SALVATION IN BOOKS

While other captains of industry have cudgeled their brains to sell luxuries to an impoverished world, the publishers have suffered a relatively slight depreciation in the sale of books. And now they have happily hit upon a scheme to give their wares the character of a necessity. The American Book-sellers Association and the National Association of Book Publishers have offered to cooperate with the President's Relief Organization. Furthermore, the offer has been flatteringly accepted by Mr. Walter S. Gifford.

Mr. Gifford remarks that these associations can render valuable aid in "making available in libraries and else-where such technical works as would prove most valuable to persons who are using their time to further technical and educational training."

This is the first time that the President's Organization has thus committed itself to an educational program. Before this, it has been merely a national publicity group behind a multitude of small doles, without any explicit campaign for economic betterment. Now it proposes to give to the idle a gift more permanent than money, the technical knowledge that will enable them to find work. Also, it proposes to give to business leaders the information that will help them to rebuild the economic world intelligently. In this way, the practical value of books, now known to a relatively small number of alert individuals, is to become widely known through the force of national publicity.