is cred,ited with another recent classic on that subject, to wit: "One of the main things people have to learn is to pay wages. If they do not do that they will never make a market. People who make barely enough to live on never create markets. People are afraid to want anything when they are paid too little." Some day the just-minded wage earners of this nation will build a monument to Henry Ford, properly inscribed in memory of the man who preached and proved that high wages is the granite foundation of all prosperity.