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Show THE CITIZEN THE WA Y men forget work. It is the universal human condition. By the sweat of our brows we must earn the worlds living. We are wont to complain that the fruits of labor have a tendency to be distributed unfairly and men of thought spend much of their lives trying to devise economic systems whereby we may escape the distress of labor and yet have plenty. Nearly all of those systems look to of the wealth of the a world, which is invariably described labor. The description as stored-uitself should be sufficient proof that there can be no wealth without labor. And yet in the face of stem warnings' of many kinds, after a war that has wasted wealth as no war ever did before, men everywhere are trying to improve their conditions by refusing to work. Occasionally strikes even on a vast scale would not be fatal were it not for the fact that they tend to produce a condition which makes for increasing idleness, for industrial paralysis, for hard times. They lead us toward the night when no man shall work. seeking for panaceas IN that there is only one 0 p 0 we have capitalism or we must have work. The best way is to do our thinking while we work to keep unflaggingly WHETHER we devise better methods, easier conditions and pleasanter living. Those who speak of redistributing the wealth of the w'orld neglect to consider that a great part of the wealth is distributed every year among the mass of the people. We cannot redistribute bridges and roads, or skyscrapers or houses every year, but we can, and do, distribute wheat, sugar, beef, vegetables, fruits, wool, cotton and we provide a means money by which all can obtain a share of these things. And money, which is simply a measure of value and a medium of exchange, is given for one thing only work, work of the hands and the brains and, in a few instances, for the work of the hands and brains of ones ancestors. The wealth that cannot be under our present system under any could not be system. The best we can do is to dis-- ' tribute the products. In a sense land is already, must always be, communistic; for the products are distributed each year. The owner of the land often has less to eat and to wear than the laborer who buys the products of the land with his money. The toiler in the city, liking as he does the ways of the city and its various diversions, would not go upon the land if it were given to him. at our toil while q foregoing is not attempted as answer to socialism or communism, but merely to cast a sidelight on this human condition of ours to emphasize the fact that only by means of labor do we obtain any of the things we want. If labor is cut down there is less to go around. THE 7 OUT By F. P. Gallagher Each one of us obtains the product of somebody else's labor to supply our needs. If that somebody else reduces his working day from eight week to hours to six or his six-da-y five our share is reduced. If everybody decided, all at once, to work only two hours a day, four days in the week, all of us would quickly starve or freeze. A few, living in the tropics, could lie in a hammock and pick banannas off the trees with their toes and continue to survive for some time. The people of Central Africa, near the equator, do not work very The hard in many favored spots. fruits of fields that are cultivated not at all, or but little, and the flesh of wild animals afford the natives a kind of living with which they will remain content until they see a moving picture show and some of the other glories of our civilization. Then they will want to work or make their husbands or parents work for them so that they can get money to go to pic- ture shows. the British found in the interior of Africa a race of cannibals. The people ate one another. It was a pleasant way of Escaping work. It obviated the necessity of raising beef cattle or even going out into the forests to kill wild animals. The good people of this colony, unlike some other cannibals, waited until the human being had died a natural death. Being rather sensitive about eating their own relatives they traded dead bodies. Perhaps one could eat a second cousin without violating any of the canons of good taste, but nearer relatives were handed over to neighbors. This race exemplified the human effort to escape hard conditions and RECENTLY The First Freezing Morning See them all headed toward Siegels and Fashion Park Clothes $40 to $75 The Siegel Clothing Co. The Store for Men and Boys travel the path of least resistance. For many thousands of years the people of interior Africa have made no progress. In a vast continent a comparatively few millions of people found it possible to subsist without much work. Our Red Indians, living in a more rigorous clime, were compelled to do a greater measure of work, but there were, 300 years ago, not more than 300,000 Indians in all that expanse of territory now occupied by the United States, and they civilization by escaped industrial hunting and trapping and, now and then, a little agriculture. is not far be that the time IToffmay when the amount of daily hard labor will be reduced to a fraction of wliat it is how. It is quite conceivable that labor-savin- g machinery will accomplish that result, but we must not lose sight of the fact that labor-savin- g machinery has had a tendency to make more jobs. maThe telephone is a labor-savinchine. It undoubtedly does the work of millions of men, but, at the same time, it creates a stupendous industry. requiring the w'ork of millions of men. The automobile is a labor-sa- v g 228-23- 0 Main Street ing devise and it, too, produces a new industry giving work to millions. Without labor saving machinery the modern world could not have done its work. Population would have increased more rapidly than the means of supplying it with the necessaries of life. Up to date, therefore, labor-savin- g machinery has not materially reduced the hours of the vrork-dabut it would be unwise to declare that the time is remote when the invention of such machinery will gain in the race with population and the constantly increasing demands of mankind. y, HOWEVER absorbing these have more serious business to consider. We must find a way out of our present difficulties. We must devise ways and means to give everybody fair play in our industrial life, but meantime we must keep at work. Those of us who like to dream of an elysium in which everybody will have that which he most desires with -- out working very hard for it should dwell, for a moment, pn the example of the German people. There is no people in the world, none in the history of the world, that ever received such a blow. From a condition of comfort and contentment unsurpassed in Europe they have suddenly been hurled into an abyss, where they must toil as never before if they would work their way out. After a few violent demonstrations of rage against their former masters they settled down to their disheartening tasks. True, their country had been almost untouched by the tires of war. In outward seeming Germany was as it had been for many glad years beautiful, Its buildings homelike, comfortable. were untouched. Its palaces and factories, its artistic houses, its splendid roads, its cities and its villages bore the same air of riches and contentment. But all were oppressed with taxes, the factories were turning out less than in the days preceding the war and the people were confronted with (Continued on Page 13.) |