Vrgabond Editorials

By Jack Dionne

Panic talk is gone, and depression talk has dwindled wonderfully of late. We don't even let people THINK depression around us if we can help it. Two men stood side by side in the street car hanging onto straps, going home. Not a word was spoken between them. But suddenly one of them heaved a deep and audible sigh. The other whirled and glared at him. "Are YOU telling ME?" he demanded.

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In the city where thousands of families are unemployed and depending on the charity of the city for their every ounce of food, the baseball games are well attended; the football games are watched by a howling mob sitting in high priced seats; these terrible fake "rassling" matches pack in the sweating crowds; thousands of dollars a week, in units of a nickel each, go into these new-fangled marble shooting tables; a recent circus drew the biggest crowds in history; etc., etc., etc. Tell me, friends, just what does "depression" mean?

Four letters for the ,"-0", lrr"r"fr.r,t this fall. Four letters each in Home, Barn, Shed, Crib, and Silo. Four letters in Work-that will build them. Four letters. well written, may create a desire for them. Four letters in Sell, to get the order for them.

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The farmer with cotton to sell, And wheat. corn and chickens as well, Is he buying a board?

Nay, he's getting a FordAnd the lumberman says-"Ain't it Hell?"-

The lumber industry is the business of getting trees into buildings.

Was I mad? ffr" otnl,"*na, sat me down at my radio to spend an hour listening to Ben Bernie and Ed Wynn. And what do you think? They announced that these two favorites of mine had been cancelled that night to let Mr. Hoover's speech have the monopoly of the air. I'll bet that lost him rnore votes than the depression. He could sue me for the things I called him.

If I were running Mr. Hoover's campaign, instead of depriving millions of music and laughter loving people of the fun of hearing Ben Bernie and Ed V/ynn, I'd cut out the political speech entirely and hire Ben Bernie and Ed Wynn to give him honorable mention. But then, if politicians had brains-they wouldn't be politicians, would they? They'd be in some useful line of business.

I picked up a little magazine the other day, the house organ of a lumber concern, and found page after page from the columns of this paper. Vagabond Editorials, Fun, Facts and Filosophy, and Favorite Stories, had all furnished fodder for this little printed sales effort. Even an original rhyme was in the lot. And never anywhere a quotation mark, or the name of this publisher. We print all this stuff without trade-mark so that people may put it to good use; but it does look like a man that admired the stuff enough to use so much of it, could have given us just one little complimentary mention somewhere, if only for reciprocity.

The Share-the-Work *.";":, that is today being put over in a great national drive, is a splendid effort at handling a vital, a momentous problem that today faces this n31ie11-"4 mighty draught for a mightier thirst" as Lewis Browne would catrl it. It aims, coordinately, scientifically, and intelligently, to check the spread of unemployment, to decrease unemployment now existing, and to arrange so that when increasing business brings additional need of men the new work will be done by the greatest possible number, rather than by working on lengthened or increased schedules. It aims to put the greatest'possible number of men to work, at no increased cost to employers, to do the same amount of work. f have been studying the plan carefully and watching it work and I am strong for it, and urge every employer to give it his careful attention. Some details of the plan will be found elsewhere in this issue.

Here's a sample of how it works. In one city it was found that most industries were working 48 hours a week. It was shown them that by cutting their weekly hours per man down to 40 and hiring enough additional men to make up the difference would require 8,50O additional men; that (Continued on Page 8)