Vagabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

1938 starts out like it might be a great year for buckpassing.

riri*

Right now the air is being rent asunder 6y the buckpassing efrofts of a bewildered group of demagogues whofinding the nation in a sorry jam right in the face of their proud pronouncements that everything that happens is according to their planwre striving through the wrathful use of partisan polemics to prove now that they didn't really plan it after all. They now want to convince an intelligent people that the present depression was caused by the employers of the country deliberately and connivingly going on strike, just to discredit the Administration.

:1. rf *

Yes Sir ! All that these economic bunco steerers have the supernal gall to ask us to believe is that in order to spite the Messianic New Deal the business men of the United States are deliberately disemboweling themselves financialln maiming their organizations, starving their stockholders, and mutilating their working forces. /

*,t*

The feitow that thought up that alibi was in danger of bankrupting his imagination.

*rk*

Because it is now an open and shut fact that we find ourselves in a rather sharp depression. Lest you, gentle reader, are unschooled in the history of depressions, Iet us make clear tfie fact that sharp, unexpected, and often brief economic dips are not at all unusual in our history. This one could easily be very brief. It may be that we are already on the way out. I think we will soon know about that. ,1.+*

Since the new year opened there has been a strong effort at a back-to-work movement, and there are various signs of improvement over December conditions. Naturally, putting men to work artificially to make goods that are unsold, must be temporary unless REAL demand for the products develops. ,trt*

That bushy-browed John L. Lewis to the contrary, industry cannot operate just to keep men employed. There MUST of necessity be a market for their goods if the turning of wheels is to continue. The trouble is'that Washington is well populated today with men occupying positions of importance who arp as ignorant of the simplest rudiments and rules of business as a single-cell protoplasm on the ocean bed is ignorant of the science of trigonometry. And the less they know, the more and louder they talk.

**,F

As ttris is being written Congress is starting its long grind. ft is starting slow because the first thing up is the anti-lynching bill. This bill seeks to have and to hold the northern negro vote. The myriads of votes in Harlem and the Chicago Black Belt are its big advocates. The Southern representatives in Congress are using the filibuster to combat it, and it means that the Congressional grind will staft slowly. rr+*

And everything, Mr. Business Man, depends on Congress. If tfrere was ever any doubt in your mind about that, get rid of it. Business can look for help from no other source. Everything depends on what Congress does, and does NOT do. If the fears that hang like a dark cloud over business are to be allayed, Congress must allay them. If owners of capital are to be induced to put capital to work, it must be because Congress, by its very acts, convinces them that it is safe to do so.

It is true that the speeches of the President in the past week are more polite and controlled than the speeches of his accredited mouthpieces the week before that sent the country into such an uproar. ft is safe to conclude that his moderation was a result of the roar of disapproval of the words of Messrs. Ickes and Jackson that went up from all parts of this land, which even the thickest ear-mufis (and sometimes I think the President must wear the thickest ones on earth) could not keep out.

But not one word has been said as yet about helping business out of this jam; nothing of tax moderation, nothing of lightening burdens, just a passing remark that AI-L business men do not mean to be bad citizens. How generous ! And not one word did the President utter in repudiation of the insults ofrered business by the two poisonspreaders just mentioned. He simply said that they didn't mean "all business." ft must make the decent business men of this land feel very happy to know that that gentle and broad-gauged Mr. fckes does not think they are all badt

Congress is asked again to pass a wage and hour law.

And under present conditions such a law would be utterly destructive to the cause of employment. It would be damaging even were conditions good, but today, with employment in thousands of cases hanging by a thread, it would be terrific. The South will fight it, and will be assisted this time by other territories. Business has learned in the past year what control boards and bureaus mean,

***

Compulsory control of agriculture is again asked. Compulsory control of anything in this country is wrong, and will back-fire. No practical man I have heard of is for compulsory control. And any crop control bill that does not include the power to bar from this country foreign farm products, is stupid. For each ton of farm stufr we abort, a ton of foreign farm stuff comes in. And we are not trying to help the foreign farmer. Or are we?

*:8{.

We COULD have grand times in this country this year. All the SOUND forces are for prosperity. Only FEAR is in the way. Mr. Roosevelt talks to his press conferences as though only the big corporations and the newspapers of the country are against him. I have visited with more small business men in the past year-and had letters from almost countless others-than ever before in my life. They are mostly modest, average American business men; trying hard to get along, not economic royalists in any sense. And I can testify that every man with whom I have talked, and every man who has written me, is frightened stiff of present-day governmental policies, and was, even before the break came last Jrear.

The American business man of small caliber whom I meet, North, South, East, and West, is hoping and praying for the day to come when politics will get out of business, and when politicians will go back to politicking and let things alone that they cannot possibly understand and have no earthly business to monkey with. Politicians monkeying with normal laws and trying to run the world artificially are the cause of all our troubles.

Wendell L. Willkie ""rJ .rl" inu, a", that "the present need of this country is reassurance to investors that government will not be a destructive force."

An eastern man whose name I have forgotten but who was a big contributor to the Democratic campaign fund last election, uttered a great truth the other day. He said that all we need is for the government to "turn on the GREEN light."

If our government would just realize how scared ALL business men are today, and give them GENUINE reassurance, WE WOULD HAVE A BOOM BEFORE SPRING.