The Daily Alaska Empire

JOHNSON AND THE NRA.

The personality of Gen. Hugh S. Johnson, NRA generalissimo, his great driving force, his saltiness of speech and the determination he is exhibiting in putting the Blue Eagle campaign over are being impressed on the entire country. The General seems to have won completely all of the corps of Washington correspondents who delight in printing new "Johnson stories."

Something of all these qualities are present in this pungent story he told during a speech, as reported in a special dispatch from the National capital to the New York World-Telegram:

Once there was a very poor farmer, ploughing a field with an ox and a mule. In the midst of the furrow the ox had an idea. He said to himself, "I don't need to go on pulling together." So he laid down and chewed his cud—he would not get up and he would not pull.

So the farmer got in to the yoke with the mule. The ox ambled home and ate his hay. At sundown the mule came home tired and worn out and the ox was rested and talkative. He asked the mule:

"What did the farmer say?"

"Nothing—he just pulled on together with me."

"Didn't he say anything?"

"Nope."

"Didn't he even mention my name?"

"Nope." And then the mule remembered.

"Oh, yes," said the mule, "a man drove along in a buckboard, and the farmer went out to the fence and borrowed a chew of tobacco. Remember now that he did mention your name."

"Who was the man?" asked the ox. The answer was:

"That was the butcher."

Now, I don't know enough about this quarrel [the coal crisis] to say who is the mule and who is the ox in this story, but I know that the field is not being ploughed. I know the farmer is the long suffering American people, and I know that the butcher is the public spirit and opinion that is awake all over this land at the sound of the voice of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and God help the man or group of men that stands against his drive on this depression!

When Gen. Johnson told this story he had in mind the differences in the great coal mining industry that were preventing the signing of a code under which it could operate as a member of the NRA family. Though it was so addressed, it nevertheless, is not without point to all of us, employer and consumer as well. The employer owes it to his fellowman to get in line, and most of Juneau's employers are doing it, and the consumer owes it to the country and to those who are Blue Eagle firms to patronize them.