The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-08-07
Daily Business
 Editorial
A Competent Cow
By RICHARD F. JOHNSTON

There is economy in a high-class personnel. Large corporations have discovered that. In time cities, states and counties will follow the [ lead. The waste of life is charge able to incompetency. TherL IS the waste of graft and stealage here and there sporadically, but that is drop in the bucket compared with the waste of incompetency of the personnel.
 There is the same waste wher- ever scrub stock of man or beast is employed. There is the same progressiveness and success where stock of high degree either of mer or beast is used. A hunter will not go on a bird hunt with mongrel. Why should he entrust his business to a two-footed one?
 Avon's Raleigh Lass of the Ames Farms, Mobile, is the new Alabama senior 2-year-old Jersey COW. In | 305 days she produced 10,085 pounds of milk and 481 pounds of butter-fat, thus besting Melia's Lakeview Lass with record of 46S pounds of butter-fat. Reduced to dollars and cents this COW earned for her owner in the 305 days total of $193.53.
 The estimate of $193.50 is a con- servative one, being based on but ter-fat at 40 cents pound, which is a low estimate of the average quotation for the period. The COW was earning at the rate of $218.80 per annum for butter-fat, while she also furnished a calf and the use of the skinned milk in the feeding of pigs, chickens, etc. She was also enriching the soil.
 No wonder the dairying indus try of Alabama has grown and does grow so rapidly. With the employment of such competent stock for producing butter-fat and transmitting competency to her descendants as exists in Avon's Ra- leigh Lass it is more than proven that the possibilities of this indus try in Alabama are without limit.
 It is pitiful to know that blind men are still dynamiting dipping vats. But, be it remembered, the Jews grumbled even when fed on quail and mama and sought Moses to lead them back to the flesh pots which they had lately fled.
 There is always the saving leaven of earnest, honest and progressive men who are ready and willing to be enlightened and to grasp a new thought. Only a few sensed the Golden Rule at first. Now it is the law of the civilized world. It was once law on Sundays and in junction of religious service. It is now the law of business.
 The annual conference board an- nounces that the wage-earner is more prosperous now than in 1920. The reason is simple one. Excess of rising wages over rising living costs was found to be IT and IS per cent greater in May, 1923, than in June, 1920. This conclusion was reached on study of reports of con- ditions in industrial plants employ. ing 500,000 men.
 The wise employe will be as gratified over this showing as the wage-earner. There have n profits in manufacture justifying the wages paid men. It is to the credit of the nation that price of product has not been raised in ex- act accordance with wages, but that the human equation has had the best of it.
 Big business is not doing the right or the wise thing when it seeks to thrust the total of every wage advance into the sales price of product. That was done in 1929 and that is why the debacle came and found unsold stocks on hand and inventories that had to be marked down. Greed always earns the reward of greed, which is indi- gestion and congestion.
 Business will always be the bet ter off the more it can afford to pay the wage-earner simultaneously with earning a fair profit. Beyond that it cannot go and should not be expected to go. l