Milford chronicle., 1932-07-22
QUIT KICKING AND GO TO WORK

Continual bowling about reduced
earnings of many corporations is
doing much to prolong the depres-
sion, intimidate the individual and
drive money into hiding.
Why shouldn't corporation and
private earnings fall below the
peaks of two or three years ago?
We were then living under abnormal
conditions. 80 ~r
When an automobile salesman
without any capital could open an
expensive show room and sell auto
mobiles as fast as he could get them,
we were not living in normal times.
When bond salesman without any
practical experience, capital or
knowledge of the intrinsic value of
the securities he handled, could open
an office equipped with expensive
furniture and oriental rugs, and sell
securities, bonds, stocks, etc., to a
clamOring public, and make money
faster than he ever dreamed of, or
dinary caution should have warned
anybody conditions were not normal.
When a real estate operator could
take practically worthless land and
sell it at fabulous figures which no
normal crop value could justify, it
should have been self-evident that
there was something wrOn. And so
on through every line of industrial,
agricultural and financial activity.
During ten years of imitation,
countless persons came to think
that by their own ability and
shrewdness they were creating
wealth for themselves by specula-
tion when, as matter of fact, most
of them were creating nothing and
saving nothing while they lived in
a FOOLS paradise which they thought
would last forever.
The majority of persons have
more today than they had in pre-war
times but they complain about hav-
ing less because they are making
comparisons on false basis.
This is true of individuals and it
is true of companies. Industrial con-
Germs expanded beyond any normal
requirements. They have endeav-
ored to maintain operations on an
inflated basis which cannot be done
because there is no longer any arti-
fetal demand to maintain such pro-
duction.
All over the nation, One-man in
dustries and one-man farms are
starting again on Debated basis.
You can drive through the country
and see little "shacks" springing up
on cheap land and in the far-away
places. The occupants of these lit
tie homes are going to produce their
living and gradually make a little
surplus The big farmers who |
bought high-priced land on the !
strength of high-priced crops, as
we'll. as the Industries which built |
and, equipped plants at peak prices |
and built up peak overheads, are all /
going to have to readjust themselves J
to the basis of the man who is start
ing at the bottom today. The laboring |
man who enjoyed wartime wages for
the past decade is in the same boat.
The same imitation that affected in
dustry and the individual also al
fected government and taxation, and
is among the last to
recognize conditions and reduce its
expansion accordingly.
The trouble with government is that
its managers four public officials
and public servants) will not reduce
their own functions voluntarily. The l
reduction will have to be forced by
4 tax-weary people who, after they
have adjusted their own personal
and business affairs, will turn to
heir governmental problems which
N large measure they have per-
nitted to expand, by their own in
Inference, without check during the
past decade.
It may be hard medicine to take
lut it is reality and the sooner we
recognize the conditions and adjust
ourselves to them, the sooner will
We conquer the depression by mere
y returning to more normal stand
lrds of living.