OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN How long can, the country go on without an adequate supply of the basic products? Some experts have estimated that there is a shortage of 72 per cent in farm labor and, no doubt, there is a similar shortage of labor for the iron and coal mines. In a very distinct sense it is a shortage of labor rather than of laborers. Men will work a few days and drift to other jobs. The country used to be filled with hoboes ; today it is filled with drifters, men who work here today and there tomorrow and. nowhere three or four days a week. The other day a mine owner who had been advertising vainly for help gave it up as futile. Then he had what he thought was an inspiration. He decided to advertise for men to sell automobiles. His office was besieged with applicants. He told them that all the jobs were filled, but that he could give them jobs in his mines at better pay. They turned sadly from him and went their way. For a long time the wisest have been predicting a smash. It 0 seemed like a simple problem in addition and subtraction. If production continued to decline the time must come, they said, when the country would be in want. High prices are symbols of the shortage in production. Even if there were no profiteering there would be high prices. We are told by government experts that flour would be selling at $11.50 a barrel instead of $14.80 if the profiteers were content with only a fair return, but $11.50 is a terribly high price. The time comes when no increase in wages can keep pace with soaring prices and the fault lies right at the basis of production the shortage of labor in the production of foodstuffs and raw 0 materials. The time is coming when the drifters will be hoboes again, or honest workmen. They will not be able to buy what they need on three days work a week. They will be compelled to work four, then five, then six days a week, or if their streak of yellow be too wide, they will quit work altogether and become tramps. The cut in prices all over the country would seem to controvert the theory we have just been expounding. How can prices be lowered when production is decreasing? The explanation is not difficult. The time has arrived when the three-da- y patriots cannot buy, when the four-da- y patriots cannot buy, y when the five-da- y patriots are living a meager life and when the workers are hard put to it to find the means to support themselves and their families. Supply remains stationery, or continues to decline, but demand, which increased by leaps and bounds for five years, has also begun to fall off. Not so long ago the retailers told us that they could not get goods from the factories quickly enough to meet the demand. All the factories were behind in their orders. That phase has passed and we are entering on a new phase. Some may think that the decline in prices is a good thing for the country, but it indicates too much that It hints of harder times, when life will not be so gay. Men will work harder and produce more. They will work more days a week because they will need the money, but the new phase Qwill have its distressing features. More will be produced, but the standard of living will be less extravagant in fact, actually lower. six-da- Which means that demand will fall off while production increases. We shall then have an era of falling prices, less business and finally enforced unemployment. Thus the country will swing from one extreme to the other and largely because the toilers did not think it necessary in the days of their prosperity to give a fair days work for a fair days wages. In England an artificial wool is being made from cotton and has been found to be a good substitute. In this country cotton as substitute for wool is many years old. q'i 5 GOMPERS WARLIKE POLICY While all sides to the contest between labor and capital and there are three sides, namely, labor, capital and the public seem to agree that the solution of the dispute lies in in a recognition of correlative rights and duties, in an identity of interests, labor and capital appear to be digging trenches and erecting fortifications for war. On the one hand profiteers are trying to make themselves so strong that they will be able to defy labor and the public. Oh the other organized labor has adopted as its theory the rule that might makes right and Mr. Gompcrs is leading his clansmen in an avowed attempt to control politics by means of a blacklist. It is curious to read in his pronuncimento this sentence: There must be an end of legislative repression, restriction and coercion. The document in which these words appear is devised for the very purpose of enforcing repression, restriction and coercion by co-operat- ion, labor. The real offense of the Gompers movement is obscured by the fact that in our political life every faction feels that it has a right to obtain its ends by repression, restriction and coercion. If a faction desires prohibition it blacklists the candidates for office who oppose prohibition. If a faction desires revision of the tariff it blacklists the candidates who oppose tariff tinkering. That form of political fighting is considered eminently fitting in a free, representative democracy. It is the normal course of politics. No amount of extenuation, however, can conceal the fact that the Gompers program is not for the general good. Like the Russian soviet, it is seeking to establish a class dictatorship and its only excuse is that capital is trying to do the same thing. In other words, both labor and capital, instead of trying to get together on their basic platform of identity of interests, are seeking to continue and expand their warfare at the expense of the public. Both sides are sincere and they think they have excellent arguments. But no amount of argument can transform a state of war into peace. There must be an overturn in congress, says Mr. Gompers. Enemies must be. defeated; friends must be elected. That is all very well if we are to look forward only to a continued state of warfare and a balancing of power, but it tends to defer the scientific solution of the problem which all of us profess to desire. Mr. Gompers and his associates insist upon the unlimited right to strike. They do not except those public utility industries which affect the life and health of the people. In Kansas Governor Allen tried to prevent strikes in the essential industries and obtained a law with that object in view. It must be repealed, says Gompers. But what does he offer in its place? The public cannot look forward with equanimity to a chronic condition of strikes in these industries. At this point we begin to see the difference between the ordinary political movement and the Gompers movement. The peaceful political movement ends at the polls. The minority bows to the majority and for a period the majority is permitted to pass its laws. The labor movement, however, does not accept the result at the polls. It tells us frankly in advance that if it loses in the elections it will try to enforce its demand by strikes, especially strikes in those industries which, when interrupted, directly affect the living conditions of the people. The principle is wrong. The correct principle is the one that sounds so idealistic and. just because it is idealistic it is mistrusted by both sides. Ihc only between labor and capital for the solution is a close welfare of the public. Employers and employes must be brought to a realization of their common interest in settling their disputes of peaceably and not by repression and coercion. The principles, justice and mutual consideration must be their guide. co-opierat- ion The Reds arc coloring the news nowadays. A subscriber asks us whether the word content in the phrase sugar content is accented on the first or the last syllable. |