Brother, Can You Spare a Job?

IT was certainly not as bad as the 1930s, but the scene brought back some haunting memories of hard times. Last week in Canoga Park, Calif., near Los Angeles, more than 700 people lined up to apply for only four jobs. The applicants were answering a classified ad placed in two suburban papers by the Southern California Gas Co., which wanted four meter readers at a salary of $133 a week. The unemployment rate in California is 7%, compared with the national average of 5.5%. The applicants were out-of-work aerospace supervisors, machinists, housewives, draftsmen, secretaries, newspaper reporters.

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