PHILOSOPHER Vol. 8 MAY, 1939 No. 5 KALAMAZOO VEGETABLE PARCHMENT CO.. PARCHMENT @e KALAMAZOO e MICHIGAN e U.S.A. KVP 4 PHILOSOPHER Sent to you by the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company, often called “The World’s Model Paper Mill,”’ with the hope that it may aid in « better understanding between man and man. Not copyrighted. If there is good here, we want to share it. Sent without charge to all KVP customers, and to others who request it on their firm’s business stationery. Vol. 8 MAY, 1939 No. 5 Uncle Jake Back (Editor’s note: Uncle Jake is just back from a trip to from “Down Under” Australia and New Zealand. Here are some of his com- ments as they appeared in his column in The Parchment News.) There is something about the appearance of these Australians and New Zealanders and their greeting of friendliness and kindliness that makes you just natural- ly fall in love with them. They are what we term “Honest-to-God Folks.” While we were there, we made the remark that if we had to live elsewhere than America, we would try mighty hard to become a citizen of either New Zealand or of Australia. You feel that you’d just like to stay a little longer or, as we heard all about us, “I’d like to live here.” | The intelligence of most of the inhabitants we ob- served and talked to is very high, and I would say also that the moral standing of the people of these two countries is above par. Their Sundays are observed religiously. All work ceases; even the movies are closed. The people attend church on Sunday morning, then go Makers and converters of PARCHMENT . WAXED . WRAPPING GREASEPROOF . LAMINATED . BOND . HOUSEHOLD PAPERS Specialists in FOOD PROTECTION PAPERS One KVP PHILOSOPHER out into the parks, the hillsides, or along the seashore for recreation on Sunday afternoon. We found that the people in both these countries take a great deal of interest in political affairs and the common workman, no matter what he may be, is well informed concerning political situations. We found Australia more progressive, more Ameri- can in her activities, in the manner in which they do business, and more hustle and bustle. It would be very difficuit for the average American to feel that he was in a foreign country. The Australians today are becoming manufacturing minded. For centuries the raising of sheep has been the source of much wealth. It was my great pleasure to talk to many men, both young and old, about the technique of sheep raising. I learned many things about sheep that I never knew before. I was wearing a wool suit; one of the sheep men looked at the cloth and said, “That wool came from Australia.” I said, “How do you know?” “Because of the fine texture of the wool.” Of course, this was of great interest so I asked him why the Australian wool is so fine. He explained to me that the sheep that were raised in the interior of Australia had to hustle to get enough food to keep from starving. It takes about 20 acres for one sheep and in their great activity to find food, they develop a fine strain of wool not found elsewhere. These sheep are then brought nearer to the coast where the pasture would be much better. Then they grow flesh that is needed, of course, in order to sell the | sheep. I am not sure, of course, whether all the in- formation I gleaned from these men was 100%. Men have made millions of dollars in the sheep K VP PHILOSOPHER business. Now these men have taken their surplus money and are getting it into factories. Their logic in this matter is sound. Australia is never going to be grown up unless they make the things that they use. They have built some very fine paper mills with the latest machinery and processes. This is also true of the steel business and in the chemical line. The special activity that is now going on is indeed very interesting. They have built tariff walls just as high as there ever were built in America to keep out foreign goods and to compel their own people to enter into the manufacture of these various commodities. We could detect very quickly the influence of Ameri- can people in their methods of merchandising as well as mass production in manufacturing. | This whole activity got into my blood, and imme- diately I said to a group of men, “You are going places here and I predict that you are going to grow faster in the next ten years than you have in a whole generation,” and they all agreed. I still give the advice to young men who are interested in manufacturing that Australia is a mighty good place to go for a good job. Another point worth noticing is that you have about all the climates there are in Australia. It is pretty much like the United States—you can choose your climate without leaving the country. I might mention that we saw very little poverty in the outskirts of their cities. The population is