V.sabond Editorials

Bv Jack Dionne

I know two men. One of them is very happy; the other very miserable. The first is happy because he loves the beauty of the world. The second is miserable because he hates its ugliness. It's all in the way you look at it; and the way we look at things depends not so much on what we see with our eyes as on what we feel in our hearts. *{.*

I always hate to hear a man stewing about saving his soul. Everything in the universe worth saving, wlll be saved. To make yourself worth while-your soul worth saving-that's the ticket ! By your WORKS-NOT by your scared prayers-shall you be measured when the measuring time comes-and weighed when the weighing tirne arrives.

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Your past size and importance won't help you to solve your future. You'll be judged in the future by your USEFULNESS. Size and power are NOT permanent saving graces. Look at the great prehistoric animals. Once they walked the earth, monarchs of all they surveyed, and the earth trembled at their steps. Where are they today? The ants they trod under foot in countless number in those days, still throng upon the earth. But the mammoth, the mastodon, and their kind-are GONE. **t

The finest piece of farm philosophy I ever heard came from my old friend H. \V. Galbraith, life-long operator of rural lumber yards. He said, "When a man goes on a farm to make a home and a living, he generally makes a living, and a little money; but if he goes on a farm to make money, he usually makes neither money nor a living." That should be given page one in the book of farming truths.

There is again intenpified efforts on the part of propagandists to have this country tecognize Soviet Russia. Let every right thinking rnan raise his voice against any such calamity. Let us extend the hand of recognition only to civilized governments; and if Soviet Russia is civilized, I'm a nigger preacher.

The selling days seem to be coming back again. And modern salesmanship, so says the cynic, means making a man exchange money or credit for things he doesn't want, doesn't need, and cannot afford.

How many people, in this day of strange garments, know the following verse from scripture? Deuteronomy, Chapter 22, Yerse 5. "The woman shall not \ rear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment; for all that do so are abornination to the Lord thy God." Hollywood, take notice ! ***

"President Roosevelt," said General Johnson of the Recovery Act in a recent radio and news reel address, "sums up the enlire thought behind the National Industrial Recovery Act in six words: 'to put men back to work'." r$*13

Hurry up, Mr. Recovery Act, and get your rules working, before this sawmill industry drowns the present lumber market under a food of increased production. ***

My personal opinion publicly expressed is that if some ironclad law could be passed restricting the lum.ber industry to a short production week for all time to come, it would be the finest thing that ever happened to an industry whose entire history is marked with a definite disposition and ability to drown every appearance of increased demand under a relentless flood of supply. Overproduction always has been its fundamental curse, and always will be unless some restrictive agency shall appear, over which the industry itself has no control, saying-"Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." ***

To hope that the sawmill industry will, of itself, do any better today than it has in the past, is like marrying for the third time-it simply demonstrates the triumph of hope over experience.

Much is being said ""a *t"*a of late concerning the "New deal for bankers." I feel that the public will likewise enthusiastically indorse that very thing. And the public not only will suggest a new deal, but a new and unmarked deck, and besides that the public would like a chance to cut the deck after every shuffle.

Talk about things that are changing-must change-to keep up with recent developments and future conditionsconsider the banker. What a jackpot of public opinion HE finds himself in. No profession will find itself facing quite as many problems as normalcy returns, as does the banker. He's been demoted so far frorn his old and apparently secure position as leading citizen of every community that it's difficult really to classify him at the present time. The public has done everything but put a bounty on him.

{<rF*

Practically all lines of business have a lot of reconstruction work to do to win their way back to their previous positions in the scheme of things, but none have so far to go as the banker. The banking business has spent nearly four years teaching 125,000,000 people how to get along without banks. And the publig is so well taught that there is a chance it may stay taught, unless the banking business does something definite about it. Now the bankers have the job of unteaching all they have been teaching the public-teaching us that we DO need banks. And they've got themselves SOME job.

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"The American people are aroused over the subject of banks as they have never been before," said an authority recently. Right ! In the public mind today there is a great big question mark after the word "bank." Replacing that question mark with understandable facts that militate in favor of banks-THAT is the big banking job of the immediate future. They have got to spread the butter of their performance in most -intelligent fashion for the next decade.

***

I suggested to a great convention of bankers the other day in a public address, that right npw the public is in a frame of mind to show great interest in statements concerning banks and the banking business. They would like to know a lot about the bank of the future. The bank of the past and of the present the public is quite well acquainted with. They would like to hear and read simple, understandable things about the bank of the future. They would like to know the responsibility of the bank toward the public, and of the public toward the bank. They would like all the haziness and mystery taken out of the bank picture, in order that the way may be cleared for a better understanding on both sides.

And the biggest single rJ"r"l,"" the banking business has to perform upon itself, is de-bunking. The bankers' old claim to financial, economic, industrial, and commercial infallibility-THAT is going to be utterly dropped. A whole lot of old claims and pretenses are going to be put up on the shelf with the cold pie when the banking code is re-written to fit the future. The bank is going to have to be put on the plane where it belongs-where it always belonged. It is going to have to be presented to the public as a common-sense, everyday, understandable, sweaty, oily machine that really functions and performs. The smartest man in every bank should be the public relations man. The bank that hasn't a smart man on its payroll ought to hire one for public relations service.

If the depression did ; **" ", the banking business than ridding it of its impossible dignity and its maddening self complacency, it would be worth all it has cost. I would like to see framed above the desk of every bank exec.utive in this land in a position where his eyes could behold it every hour of the working day, this sign- ..DON'T TAKE YOURSELF TOO DAMNED SERIOUSLY."