Montana labor news., 1932-10-20
TIMELY and UNT|MELY.
. OBSERVATIONS .
(By ADAM COALDIGGER)
WHY WORRY?
(By ADAM COALDIGGER)

Tive Jhe devil MS due. When
two months ago Washington adj
dressed a request to the newspapers
to play up all signs, indications and
tokens of returning prosperity, the
scribes fell to it %a-whooping. Soon
headlines made their appearance in
black, bold and red type proclaiming
the glad tidings. Day after day
stocks made new highs over the
lowest lows Of the week or month
before. Steel production increased
II per cent over what it was when
there wasn't any. Car loadings, that
other infallible business barometer,
rose from next to nothing to almost
quite as bad. Bonds kept growing
strong with every tick of the ticker.
Even wheat, corn, cotton, hogs and
cattle gave signs of returning to
life.
Perusing the six-point figures be-
meath the flaming headlines, it didn't
look so encouraging. Things went
up and down. Up today and down
tomorrow. Tucked away among the
cigarette, toothpaste and pink pill
cure advertising, one also read about
increasing unemployment and the
wall Of charitable organizations
pleading for bigger and better con-
tributions for the filing Of deeper,
wider and longer longings.
What a pity prosperity is not
responsive to the art of Guten-
berg, for if good type well-dis-
played, accompanied by well-wish-
ing, could have dispelled the SOM
bre gloom that has been lowering
for three years over the land of
the bent and the home of the
broke, those flaming headlines
should have turned the trick. But
alas and alack, the bump in the
hump was followed by another
dump in the slump and now every
thing is back to where it shouldn't
be.
Gone are the sixteen billion psy-
Geological dollars the agitated stock
and sack holders had already felt in
their p~sychical pockets. Gone are
the untold millions of phantom shek-
els the farmers had raked in with
their wishbones. Gone the broad
smile on the face of my grocery
mar who only a short month ago
assured me of his unsuitable faith
in my payability-eventually if not
now. And my banker looks at me
again with the customary icicles in
his eye.
They say faith moves mountains.
Why then can't faith fill depres-
sions? Pm losing my faith in faith.
Ever since this temporary depression
started, the very best people assured
me that there was no depression,
or that it was only a temporary de-
preston, or that the depression vas
flattening out, or had reached the
bottom of the trough last fall and
had been climbing toward the sunny
sunlight where prosperity waits just
around the corner ever since. And
here I am still down in the trough
and flatter than a pancake planned
on both sides.
So I've been wondering, could it
be as the red ravens have so vocifer-
ously proclaimed that there is really
an economic basis for this seeming
depression? Could it be that those
ten million unemployed refuse to re-
turn to their alleged waiting jobs
because they have lost confidence
in their alleged jobs? Why don't
people buy now when everything Is
so cheap that nobody can afford it?
What became of the apple sellers
who used to infest the street cor
ners? Did they lose their faith in
apples, too, even as l have? In
the good old days when apples were
still sold on every corner and IN
the street between them, | used to
eat apples until my inners felt like
an over-worked cider mill. I'm a
patriot. When my country called
for apple-eaters / answered, "Ayel"
and ate them. But what good did
it do? The apple sellers starved
selling apples to me. ! f~oundered
eating apples and now the apple
raisers are starving because I'm
apple-logged.
Next | was told to spend an addi-
tional five bucks a week and that
would drive the depression away.
Continued on page four)