﻿Shortage of Skill Is in Top Positions 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Seventy-eight hundred unemployed at Erie, Pa. A cynic opines the rest of the population is working on the WPA, CCC, and NYA. 
I presume some are laboring on the “straight beg?” 

Draft has had no appreciable effect upon the army of unemployed—some of them the finest exploitable timber the world has ever seen. 

However, an alarmingly high percentage of young men are being rejected by selective service boards because of physical disabilities. (Girls please note.) I suppose depression diet has injured their pep and self-respect. Just plain, common jugginess, almost as virrulent as hook-worm, sleeping-sickness or pellagra. 
Fasting may be good for the soul, but damme for a sucker if it gets by the army exams. 

The defense program will have an inevitable decline (fade-out) and the youth problem will grab the center of the stage with emphasis. 

Now we aged and decrepit: 
The relinquishment of 50 over-aged destroyers to England sets a bad precedent. According to that theory, we old work-horses may be drummed out of the country or traded-in for cargo of magnesium, or shipload of baloon tires? I think I we old codgers are getting soft, not only in the head. 
“Shortage of skilled workers in the plants,” is the cry. Conceded, but not only that—too much mediocrity in the saddle, also; ‘n’ that’s what hurts. You cannot run industry under the principle of lunkheadedness or pretense of intelligence. 
Sharing orders: 
Manufacturers are pooling their resources, farming out portions of orders for production in the idle hours of machinery in part time plants. The answer is yours. 
It also makes a greater spread of the pie to the favored class and enhances the numbers of the commercial “knucklers down.” Great is moral suasion, hey! 

Only one page of sheriff’s sales by virtue of sundry writs of Fieri Facias, Levari Facias, Venditione Exponas, etc. 
Lord help us all! Is it as bad as all that? We’ll be sold out of our pants yet! 

In 1939, USA sold USSR $50,000,000 worth of goods. In 1940, USA sold USSR $100,000,000 worth of goods. 

Pennsylvania NYA is busily engaged in building chairs for schools and other public establishments and the pay is somewhat larger than in the involutary workhouses in Massachusetts that almost wrecked the chair industry of that state. We have a right to believe that the Pennsylvania NYA chair industry is on a self-sustaining basis, and if its products are not to replace existing furniture, we can all sit down in the near future and place our feet upon a table. 

What ever success Herr Hitler has had is due to the fact that he combines action with organization; he consolidates his gains by further organization. In other words, he is a two-handed Hitler. During the last world war it was mostly sound and fury, power and bluster—no organization before or after action. 
The purpose of these remarks is to show that organization and action go hand in hand; that action must not precede organization; that organization must precede and follow action. So the first business before the house is organization. Otherwise you do not act—except to your sorrow. 

“Gale preceded Willkie to Azores.” Great bodies cast their shadows before them. 
It will be remembered Willkie is a promoter of no mean proportions. He was on his way to Merrie England to witness first-hand the havoc (if any) of war’s pyrotechnics. I speak but the truth—well, half of it. 

“A cordwood cutter had cut a hundred cords of wood and when he ‘squared up’ he was given a check that bounced. He returned to the contractor and was assured ‘the check is good,’ and so he back-pedaled the 15 odd miles. 
“It bounced again. 
“He returned to the scene of his toils and burnt up his share of the cordwood.” 
Many of us more intelligent cordwood cutters take the position that he should not have continued playing tag with a bouncing check, 30 miles to a bounce. 
Aren’t bosses grand! 
“Contractor claims he burned up a couple extra cords”—for the mileage, I presume. 
There was no labor union there. 

A peace organization must be genuine and verile in order to withstand the blandishments of the executioners. 
We have no such organization. 
So tighten your belt. See you in heaven. You are using the masters’ brain. not your own. 

Music of the past wasn’t so hot. It cannot speak for itself—we have to be assured by the announcer: “the composer was great.” 
The music of our day speaks for itself and we don’t have to be told, “the composer was rotten.”