Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-12-20 | Page 6 | Caution Necessary

CAUTION NECESSARY. The sudden cessation of hostilities in November left the United States government with enormous supplies of material on hand, and the problem just now is to dispose of this surplus without with-out breaking tho market and bringing ruin to producers, manufacturers and dealors. For instance, tho government has a very largo amount of wool on hand for which a big price was paid. It is no longer needed for war purposes, but if it were to be thrown upon the market it would practically result in a tremendous loss to the wool growers of tho United States, who would be absolutely abso-lutely without protection. The government govern-ment also has in the neighborhood of 100,000 motor trucks on hand. It would .not do to turn these trucks over to tho speculators at nominal prices, for that, would spell disaster to the motor industry. indus-try. The war department also has about $300,000,000 of machine tools on hand, including tho fixtures for gun manufacturing plants. Tho Association Associa-tion f Machine Tool Makers may undertake un-dertake to dispose of these tools on the percentage plan, which will mean the limitation of its own output. T n P u-nvprnmpiit- i nn ' It, many other lines. This condition pf affairs, af-fairs, however, was inevitable, since we wore compelled to maintain production to the end. Had the actual fighting lasted longer wo might have used up some of the raw material now on hand, but we would have been left with more finished products when Germany finally surrendered. So the government was certain to lose money on its purchases whether the war was long or short. Assistant As-sistant Secretary Crowcll has been charged with responsibility for the disposition dis-position of the surplus material by order or-der of the president, and no one need envy him the task.