Vagabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

"Aid slighted truth, with thy persuasive strain Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain; Teach him that states of native strength possest, Tho very poor, may still be very blest; That trades proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labored mole away; While self dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky."

Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village.', *'k*

I've never been up in an airplane. About once a year I decide that fying has finally reached a condition where it is about as safe as anything else in life, and think I'll speed up my travels via the air route. And just about that time they begin falling in clusters; and I change my mind.

,1.**

The tremendous and horrifying number of big wrecks in the past few months has tied me to the ground for a long, long time. And these silly statistics they hand you to prove that flying is safer than motoring, fail to budge me. Those flying versus motoring figures always remind me of the eighty-year-old man who claimed old men were better insurance risks than young men because so many more young men die, than old men. :f**

Flying will never be anything that even resembles safe until they can take off and land at extremely low rates of speed. There would seldom be an airplane wreck if they could do that. Trains and Fords seem to supply my traveling needs mighty well for the time being.

Texas follows the example of California in frowning on sit-down strikes. The Governor of Texas says there will be no sit-down strikes in his state; and the Legislature of Texas is working on a law to make sit-down striking a felony. Texas is one place where there will be no sit-down strikes if the authorities do not approve. Five Texas rangers, clothed with the authority they have in Texas, would break all the sit-down strikes in Michigan in three days' time. When a ranger lifts a man up off his sitter, he stays up.

*.*,t

The Governor of Texas remarked caustically that "Texas is not going to go Michigan." Hope the Governor of Michigan, who gets all his instructions from Washington, read that line.

Los Angeles not only established a precedent for law and order and the authority of the courts when it broke its first sit-down strike, but at the same time another powerful precedent was established when the local authorities announced that no man could go on the relief rolls who could get work and wouldn't take it. *<

Which reminds me of how splendidly the White House has spoken and acted with regard to sit-down strikes, property confiscation, defiance of the courts and the laws of the land, etc.?

***

And how strangely it makes a man feel to see, not only an army of professional politicians but likewise every dangerous red radical in this country, going up and down the land hurling insults at our highest court.

**'i

Since the Vagabonds for the last issue were written, I have heard and read much more regarding taxation. I have seen public utility corporation after corporation appear before legislative tribunals to discuss taxation, and ofrer financial statements showing startling figures. For a public service corporation to pay more for taxes than for its entire pay-roll, is NOT the exception; it is almost the rule today. Just think of running a business whose tax bill is greater than its pay-roll!

**t

Yet there is an eternal cry these days against the public utility corporations, raised mostly by the ignorant and the demagogue. The printed statement of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company shows that they pay a tax amounting to approximately two dollars annually on every telephone they have in service.

To a man schooled only in private business enterprises and their problems, the problems of the public utility corporations are stunning. No private enterprise could pay them. Or would if they could. Yet they are eternally decried by the ignorant and the radical.

***

Talking of taxation reminds me of big headlines in to: day's newspapers, stating that Henry Ford had publicly declared he will not treat with labor unions. Because Mr. Ford's labor situation and his tax situation are very, very closely akin. Why? Listen. Do you know that if Henry (Continued on Page 8)