War is Illiegal, Volunteer on a Farm, the Consequences of Population Growth and More Bits and Pieces

War is Illegal!
In Paris, on August 27, 1928, fifteen of the world's most powerful nations (later joined by 48 others) signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact "renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, and outlawing war". The U.S. was one of those countries and it is still officially illegal for our Congress to declare war.

Volunteer on a Farm
For the past two summers, a group known as the Wisconsin Alliance has organized "Farm Brigades" of 1 to 4 people who work for several weeks on small farmsteads whose owners can't afford to hire regular extra labor. "Brigaders," says an Alliance spokesman, "need not have any farm experience - only a willingness to work hard at unskilled tasks." Otherwise city-bound high school students and college men and women welcome this chance for a working country "vacation" and the farm owners they help always request more Brigaders than the Alliance can furnish. The idea seems well worth a try in other areas of the country.

Net Economic Welfare
Economist Paul A. Samuelson, author of one of the most widely read college textbooks on the subject, is now turned on to the realities of modern life. The 9th edition of his manual still comes on strong for Gross National Product (which many of the New Generation consider very gross indeed) . . . but it also mentions, for the first time, a new economic index called, appropriately, N.E.W. The letters stand for Net Economic Welfare. A leading economist, to put it another way, now recognizes that the sheer material handling of more and more dollar commodities doesn't necessarily increase the quality of life for those doing the handling. For an economist, that's NEWS!