Socialized Housing Initiative Measure tVill Be On California Ballot November 2

California voters will decide betrveen socializecl housing and free enterprise housing on November 2 rvhen they vote on the Housing Initiative Measure to be shown on the ballot as Proposition No. 14.

Proposition No. 14 proposes to put the State in the housing business, r.nu'ith millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money at its disposal. The measure is based on the theory that the housing shortage can be solved by simply turning millions of dollars over to a new governmental bureau to be used for rent subsidies, loans to housing agencies, and direct government conflict with private buildirrg and construction activities.

The measure rvould create a fund of $l@,0Ci0,000 through a state bond issue, and another fund of $25,000,@0 to be made available annually fronr the state's general fund. An appropriation of $750,0@ per year for administrative costs ,of the Agency would also be authorized.

It would create a State Housing Agency compose<l of five commissioners, and lets the Agency appoint a new staff of government'employees, including a director, deputies, a legal staff and technicians, experts and professionals, exempt from civil service.

Frank Oleson, general manager, Western Division of Georgia-Pacific Plyu'ood & Lumber Co., Irortlancl, Oregon, spent a ferv days calling on the trade early this month with F. A. "Pete" Toste, Los Angeles, nervly appointed sales representative for his company.

The Legislature is forbidden by ,the measure to pass any law lvhich might control this Agency, or to cut down any of its powers for ten years.

Lumber dealers, builders, and many other business groups throughout the state are opposed to Proposition No. 14, and are putting up a strong fight to beat it at the polls. The Northern and Southern California lumber dealer associations are taking the lead in the fight. They take the stand that private industry is working to full capacity, both labor and materials are being fully utilized, and no public agency could do anything but retard building, in addition to creating another huge bureau to prey on the public.

Lumbermen generally are confident that Proposition No. 14 would retard building, and hurt the cause of home building on a sound and economical basis.

Don Coveney, cently spent an for steelhead in of California Lumber Sales, Oakland, reenjoyable and successful 10 days fishing the Klamath River.

United Lumber Company yard at 5714 West Jefferson has opened a retail lumber Blvd., Los Angeles.

"A thousand years scarce serve to form a state - An hour may lay tl t1an.. dusf."-By1qn.

The London Sunday Times recently offered this classic editorial opinion of Socialism as England has found it: "In England there is no incentive to bold undertakings Today, it is safer to be a Bureaucrat than a maker, and the young men know it SOCIALISM IS COMPETITION WITHOUT PRIZES, BOREDOM WITHOUT HOPE, WAR WITHOUT VICTORY, AND STATIS. TICS WITHOUT END. It takes the heart out of young men . . . It is not only politically false, but morally destructive." ***

Should you be seeking any further signs of infation than those that surround you at every step, consider this from "Nation's Business": "The Veterans' Administration this year asked for $7,9fi),000 for stationery. This would have printed 3,674,000,0(X) forms, or 200 forms for each veteran, or 30 forms for each person in the United States. It also asked for 303,2t7,50O letterhiads, at a cost of $557,902. This would have permitted each of the employes of the VA, including elevator operators, to write 1348 letters in the fiscal year 1948."

Signs of business confusion: I read in the newspapers recently about a man from Michigan who had been trying in vain to buy a new car, and couldn't even get a promise. Called to England on business he saw the very car he had been trying to get. It was in a sales window, and he was o'ffered immediate delivery-just take it and drive it out -fs1 svasfly $557 less than the list price in the United States. So he decided to buy it and ship it home, but the English dealer told him that would not be necessary; he just took the man's money and delivered him the car at the same price at the car factory in the United States. He made the deal, got the new car, and saved over five hundred bucks. A few days later some motor car official got into the papers trying to explain how such things ,could be, but it was too deep t:r

But here is one closer home. A friend of mine tells me one that tops that English deal. He was recently in Oslo, Norway, on business, and there he saw offered for sale by a dealer a car he had been trying in vain to get at his home in California. And it was ready for delivery for hundreds of dollars less than the delivered list price of the same car in California. He bought the car, actually shipped it to California, and still saved money, and at the same time got the car he had been unable to get at home. Higher economics, f guess.

Reports from authentic sources indicate that most big national advertisers are going to spend at least as much for advertising in the next year as they did in the past year, which is a very good business sign. Lever Bros., who sell Lifebuoy, Rinso, and Pepsodent, plan to spend the biggest budget in their history, fifteen million dollars for advertising. Other big firms are reported to be considering like action.

Someone unknown to me wrote the following classic on salesmen, which deserves a spotlight: "ff you work with your hands, you are a laborer. If you work with your hands and head, you are a craftsman. If hands ,head, and heart are required, you are an artist. But if it takes hands, head, heart, AND FEET* an*". you are a salesman."

When a man takes off his hat in an elevator it may be a sign of good manners, but it is much more likely to be a sign of good hair. ***

Rev. George Hewlitt Johnson, of England, widely advertised as the "Red Dean of Canterbury," is again trying to get into this country to preach his philosophy of Communism, which he professes to dearly love. Some writer says that the trouble with this so-called religionist is that he has more love for the gospel of Marx than for the Gospel of Mark. (Wish I'd said*that.)

A great furor was raised in the press recently when a male movie actor.was arrested for being a "dopie." They threaten him with trial and punishment. The folks they should prosecute are the fools who take a good forty dollar a week truck driver, pay him thousands of dollars a week, and fill his head with the crazy notions that their witd salaries so easily finance. YnT else could they expect?