about 85% English. They have kept the bars on immigrants fastened tightly. In days to come they will permit cer- tain immigrants from Europe to land more easily. If these immigrants will do in Australia like they did in America, they will make the desert bloom like the Rose of Sharon. KVP PHILOSOPHER Paper is the modern. world’s most necessary com- modity. If you don’t believe it, keep track just for one day of the number of times your encounter it. al Don't You The worst thing about a depression, re- Believe It pression or whatever other polite name you want to give rotten business, is not the financial losses suffered, but the part it plays in wrecking homes. So many wives can’t understand why their husbands have changed so. They no longer come home whistling, singing and laughing, as in other days. All have been replaced by serious thinking. Worrying about how he is going to meet a payroll, replaces whistling. Trying to figure out a way to borrow money to save his business, doesn’t cause him to feel like sing- ing. And wondering how he is going to pay rent and household expenses is to him no laughing matter. As he sits before the fire in the livingroom after din- ner, silently and seriously trying to figure a way out, his wife wonders what it’s all about, and some wives get the idea that their husbands are no longer interested in them, but in other women. Under such conditions “other women” are the least of their thoughts. This is helped along by some men becoming grouchy, fault- finding, and the giving of short snappy answers to questions asked by their wives, or their children. But, they don’t mean to be that way at all. In truth they love their wives and children just as much as they ever did, and the fight they are making, is to insure their future happiness. In such times of trouble, every wife should do more than ever before to help her husband, and not add to his troubles by imagining silly things, and making untruthful charges. You have heard men say, “When I leave my busi- Four KVP PHILOSOPHER ness for home, I forget it until the next day,” and so have I. And, like you I never believed them. One thing sure, I never heard any man who had made a success of a business make such a statement. Nor did you. The fellow who works with his hands might truth- fully say it, but not the man who uses his brains.—c. c. Bd Give everyone the benefit of the doubt hoping they may be as charitable with you sometime. sae Mulley- No use in looking in the dictionary for it, b because it isn’t there. Mullegrubs was a gruns word coined by old Aunt Susan who lived across the street from our home when we were a lad and she used to run over and frequently visit with our mother. Aunt Susan never missed a funeral and she knew all of the town gossip. She knew everything that happened, and if it didn’t happen she drew on her imagination. Aunt Susan had a daughter, an old maid, who must have been born with blue glasses. She was always “low- down.” Everything was wrong, according to her ideas, and when in course of conversation mother would say, “How is Alice this morning?” Aunt Susan would reply, “QO, she has the mulleygrubs as usual,” meaning, of course, that she was looking at the world through her blue glasses. Well, according to our notion, brethren, there are too many people in the world right now who have the mul- leygrubs. Too many people are looking through blue glasses. Let’s take them off and see the sunshine. The sun is there although the clouds may occasionally hide it, but blue glasses prevent a lot of people from seeing it when it does shine.-—w. L. B. Five KVP PHILOSOPHER Old Rip Tollinger was buried last week, and his brother-in-law Hen Johnston come all th’ way from 'Io-way, seven hundred miles, to the funeral. Hen, who hadn’t spoke to Rip fer nigh on to thutty years, said he done it just to make sure they was buryin’ the right corpse. Sat Pushers and Our family physician has developed D a very prominent waistline. In Taggers . . fact, his belt buckle arrives con- siderably ahead of him on all occasions. One of his patients, a woman who came to him for treatment for the first time some twenty years ago, ap- peared at his office the other day with a new complaint. When the doctor had heard her description of her symptoms he said, “Now May, you are going to have to do something about your weight. You are getting altogether too heavy. Have you taken a look at your- self in the mirror lately? Your hips are getting mighty big, and it is spoiling your appearance.” Thereupon the forty-year-old matron gave the doc- tor a once-over with an appraising eye. She noted his rotund contour, and said, “Doctor, you may be right. But to tell you the truth, I would be just as willing to drag it as to push it.” Now there may not be much of a moral in the story, but it occurs to