The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1937-10-22
TheCherry
" Where with our
roo Little Hatchet
we tell the truth
about many things, sometimes pre-
foundly, sometimes Aippantly,
sometimes recklessly. -.


The ponderous pundits of profit turn
loose their statistical stunts and the
populace is supposed to hold its breath
in awe and believe all it sees in the
papers.
Read the financial pages of the
daily papers. Short memories forget
what they read yesterday and SO mar
vel at what they read today.
Nothing is more inconsistent than
the various tabulations turned out by
the multitude of agencies represent
ing big business.
The United States Chamber of Com
merce gets pontifcal and turns out
its tabulations and washes them along
the road with general libations of
advice.
The Nam. goes into trance and
Little Egypt pours forth words of
wisdom based on lot Of so-called
findings.
Business magazines by the score
view alarm, point with pride and gloat
glamorously over what they fondly
call the truth, as found in their re-
sourches.
Various foundations, safe in the
snug harbor of financial security Gre
ated by rich men i'll at ease in the
midst of the gold, tell us what we
must do to avoid shipwreck, what we
must do to be saved and just why it
is that they are repositories of all
wisdom.
Probably the world never had SO
much advice or took so little of it.
| Labor itself pours out advice.
| OF labor's advice it must be said
it relies more than most others upon
the impartial generally findings of
governmental statistical agencies.
Statietics are the ammunition used
by contenders. They are the filling
| for bombs in economic conflict.
Labor makes more use of such
material now than it used to---but
| still not enough.
Andy Mellon, the "best treasurer
since Hamilton" used statistics to
good purpose. He got taxes on the
rich reduced by their use And the rich
came and got voluminous exemptions
/ by similar means.
And then when Andy Mellon passed
out of this mundane existence, it was
found that he had wound all his stat
istics up into a ball which he called
foundation-tax exempt
Those who get the wealth away
from others know how to use fig
ures.
They know how to make you think
you have been convinced, which is just
as good as if you really were con-
vinced
To repeat all over the place there
are the dug-outs of big business, pour
ing forth ponderous argument, all
backed up by rows and rows of fig
ures. They look very convincing until
some better statistical surgeon sticks
the point of a knife into the heap
and then, down goes McGinty, London
bridge and the House of Cards.
But most folks are not skilled stat
istical surgeons, and so the evil dose
goes down the intellectual gullet.
And the moral is that labor
can't omnia vincit until it knows
as much about the game as the
other fellow, plus little more.
The cruel and mean part of this is
that labor is so willing to join in the
stupid yammer at brains" even
while it joyously pays it school taxes
aind sends its own kind to college
whenever it can.
A practical application of all this
at the moment is the general labor
inability to understand the Wagner
housing act so as to check those who
would distort it. And the housing act
was enacted to build houses for the
poor, with a flow of wages to those
who do the building thus, a 100 per
cent labor law that may well go hay
wire because labor men can't see their
way through the statistics and techni-
calities of it. There are times when
dull brains make for idle hands.
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