Gifford on Wufus

Into the address which he was to read to the annual Associated Press luncheon in Manhattan this week, President Walter Sherman Gifford of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., largest corporation in the land, had the wit to put a paragraph which the Press would surely quote:

"And we have also with us those who want to return to the good old times. They are of the order of the Wufus birds. As you know, these interesting birds fly backward to keep the wind out of their eyes and they are not interested in where they are going but only in where they have been. . . . The Wufus birds and alarmists are talking to the wrong people. The American people are not looking backward, they are not afraid, and no one can direct them by threats."

He also said: "Whose depression is this? If, as has been said, a fundamental cause of it is greed, who are they that did not add their part to the picture? This is a democracy of blame as well as opportunity. We were all in it--flapper, financier, newspaper man and manufacturers, laborers and politicians. It is true that its evil effects do not fall on all equally but the evil effects have been pretty widely distributed nevertheless. Fixing the blame is the occupation of the people who have lost their nerve. Finding the causes and planning the future is the part for the constructive minded people. . . . The immediate present, the statisticians of the telephone company tell me, shows signs of improvement. How fast that improvement will be measured in weeks or months I don't know. But in the telephone company we have every confidence in the future."

A. T. T. made $45,185,413 for the first three months of 1931, an increase of about $5,000,000 over the first three months of 1930.

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