This case caused much discussion in the press as to whether or not marijuana is habit-forming, and how harmful it may or may not be, and many arose to belittle the idea that the stuff was of the devil's own brew. So just give ear to the best possible authority on the subject, Col. Garland Williams, head of the United States narcotics enforcement department, who says: "Reefers are habitforming. All sex perverts may not be marijuana smokers but practically all marijuana smokers ARE perverted." Nice stufft * * *

When someone suggests cutting the cost of the federal government, he always catches hell, because economy is the most hated word in a federal bureaucracy. Yet there

(Continued on Page 10)

(Continued from Page 9) are innumerable ways economy could and should be practiced. In fact they could save a lot of money by stopping some of the illegal things that are being done by the bureaucrats. For instance-the Harness Committee, headed by Representative Harness, of Indiana, was appointed by the Lower House to investigate publicity and propaganda activities of the executive department of the government. This committee reported that in 1946 the fedei-al government in Washington employed 45,000 people who spent either all or part of their time doing publicity and propaganda work for the bureaus, and they spent seventy-five million dollars that year doing it. The thing is indefensible, and probably entirely illegal. There is a spot where we could save a neat seventy-five million. But of course it won't be done until the whole set-up is changed. No telling how many such saving possibilities there are'

{< * :F

Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows. You've heard that quoted all your life. Accepted as one of the great truisms of our modern times, its origin is seldom mentioned. So I shall mention same. In l87l a man named Charles Dudley Warner wrote a book, and while the rest of the book is long forgotten, one phrase that it contained, lives always. He remarked: "True it is that politics make strange bedfellows." Thaj, tl."*U", is the exact quotation.

Every four years we have our biggest national circus; the Presidential campaign. It's in high gear now. And isn't it a spectacle? I'm inclined to think the show this year is much more interesting to the entertainment seeker than any in a long time. The last Roosevelt campaigns were too cut and dried to furnish much thrill. FDR went into each race with the Solid South, the unions, the radicals, and the great government employee vote already in his pocket, a total of about twenty million votes to start out with. Didn't give the opposition much chance, especially with his promises not to send our boys abroad to fight'

But this year there are new elements. Truman, after deliberately cracking the Democratic Party into bits, is making a driving campaign for votes. Some say that the party will put its pieces together again after the campaign. I don't believe it. It looks to me like the Humpty Dumpty of nursery rhyme fame; "and all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put Humpty Dumpty togetheragain."

In Texas especially, famous old Democratic newspapers are beating the drums editorially in favor of Dewey, including such papers as the Dallas News, the Galveston News (oldest Democratic newspaper in the state), and the Houston Post and Chronicle (the latter published by Jesse H. Jones.) A fair example of what these papers say about Truman can be gained from these editoiial remarks from the Dallas News: (Heading: With little to give, Truman gives it all.) "A public figure has difficulty putting his best foot forward when the best foot isn't such-a-much. In a campaign tour that would be difficult for a Demosthenes, Harry Truman finds that his principal handicap is Harry

Truman. The unimpressive, balding little man without platform presence, phrase-maliing command, or the power to sway an audience is entitled to admiration for the gameness of his battle. He is giving all that he has. He has so little to give."

While I was raised a Democrat as was my father b9fore me, I was never the kind that my friend Stanley Horn, of Nashville, Editor of The Southern Lumberman, has always been. Stanley says he was brought up in the belief that should he ever raise his hand to vote the Republican ticket, that hand would fall palsied at his side. Flowever he recently remarked that he is in something of a fix now, since he cannot follow the little Pendergast man, and still hates to vote Republican.

**{<

The Democratic Party that I knew was founded on two main planks-states' rights, and free trade. Since free trade is gone and they spit on States' rights at the Demo' cratic. national convention, I feel that free lancing is the political order of the day. As far as the New Deal is concerned, everything about it is and has from its beginning been abhorrent to me. Before the nominations I was pulling for Douglas MacArthur for President. His great record and personality were foremost in my mind. But in the back of my head was THIS thought; that if MacArthur was President he might some day be present when some hydrophobia polecat like Vishinsky was spitting his venom at the United States. I can't help wondering how many teeth the little Ruskie would have missing one minute after he uttered his first insult. And we've been needing some such action for a long time. You can't tell me anyone would utter an insult to this nation in MacArthur's presence. The Magnificent Mac would rise up and obliterate him. {<**

Now I'm pulling for Mr. Dewey. Again my chiif reasons for so doing are unorthodox. I have two such reasons, which I shall now unfold. First, he is a grand prosecutor. Not since Hercules cleaned out the stables whose name is so hard to spell, has there been such need of a cleaning job as there is in Washington; and has been for the past sixteen years. I know that many millions of American businessmen feel that way. So when Mr. Dewey promised that if elected "there will begin the biggest unraveling, unsnarling, untangling operation in our nation's history," right away I daid to myself-"That's for me." I can hardlY wait' * * ,.

My second reason for pulling for Dewey is Mrs. Dewey. She goes with Governor Dewey on all his political trips, and they tell me she gets more votes than her husband does. She is beautiful to look at, charming and gracious in manner, highty intelligent in speech, yet a modest, gentle, lovely lady. She gets my support, even if I did not approve so highly of her husband.

I must now speak " *Jru l, 1."*" for Henry wallace. Wait ! Don't start throwing things at me yet. What I mean is that Henry no doubt is the strange, confused,

(Continued on Page 12)