Henderson daily dispatch., 1939-06-01
THOUGHTS ON DULL READING
AND PESSIMISM.

Merle Thorpe, in Nations Business
When a member of the Cabinet
and, the head of the Commerce De-
partment al mat. states that the re-
ports of the National Chambers An
nual Meeting made dull reading,
the comment invites elaboration.
It is doubtful if the business COM
munity could ever compete on equal
terms With the Official Planners and
DISPENSERS in the authorship of hot
news. Business can only repeat, as
it did at its annual meeting, the dull
prose of q "a; that you can't have
your cake and eat it, too: that taxes
are paid in the sweat of every man
who labors.
How can such dull reading stand
up against the daredevil, death
defying circus stunts of the District
of Columbia?
What chance has statement of
old-time thrift, self respect, pay-as-
you-go virtues against the front page
news of the massacre of little pigs,
the mobilization of rakes, for leaf
juggling, the plowing under, the Or
deal of the potato growers, tree belts
and Greenbelts, the yaTdsticks, court
packing, deficit financing, the Ma
tanuSka mirage, the mumbo-jumbo
of "parity" and farm allotments and
quotas, grocery stamps to reliefers,
the. tidal wave of taxes, the rain of
laws, a million citizens added to
bureaucracy, the nonstop climb of
administrative absolutism, and the
daily evidence of politics
exerted in high places?
The w. p. A. itself never makes
"dull reading" Man bites dog" is
the time-honored example of excit-
ing news. How close to the ideal,
then, are the news items that the w.
P. A. has a project to instruct its
workers how 10 see Europe on So a
day that the American Fedora
ton Of Actors has fined two Holly
wood members $40 for cracking a w.
P. A. joke that the w. P. A. dis
tributed go women's ski suits in In
dependence. Kansas, and announces
that limited number of tuxedos are
available at Kansas State headquar-
ters .. That the w. F. A. theater
projects have produced 1900 plays at
an average cost of $4,000, with aver
age receipts of $500 . d. that a w. P.
A.. sewing center in Omaha made
so. many diapers that State head
quarters distributed a quantity of
them in surplus commodity packages
to aged persons on relief.
Dull reading" indeed, is the busi-
ness mans review of conditions that
brought the country an 8O-billion-
dollar income and recommendation
of conditions that would permit il
again. Dull reading that the most
gigantic spending program of the
ages still finds the number of unem-
ployed at the 1888 peak, and in
dlvldual annual incomes down from
$672 ten years ago to $490 today.
The secretary, it would seem
wants a world of optimism-"T "There
was an awful lot of pessimism (at the
chambers annual meeting) and
don't belong to that school OF
thought"
1t would be charitable to interpret
the secretary's appraisal of the cham
pers speakers in the light of his own
ADMISSION that he had been out of
touch with Washington for ten
weeks" At the very moment he was
Iepfoaching the business communitv
1or its pessimisnl, three events were
taking place within a stones throw
OF. his office: The mayors of our four
largest cities were testifying before
a House Appropriation Committee
that unless Federal aid is continued
tragedy will follow" with "resl,ltS
100 terrible to contemplate" DR.
Parran, surgeon general of the limit
ed States Public Health Service
clamorlng for more money, rides in
belatedly on the war scare to warn
us that "our nation is not physically
fit for war" And the Senate. with,
out dissenting voice, was voting 10
up" the farm grant of the House bv
46 per cent ~
1t would seem, then, that on one
count business is guilty. Its prose is
not amusing; it is as dull as the de-
calogue or as the old convboolx
maxims of horse-and-buggy davs. On
the second count, business can on1,,
plead that it has no monopolv of
pessimism, that, as of the given date
it enjoyed the corroborative testi,
mony OF mayors, man of medicine
and the Senate confessinr that 49,
farmers plight was worse than budN
get estimates by third of a billion