me that the doctor’ s criticism is a good deal like the criticism a good many of us offer for the benefit of our friends. It is a common thing for the pushers to make suggestions to the draggers. “I always hate to take advice from people who need it themselves,” was the way one sharp-nosed school teacher expressed the matter. | It is a common habit for Americans to offer critical comment on the subject of European politics. One of Cr v YT ITI I IT ~ SF SE TEE Six KVP PHILOS OP HER our lunch club speakers put in twenty minutes a few weeks ago, in his regular Wednesday “pep” talk, dis- cussing the moral failure of England and France in the Czechoslovakian crisis. But the United States did not rush to arms when Manchuria was invaded, and it sold war supplies to Italy for its Ethiopian campaign. There is a minister who pastors a church less than a hundred miles from us who spends a good deal of time talking about the sins of the big industralist who ac- cepted a raise from his board at the same meeting at which they cut the salary of the janitor. Now don’t think we are defending either the push- ers or the draggers. All we are trying to suggest is that pushers make poor advisors for draggers.—R. L. S. al Since their roles in the latest version of “The Smug- glers,’ we wonder why we used to think certain radio and screen people funny. fat Doctor’s According to the calendar, Mother’s Day Da is once more passed and gone, but so far Yorus as we are concerned, Mother’s Day is every day. Our mother passed on many years ago, but there is never a day that we do not think of her. Our father was a good man and a kind man but he was a stern man. Mother was the one whom we went to with our boyish troubles, she was the one who made excuses for us, and God bless her memory, every day is Moth- er’s Day to us. You may have had a stepmother. She may have been kind and considerate, but you never had but one real mother and so we are in entire sympathy with Mother’s Day. There is one man, however, whom we overlook in _ our homage paying and that is the family doctor. No, Seven KVP PHILOS OP HER he does not want to have any flowers, he does not want any bands to play for him, but if there is a heaven, and there is, our old family doctor gone these many years, has a front seat and isn’t called out on cold winter nights to minister to the sick and distressed. He didn’t want any praise, he simply did his duty as he saw it. He had a big heart. He was a teacher and a helper without hope of fee or reward and so we say God bless the doctors and let’s have a day for them while they are alive and can appreciate it. We want a Doctor’s Day. Who will start it-—w. L. B. sae No one can be honest without being truthful. se Man and /or The last time Aunt Mary soared to Mouse the top of the kitchen table shriek- "=" " =" ing “Mouse!” she came as near blasphemy as we have heard the dear old lady approach. “Land O’Goshen,” she sputtered, after we had repulsed, routed, and finally annihilated the enemy with a lucky swipe of the broom, “it does look like the Lord could have done better with His talents than to make a mouse!” But somehow we have never managed to steam up much wrath against this tiny nemesis of Aunt Mary’s, and of Aunt Marys the world over, even though our first acquaintance with one was not a happy meeting. We must have been about four when it happened. We had gone with father to the barn to feed old Wallace. Opening the oatbin cover, father saw a mouse scamper for cover, and suggested to the little boy that he climb in the box, catch the mouse, and take it as a present to mother at the house. KVP PHILOSOPHER By some miracle, the little boy did catch the mouse, and holding the astonished victim by the tail, started for the house, calling for mother to see his prize. About the time he got to the pump between the barn and the back porch, the mouse decided that things had gone far enough, crawled up his tail, bit one of the small fingers, and departed thence quickly. The small boy let out a yell of surprise and pain, which was redoubled when a tiny fleck of blood appeared. Mother rushed to the door, but not as fast as father, who had been watching the proceedings, ducked back into the barn. Old Wallace never got such a lengthy currying in his life, but mother still had plenty of fire left when he finally got to the house. He learned what a cruel trick he had played on an innocent little boy. Well, perhaps it was cruel, but we never held it “against him. Neither have we ever held another live mouse by the tail. Quite a sizeable chunk of literature and sayings would be missing from our language if there were no mice. Bobby Burns likely did best of all with his “wee sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie” and its great lesson that “the best-laid schemes 0’ mice and men