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Show WHAT TO DO WITH IDLERS. While the Senate Committee on Commerce is considering the question of conscripting labor for the ship-yards it might appropriately appro-priately take into account first of all the luxurious person who, appreciating keenly the big wages received, loafs three or four days out of seven. He is the man responsible for the shortage of labor of which so much complaint is made. No draft is required in this country to put industrious men at work. For personal reasons or for patriotic reasons, or for both, they are doing their best, and that is considerable. The fellows who want increased pay only as a means to lengthen their periods of diversion are the ones who need the discriminating attention of .statesmanship. When wages rise rapidly enough to encourage idleness on the part of certain elements the remedy is not conscription but proscription. pro-scription. Men who will not work voluntarily more than half the time ought to be conscripted, perhaps, but in legislating on the subject a distinction should be made between them and the willing toilers, not only in hours but in money. A man who cannot be put at work six days a week, at wages heretofore unknown, except by the operation of law, would seem to be a candidate for an internment camp, where work of one kind or another should be compulsory and the rewards a good deal short of the union scale. |