LUMBER GO.

ANDERSON, CALIFOR,NIA

"About the time a youngster feels an irresistibie impulse to make a fool of himself whenever a female smiles upon him; when he's reached that critical stage in life's journey when he imagines that he knows much more than his father, he begins to doubt the religion of his mother. He shrewdly asks his Sunday school teacher who made God? He demonstrates by the aid of natural history diagrams that a large whale could in nowise swallow a small prophet-that if he did succeed in relegating him to its internal economy it were impossible for him to slosh around for three days and nights in the gastric juices without becorning much the worse for wear. FJe attempts to rip religion up by the roots and reform the world while you wait, but soon learns that he's got a government contract on his hands: that the man who can drive the Deity out of the hearts and homes of this land can make a fortune turning artesian wells inside out and selling them for telegraph poles. You can't do it, son. Religion is the backbone of the body social. Sometimes it's as unbending as a boardinghouse biscuit, and sometimes it's a bad quality of gutta percha; b.ut we couldn't get along without it. Most youths have to pass through a period of doubt and denial-catch the infidel humor just as they do the mumps and the measles; but they eventually learn that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."

* * -Wm. Cowper Brann.

f read the above fully fifty years ago and was so imLtessed with it that I have never forgotten it, and have reread it countless times since then; and reprinted it more than several.

But we are not going to ;.;* this column at this time to an extended discussion of the spiritual side of life, even though we know full well that it is much the most important need in our national life right now. It is the tremendous spirituality that shines through everything that General MacArthur says and writes that has always attracted me to him. In a time when sordidness unspeakable is the order of the day, he raises his head to look his God in the face, and speaks as other men lack the power to speak. All of his life he has heard the still. small voice that ever whispers to the soul of a truly great man. And thus inspired by his unflinching belief that, as they say below the border, he "walked with God," nothing that the little men could say or do could sway him from the path where, to his clear comprehension, lay his sacred private honor, and his even higher public duty. As stainless as the sword of the sentinel who guards the gates ajar,, is the name and fame of Douglas MacArthur, who came back home and has shown us clearly the way great Americans should act, and speak, and write. With the unclouded vision of an imrnortal faith, he holds for us a beacon light.

Let us talk for a while tol", "Uo.ra the more sordid subjects of taxes, and money; two subjects that have every thinking American hanging on the ropes today. My favorite Washington columnist, Bill Henry, tells about a businessman who "looked the Secretary of the Treasury right smack in the eye, and said with cruel firmness, 'if f ran my business like the Federal government does, I would have been bankrupt long ago."' FIe does not relate what the Secretary said. Probably nothing, for all men outside the asylum know full well that any business of any kind run like the business of our government, would go down the slippery slide to bankruptcy faster than a jet plane with a tail wind.

Dr. Robert L. Johnson, President of Temple University, and Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the floover Report, issued a public statement just a few days ago, which echoed the recent speech by Senator Byrd, of Virginia, saying: "Our country is in greater danger today than at any time in its history because of the waste and extravagance in the government at all levels . The government is so full of duplications, inefficiency, and waste, and so bogged down in red tape it cannot be responsive to the kind of emergency we may find facing ourselves strddenly at any time."

In the medical prof.*"iorrlr.l, n"rr. learned that a human being can be fed poison in small but constantly increasing doses in such a manner that the human body gets used to them, and thus "forms a tolerance" for them, so that the enlarged doses do not harm. That's what has happened in this country with regard to the spending, or even wasting, of huge sums of money. A stated amount of money that not so long ago would have given the entire nation a case of screaming meanies, today causes not a ripple. The spending of a billion dollars today is not considered half as important as spending a million would have been a generation ago. The American public, like the Admiaistration at Washington, has not the faintest notion any more, what a billion dollars means.

I have an old lumber friend named Will Curry, living in the free and unafraid City of Waco, Texas, who has a nose for such things, being a scholarly fellow, and he sends me some terse figures on tlris subject, to wit, what is a billion dollars. filere's what he says: If a man had started in business in the year A.D. (1951 years ago), with one billion dollars capital, and had managed his business so badly that he had lost one thousand dollars every day since he started, he would still be in business, and could continue losing one thousand dollars a day for another eight hundred years, before running out of cash.

*

That gives you a pretty fair measuring stick on a billion dollars. But you could enlarge those figures to giant size and hold them before the eyes of a lot of men in Washington, and it would impress them not in the least. Step by step we have built up this weird situation where government spending makes no impression on the spenders. We pick up a newspaper and learn that it is being proposed that we spend another block of billions for something or other, and nobody cares what. Some guy who knows as little about the really mysterious subject of money as a pollywog in a pool knows about the power of prayer, wants to spend eleventy-seven billion dollars. And he wants you to know that he doesn't mean just seventy-eleven billion; not on your life; he means eleventy-seven billion, and not a dime less.

And then some other ,* tln" probably couldn't command a salary of one hundred bucks a month for a business job if he were thrown off the political bandwagon, prates learnedly about inflation, about controls, about billions here and billions there, that must be raised by taxes to save the nation in this vital emergency.