gang aft a-gley and lea’e us naught but grief and pain for promised joy.” There are innumerable other references. Acting upon the self-put question, am I man or mouse, has put more backbone into hitherto spineless men than this world will ever know. We all pity the forlorn soul who is as poor as a church mouse; we wink knowingly about the mice who play when the cat’s away; we welcome the eve of the year when not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse! We get ribbed when we show up for work with a mouse under our eye, one of our best fishing baits is an Nine KVP PHILOSOPHER artificial mouse, we ask for mouse cheese when we want it mild. Junior is far from being quiet as a mouse when mother combs the mouse nest out of his scrambled hair, and we have that wretched mousetrap quotation attri- buted to Emerson. : Also, Mickey!—G. s. al Before We Got So There are some who will Civilized say that he is roasting in *" =" " * hades for it. We don’t know positively that he is, but the evidence is that the act hardly got on the Good Deed side of the ledger. We refer to the time Zed Hawkins and his mule went to church. The time was around 1870, and it was a country church down in southeastern Pennsylvania. Zed and some of his cronies had spent the Sabbath afternoon drinking, and by evening Zed was pretty drunk, so much so, in fact, that he began boasting that he was afraid of neither God nor the devil, and would prove it if anybody cared to bet a bottle of whisky on the outcome. . Somebody offered to cover the bet provided he could name the test. Zed agreed, whereupon the fellow pro- posed that Zed jump on his mule, ride into the church then holding its evening service, and return to claim his bet. Zed said he would do better than that. He filled his pipe, emptied his pockets to show he had no matches, and promised to return with his pipe lighted. Well, he did. It was summer and the church doors were open. He forced the reluctant mule up the steps into the vestry, turned it down the left aisle, lighted his pipe from a candle near the pulpit, let out a maudlin whoop, and galloped out the other aisle and through Ten KVP PHILOSOP RLS the door. The people were too stunned by the sacrilege to restrain him. No, it is not a pretty story, but it happened. So did this one, perhaps a year or two earlier, in central Tlinois. Cyrus Throckmorton professed great religion. His vig- orous amens regularly bounced off the meetinghouse rafters twice every Sunday and every Wednesday night at prayer meeting. One day the minister called un- expectedly at the farm shortly before dinner, and the family found itself short of some of the delicacies with which farmers in those days liked to feed visiting min- isters. There wasn’t even a chicken about the place which permitted itself to be caught, which was probably a break for the preacher. Farmers didn’t hop in a car and drive six or eight miles to town for a couple of pounds of fresh meat or a loaf of bread like they do now. But that didn’t stump Cyrus. He disappeared in the vicinity of the barn, and when he reappeared, he had as nice a chunk of beef round as you could want. He had hacked it out of the hind leg of a yearling heifer. Yes, the heifer got better, just a limp was all, and the story would never have gotten out if the hired man hadn’t come around the corner just as Cyrus was sewing up the opening with harness thread. Now everyone knows, Elmer, that things like these two stories can’t happen again. We’re far too civilized now, and we tell you this merely to show you how far we have progressed in the last seventy years or so. By the way, Elmer, a camera nut like you will certainly get a kick out of that shot of a children’s hospital in Spain in this morning’s Star . . . the one set up in that old cathedral. It just doesn’t seem possible that you can hit a little thing like that while going two hundred miles an hour, and three miles up in the air!—c. s. _ Eleven Bev? PHI] LOS 0 PHER Two Letters from Terre Haute: “I use KVP Dusting Paper, Waxed Paper and Shelf Paper and couldn't keep house without them. I have used all kinds of ex- pensive furniture oils on my antique and modern furniture, but since using your oiled paper, I never want another ‘oiled rag’ in the house--for it is perfect.” from Detroit: “The clerk said ‘This is just as good’ and sold me a substitute for KVP Dusting Paper. I used about six feet of that substitute brand, and then made a special trip downtown for more KVP. Apparently, there is nothing just as good.” and a Poem To clean, then polish furniture Was a job I cailed terrific, Now DUSTING PAPER does them both, Boy -- that’s scientific! A fluent gossiper can spread more dirt over a community in a day than the population can clean up in a week. ia AES HMRI SIND Sah NORRIE Ne RETR DATES ACRES | te