“Now, let’s see if I’m getting you right, Mr. Moorehouse. You feel that with your connections with advertising and big business you want to open up a new field in the shape of an agency to peaceably and in a friendly fashion settle labor disputes. Just how would you go about it?”
“I am sure that organized labor would coöperate in such a movement,” said G. H. Barrow, leaning forward on the edge of his chair. “If only they could be sure that… well, that…”
“That they weren’t getting the wool pulled over their eyes,” said the judge, laughing.
“Exactly.”
“Well, gentlemen, I’m going to put my cards right down on the table. The great motto upon which I have built up my business has always been coöperation.”
“I certainly agree with you there,” said the judge, laughing again and slapping his knee. “The difficult question is how to bring about that happy state.”
“Well, the first step is to establish contact… Right at this moment under our very eyes we see friendly contact being established.”
“I must admit,” said G. H. Barrow with an uneasy laugh, “I never expected to be drinking a highball with a member of the firm of Planet and Wilson.”
The judge slapped his fat thigh. “You mean on account of the Colorado trouble…? You needn’t be afraid. I won’t eat you, Mr. Barrow… But, frankly, Mr. Moorehouse, this doesn’t seem to me to be just the time to launch your little project.”
“This war in Europe…” began G. H. Barrow.
“Is America’s great opportunity… You know the proverb about when thieves fall out… Just at present I admit we find ourselves in a moment of doubt and despair, but as soon as American business recovers from the first shock and begins to pull itself together… Why, gentlemen, I just came back from Europe; my wife and I sailed the day Great Britain declared war… I can tell you it was a narrow squeak… Of one thing I can assure you with comparative certainty, whoever wins, Europe will be economically ruined. This war is America’s great opportunity. The very fact of our neutrality…” “I don’t see who will be benefited outside of the munitionsmakers,” said G. H. Barrow.
Ward talked a long time, and then looked at his watch, that lay on the desk before him, and got to his feet. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I have just time to dress for dinner.” Morton was already standing beside the desk with their hats. It had gotten dark in the room. “Lights, please, Morton,” snapped Ward. As they went out Judge Planet said, “Well, it’s been a very pleasant chat, Mr. Moorehouse, but I’m afraid your schemes are a little idealistic.” “I’ve rarely heard a business man speak with such sympathy and understanding of the labor situation,” said G. H. Barrow. “I only voice the sentiments of my clients,” said Ward as he bowed them out.
Next day he spoke at a Rotary Club luncheon on “Labor Troubles: A Way Out.” He sat at a long table in the big hotel banquet hall full of smells of food and cigarettes, and scurrying waiters. He spread the food a little round his plate with a fork, answering when he was spoken to, joking a little with Judge Planet, who sat opposite him, trying to formulate sentences out of the haze of phrases in his mind. At last it was time for him to get to his feet. He stood at the end of the long table with a cigar in his hand, looking at the two rows of heavyjowled faces turned towards him.
“When I was a boy down along the Delaware…” He stopped. A tremendous clatter of dishes was coming from behind the swinging doors through which waiters were still scuttling with trays. The man who had gone to the door to make them keep quiet came stealthily back. You could hear his shoes creak across the parquet floor. Men leaned forward along the table. Ward started off again. He was going on now; he hardly knew what he was saying, but he had raised a laugh out of them. The tension relaxed. “American business has been slow to take advantage of the possibilities of modern publicity… education of the public and of employers and employees, all equally servants of the public… Coöperation… stockownership giving the employee an interest in the industry… avoiding the grave dangers of socialism and demagoguery and worse… It is in such a situation that the public relations counsel can step in in a quiet manly way and say, Look here, men, let’s talk this over eye to eye… But his main importance is in times of industrial peace… when two men are sore and just about to hit one another is no time to preach public service to them… The time for an educational campaign and an oral crusade that will drive home to the rank and file of the mighty colossus of American uptodate industry is right now, today.”
There was a great deal of clapping. He sat down and sought out Judge Planet’s face with his blue-eyed smile. Judge Planet looked impressed.
Newsreel XVI
the Philadelphian had completed the thirteenth lap and was two miles away on the fourteenth. His speed it is thought must have been between a hundred and a hundred and ten miles an hour. His car wavered for a flash and then careered to the left. It struck a slight elevation and jumped. When the car alighted it was on four wheels atop of a high embankment. Its rush apparently was unimpeded. Wishart turned the car off the embankment and attempted to regain the road. The speed would not permit the slight turn necessary, however, and the car plowed through the frontyard of a farmer residing on the course. He escaped one tree but was brought up sideways against another. The legs being impeded by the steering gear they were torn from the trunk as he was thrown through
I want to go
To Mexico
Under the stars and stripes to fight the foe
SNAPS CAMERA; ENDS LIFE
gay little chairs and tables stand forlornly on the sidewalk for there are few people feeling rich enough to take even a small drink
PLUMBER HAS 100 LOVES
BRINGS MONKEYS HOME
missing rector located losses in U S crop report let baby go naked if you want it to be healthy if this mystery is ever solved you will find a woman at the bottom of the mystery said Patrolman E. B. Garfinkle events leading up to the present war run continuously back to the French Revolution
UNIVERSITY EXPELS GUM
they seemed to stagger like drunken men suddenly hit between the eyes after which they made a run for us shouting some outlandish cry we could not make out
And the ladies of the harem
Knew exactly how to wear ’em
In oriental Baghdad long ago.
The Camera Eye (23)
this friend of mother’s was a very lovely woman with lovely blond hair and she had two lovely daughters the blond one married an oil man who was bald as the palm of your hand and went to live in Sumatra the dark one married a man from Bogota and it was a long trip in a dugout canoe up the Magdalena River and the natives were Indians and slept in hammocks and had such horrible diseases and when the woman had a baby it was the husband who went to bed and used poisoned arrows and if you got a wound in that country it never healed but festered white and maturated and the dugout tipped over so easily into the warm steamy water full of ravenous fish that if you had a scratch on you or an unhealed wound it was the smell of blood attracted them sometimes they tore people to pieces
it was eight weeks up the Magdalena River in dugout canoes and then you got to Bogota