I have been told by men in position to know that there are not ten men in the entire United States who can be said to actually understand money in all its ramifications, and its multitudinous confusing facets. There are certainly not ten men in this nation capable of understanding the present financial and economic situation in which this nation is now bogged down, money, debt, taxes, subsidies, infationary matters, the real meaning of controls, etc. Yet we hear an army of men orating learnedly on all these subjects and issuing ordeis and opinions thereon, who know no more of these things than a single-cell protoplasm on the ocean bed knows about*the science of trigonometry.

A battle over controls has been going on in Washington for some time past. The gang even demanded the authoritlr to license every business in this country, and thus be enabled to put anyone out of business who could not be controlled. I know a lot of able men of affairs in all parts of this country, and they seem to be of the unanimous opinion that the biggest need for controls is controls OF the government, rather than controls BY the government. If we could control the needless and unintelligent spending, the waste, and the inefEciency of government, we would be in a position where there would be no need of other ccntrols. They believe that it is extravagances, waste, and impractical management, that have created our present inflationary conditions. And that these things would be curable if admitted.

Necessarily, needless "n"*r* means needless taxes. We have entered upon a preparedness program that, even if managed and directed in the best possible manner, will run into tremendous figures, astronomical figures in fact. Few people object to doing their fair share in financing that vital program. But every taxpayer has a right to expect and to demand that every possible dollar not needed for defense, be saved for the pocket of him who pays the bili. ft's going to be rough enough on him even though he gets a fair deal from government. Give the taxpayer a break ! And, don't think for a minute that he is now or has for a long time, been getting one: With the big burden bf the defense program settling down inexorably on his shoulders, he deserves a change.

,k *

..RUSSIA WILL FORCE THE UNITED STATES TO SPEND ITSELF INTO DESTRUCTfON," said Lenin, just before he died. Unwise and impractical men in this country are doing a lot to make the big Ruskie's prophecy come true. Lenin himself would no doubt chortle with unholy glee could he witness our present spending spree.

A man died just the other day who has given so much rich joy to so many people, that when I read of his going f sat for a long time to think about him. and to wish him well wherever he may be. His name was Egbert Anson Van Alstyne, and he died at the age of 73 in Chicago. No, f never knew him, but I owe him for millions of happy moments, and I am grateful. ffe was a writer of popular songs; the kind that ring in your heart, and live in your soul. He wrote over 500 songs. He wrote "In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree. He wrote "That Old Girl Of Mine." lfe wrote "Pretty Baby," and "Memories," and "Old Pal Why Don't You Answer Me." He wrote "Sunshine and Roses," and "Your Eyes Have Told Me So," and "Drifting and Dreaming," and "The Little Old Church In The Valley," and "Pony Boy," and "Navajo," and "Afraid To Go Home In The Dark," and others I remember well. When f was a kid I have joined with groups of youngsters countless times to sing all those songs, adding my lousy tenor to the more or less harmonious discords of all those concerned. ff you, too, recall such happy memories from such tuneful ballads, join with me in a kindly thought for the man who did so much to make so many people happy.

rAN MAII

The u'riter \vas so thoroughly thrilled and pleased in reading Jack's editorial on taxes in the Merchant, ctlrrent issue, that I felt impelled to write you and convey my sincere appreciation of the effort he is making to save this Democracy. "He may be as a voice crying out in the wilderness, but we hope his light may so shine that every man may see," and would that everyone could rise in his might and smite this insidious evil that will undoubtedly destroy our freedom and way of life unless this unwise spending is checked.

H. M. Rhodes Salt Lake Mill & Lumber Co. Salt Lake Citv. Utah

GrouPs ctvtc cruBs

MMU N ITY tzATtoNs

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Oak Flooring Manufacturers Hold Semi-Annual Meeting

Although home building dropped 16 per cent in the first four months of this year as compared with the first third of 1950, hardwood flooring demand reached an all-time high for the period, members of the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers' Association were told at their recent semiannual meeting at Memphis, Tenn.

Secretary Henry H. Willins reported that shipments from the nation's major producing areas totaled nearly 341 million board feet, a 10 per cent increase over the 309 million feet shipped in the first four months last year. Nonfarm dwelling starts meanwhile dropped from 412,000 to 348,000.

A substantial portion of the strong demand was due, Willins said, to the large carry-over of unfinished homes from 1950. He added, however, that the increase in shipments at a time of slackening home construction indicated that hardwood rvas becoming increasingly popular as a residential' flooring material.

"It is interesting to note," he said, "that in the first four months of 1950, the biggest year in the industry's history, shipments rvere equivalent to about 74I board feet per dwelling unit started. In the corresponding period this year tlrey have risen to 979 f.eet, an increase of 32 per cent."

A tapering off from this unusually heavy demand is anticipated, Willins pointed out, in view of the fact that home building in the remainder of the year is expected to drop even further behind its 1950 pace.