The Wilmington morning star., 1940-10-03
Fair Enough
Bv wEsTBROOK PEGLER

to know that views ana oPlA-
ions expressed in this article
are those of the author and
may not always harmonic
with its position.-The Editor.
NEW YORK, Oct. 2.-The most
highly civilized man I know is a
sallow young Georgian of % years
or so who was born in a log house
chinked with mud, such as may be
seen from the highways and the
train windows there. He quit school
when he was eight years old to
help out around the poverty-strick-
en- patch on which his family lived
and, a few years later, Joined out
with a building contractor to earn
a little cash money and learn a
trade.
He lives in a small Connecticut
mill town where squalor consider
ably hides unsightliness by budding
along a side road t--e a stream
which could be beautiful and in
some of it's reaches is undeniably
lovely. In this particular stretch,
however, the river is badly fouled
with crumbling industrial outbuild.
ings and the familiar clutter of old
tires, oil cans and all such.
The settlement around the mill,
which manufactures wire and wire
products-a historic industry in
this particular section-depends on
the mill for much of its living, but
the wages are low, the work is
intermittent and there is no mar
gin. My friend has a wife and little
boy, and he works in the mill as
assistant machinist now, w h j C h
means that he continues to work
during layoffs in the mill, because
that is the time when the machin-
cry is frightened up and repaired.
1 won't attempt to 60 in, details
about that, because I don't know
much about it and, that isn't my
story.
My story is that my friend is
the most reliable and r~e-~1rceful
man that I have ever known. He
is a carpenter and cabinet maker;
he can mix plaster and concrete,
build a chimney, take down and
reassemble an automobile and
mend an old job with parts picked
up at the wreckers' yard. He is
an electrician, plumber and steam
filter and a farmer, and he can
butcher his OWN meat.
He can build a whole hou-e start
ing with the excavation and foun-
dalton, and if 1 give an impress
sion that he is just c typical old
time, rural handy man or tinker
l have done him an injustice and
mauled the story. That kind can't
do anything well, whereas my
friend does everything with the ex-
pert touch. That is why I say he
is the most civilized man I ever
have known, although he n ev e r
really went to school but just
dropped in for a couple of those
short winter sessions in a rural
seat of learning in a backward
Georgia county, during which,
nevertheless, he learned to read
and write and to reckon up figures
well enough for his purposes. Put
him down on a frontier and he
would get by where other men
would freeze and starve. Isn't that
civilization?
My friend is honest, too, and,
although he will take a dram, it
doesn't come too much, and he is
always on the job in the morning.
When he joined out with the con-
tractor down in Geor"ia the latter
was building a house three stories
high, and my friend--just an i'm
mature boy at the time-was set
to work pushing sand up to the
first story, then to the second and
finally to the third in a wheelbar-
row along inclined planks.
The first few weeks he. thought
the work would kill him, and color
ed casual laborers on the same
job would work a day or two, draw
their pay and wander off, but he
stuck it because the contractor had
told him he would zach him all
about building houses if he would
stick around. He worked with the
contractor four or five years, send
ing part of his money home, and
when he finally decided to come
north he had all these new skills
added to the others, which he had
acquired farming the patch at
home.
There are a lot of potential NUM-
tons plants around our part of the
country, but they say these places
can't produce munitions because
the machinery doesn't exist, but l
tell you what they can do. They
could turn my friend loose in an
automobile boneyard or a town
dump with a fair quota of old
washboilers and baby carriage on
it and he would come up with a
workable ainti-aircraft gun or tank
in due time.
And if a special kind of machine
was wanted to bore the tube of
a special kind of cannon you
wouldn't have to bother wi, blue
prints. Just give him a rough idea
and a couple of weeks to work on
it in his spare time. Then one
night he would be around at the
door saying: Il got that machine
for you to make cannon with.
Where shall l put it?"
Believe it or not, my friends
name is Johnny Brown. l don't
know why they haven't called him