To War

It all started with a few men sitting around the lobby of the Elks Club in Muncie, Ind. Tired of talking about national unemployment and the Depression, they decided to do something about joblessness in their own town. They canvassed homes and factories, asked everyone to make one extra job, bought newspaper space first to tell their plans, later to detail their achievements.

One of those who learned of the Muncie venture was Roy Dickinson, associate editor of Printers' Ink. Thinking down the groove of his own experience in the Army Intelligence Service, he telephoned small Carl Byoir, publisher of the Havana Post and Telegram, with whom he worked when Mr. Byoir was on George Creel's Committee on Public Information during the War. (Mr. Byoir likes to tell how he once set a chorus of 600 U. S.-born Slovenes to singing their national anthem on a mountain behind the Italian front and caused 60,000 other Slovenes to desert from the Austrian army.)

Messrs. Byoir & Dickinson lunched: Between them they decided that some recreation of the Wartime spirit of millions of people in thousands of towns doing the same thing at the same time under the influence of high pressure propaganda, might have an important psychological effect on the nation. That was in July, an unseasonable month for snowballs. The snowball did get rolling, however, in November. Shrewd Publicist Byoir made known his and Editor Dickinson's plan to the Association of National Advertisers. From then on there was no stopping the snowball. The American Legion, with an organization of 10,600 posts throughout the land, and the American Federation of Labor, representing the country's workingmen, were maneuvered into giving the plan their support. Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel donated office space for national headquarters. A national organization sprang into life with one purpose in view, namely, to tell every employer that if he and 999,999 other employers would make one extra job available for six months, a million men would be put back to work. It was the militant Legion which suggested that the drive be called the "War Against Depression."

Fortnight ago the War began. Scoutmasters, church workers, civic and social organizations went out on a thousand fronts. Where there were already established block relief plans or other forms of unemployment relief, the Warriors Against Depression lent them their support.

In New York, Director Byoir had built up the thing which distinguished this relief movement from all others, an amazing machine for disseminating propaganda. National Broadcasting Co. and Columbia Broadcasting System alternately placed at his disposal two 5-min. periods a week. Seven or eight national radio advertising periods were daily devoting 30 sec. to his use. Hundreds of daily papers were carrying employment box scores on their front pages. Scores of magazines had volunteered to further the cause. Twelve hundred billboard services had done likewise. Donated was $250,000 worth of car card space. Director Byoir, who said his present organization outshone anything he had put together in the War, arranged for "War Against Depression Service Stars'' to be displayed in the windows of everyone who had helped make one of the extra jobs. Last week, at the end of the first ten days of the campaign, more than 100,000 new jobs had been created.

"It was a crazy idea," admitted Editor Dickinson. "Well, if Joan of Arc had not been crazy she would have died a grandmother. ..."

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