TURNING STONES INTO BREAD

California, land of promise in times of prosperity and catch-basin of the penniless in this time of depression, has adopted heroic measures in regard to its "non-resident unemployment situation." Twelve hundred recruits swell the ranks of the idle each day in California. Not all can be assisted by the state, and the problem is to find a sensible basis of classification. Accordingly, the state is to establish rock-piles along the eastern frontier, where the jobless can go to work splitting stones; and labor-camps in the interior, where the unemployed can earn food and shelter by cutting fire trails.

The plan is a significant one. In contrast to Owen D. Young's tearful pleas for money to tide over the starving, here is a hard-headed measure of a man's real willingness to work. The asperities of rock-hammer and timber-axe will soon enough sort out the industrious needy from the conveniently unemployed. Any able-bodied man can keep body and soul together at the work provided without a drain upon the state, thus greatly lessening the need for downright dole.