Vrgabond Editorials

BvJacL Dionne

I notice that the Federal Trade Commission has denied the petition of Western Ponderosa Pine producers for a re-hearing of the "White Pine" case, in which they recently decided that Pinus Ponderosa could NOT be called "White Pine." f don't know what the next step is to be.

r am just a simple """":r;;, trying hard to get atong, and to help a lumber industry that is having a hard time trying to do the same thing. I'll admit that I don't seem to have the mental equipment to understand lots of things that I should. This White Pine case is one that staggers me. I'll tell you why. ,i*rt

On my desk, as f write, there are two Pine boards. One of them is a rich, cheese color. The other is very, very white in color. The cheese colored board is Sugar Pinebotanically-and Federal Trade Commissionally-a true white pine, and permitted to be advertised and sold ,,as sich." The other, ,the very white board, is California White Pine-so called-botanically Pinus PonderosaFederal Trade Commissionally speaking a YELLOW pine.

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You can readily understand how these exhibits worry and puzzle me. As f said, I'm simple and can't understand these things. This yellowish board is a WHITE pine. This whitish board is a YELLOW pine. The guy that rnade the yellowish board can call it WHITE and get alvay with it. But the one that made the .WHITE board mustn't call it "white" or he'll catch merry Hades. I'm satisfied the F.T.C. is right in the matter and that there IS a good reason why this white board must be called yellow, and this yellow board can be called white, and all f regret is the natural dumbness that blocks my understanding of the matter.

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But since, in addition to being simple I am likewise very inquisitive, I can't help wondering what the intelligent courts of this land would say if you took these two boards before them, unlabeled, and asked the learned judges to please select the white pine and the yellow pine, just as any layman buying lumber would do. Wouldn't that be fun?

They sometimes refer to him historically as a "heathen," but read the prayer of Socrates, the great Athenian commoner, and see if you agree. "Grant me to be beautiful in the inner man, and all I have of outer things to be at peace with those within. May I count the wise man only, rich; and may rny store of gold be such as none but the good can bear." ri ri ri

\il/'e're funny folks in lots of ways. We put such stamp as "heathen" on some great soul whose uttered thoughts were pure and stainless as the sword of Eden's sentinellacking only the trademark of orthodoxy. And then, mayhap, turn in our foolish pride and utter a prayer as soddenly savage as the war cry of a Solornon Islander.

The most delightful public speech f have heard in years was made by an orthodox Christian clergyman on the subject, "What I learned about spirituality frorn the heathen.". He had just returned from many months in "heathen" lands. One day he asked a "heathen" who and what his God was. And thp "heathen" answered with an explanation so simple, so beautiful, so understandable, that his interrogator dropped his head in humility. "It made me seriously wonder," said the clergyman in terminating his address, "which of us was the heathen?"

On the wall of my office is framed this statement: "The holiest temple beneath the stars is a home that love has built; and the most sacfed altar in all the wide world is the fireside around which gather father, mother, and children." THAT was said by a "heathen," also.

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Someone ought to compile a volume of the beautiful utterances of the great heathens of history. In this gangridden, bootlegger-infested, murder-muddled country of ours today, such a volume might prove a saving grace. To know the beautiful thoughts of great men now dead might be sorne compensation for the mediocrity of today's moronic modernness. They might erase some of the "scramrt' "lamr" ttmob," ttmollrtt and the like, from our embattled consciousness.

Speaking of modernn"":, .-"" l, o.r, phitosophers of to(Continued on Page 8)

PINE DEPARTMENT

F. S. PALMER, Mgr. California Ponderoea Pine California Sugar Pine