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Show PROBLEMS FACING STRICKEN WORLD Shall Chaos or Reconstruction in Europe Follow the Great World War? GREAT NEED IS PRODUCTION Men Must Be Given Inducement to Work and Guaranteed Fair Dealing Deal-ing in the Distribution of the Result. Article VI. By FRANK COMERFORD. The world lives by two kinds of work, the work on the soil and the labor la-bor spent in making things. In this way we get the things we eat and wear. We have eaten up our surplus. The world's reserve is gone. We are literally living from hand to rnoufch. To overcome the food shortage we must put every inch of available ground into production. Only by doing this can we live and gradually get back the surplus sur-plus which stood as a protection against crop failures. Production is not automatic, it is the work of man. There is not anything complex about it. You can't use magic. To grow things men must plow and gather. The will to work is our greatest need. The land is available. God furnishes the sunshine and the rain. To get the plows, tractors trac-tors and farm tools we must look to the industrial arm of life. Here again Is the call for men. We are short of man power. Men were killed and crippled in the war. The men who survived the war must help do the work that would have been done by those who did not come back. In their present frame of mind they do not will to work, at least under the old conditions obtaining before the wtir. It is necessary to furnish them with an inducement to work. There was little inducement for men to work before the war. The discontented are not kicking at work. Their objection goes to the unfairness shown in distributing dis-tributing the result. It isn't any secret. se-cret. They are shouting it from the housetops of Europe, they demand a larger share of the things they produce, pro-duce, or they refuse to work. There is a good deal of human nature in it, too. It is .only human nature to think of self. There isn't anything uunaturai til the worl;inginan looking for reward. Willingness to work is largely based on the thought of working for oneself. Five things are necessary to start and keep production going. In other words, to get the clothes, shoes, stockings, coal and comforts of life, to give the farmer the fools he needs for agricultural production, so that we may eat; to provide the transportation necessary to collection and distribution, distribu-tion, to bring the city to the country and the country to the market we must do five essential things. Production's First Need. First, we must have plants, and I use the word in the most general sense. These plants must be equipped with machinery and tools, they must be ready for work. Second, a plant is useless and stands idle unless we provide raw material, ma-terial, the thing furnished by nature that man and machine work into the finished product. Third, we must have coal. Coal runs the nut chine and keeps warm the home of the man who runs the machine. The helplessness of the world without coal is brought home to me while I am writing writ-ing these articles. The miners have left the pit. The government, through the courts, has tried to force them hack. The effort is a failure. The streets are dark at night. The houses are cold. Business is crying out against necessary restrictions imposed because of the coal shortage. I realize as I never have before how dependent we are on the men who pick and dig the coal. All of the intelligence and culture, the courts, the gold, are but symbols of power. When the coal miners folded their hands and set their teeth things stopped. r Fourth, transportation Is necessary to the gathering, collecting and delivering deliv-ering of raw material and the distribution distribu-tion of the finished product. t.-:i-.k 1 cr fi.d In Imnnp. r 11 111, anu ini, ... ... ,..jv tance, is man power. The purpose of production is man. He i master of it at every stage, in every department. Without him production i Impossible. The business men who proceed on the theory that men could not live without their business. Its pay roll, forget the first and greater truth that there would be no business without the workers. Man cuts, digs, gathers and hauls the raw material. He hews the wood, builds the plant. He mines the ore. he makes the tools, the machinery. He oils it. sets it in motion. He runs it. He makes the furnace and the boiler. He digs and shovels the coal which makes the power. He defies the heat of the furnace, lie builds the locomotive locomo-tive and pulls its throttle. He makes the freight car and stands in th" sie. t in the (laiiL-erous railroad yard with the siirnal of safety. Railroads All Worn Out. Transportation in Europe is partly I . ' .e-l. I Mi riti lt the w:ir r: 1 1 1 r. .: i 1 tracks nr..l roa.le.-iN were all.. ' . I ;.. iSctiTi.-Rltc. It eoKi.l not be i. i doesn't alter the siMn-Vn. i ; :s a P-mlilo s!i..r:::-e ol cars. ery-uiiere ery-uiiere on the Continent this i.s felt. They have less than a third of the j rolling stock necessary to meet normal requirements. The demand for transportation trans-portation facilities will necessarily increase in-crease during the period of reconstruction. reconstruc-tion. I have seen locomotives sneezing, sneez-ing, coughing, expiring every few-miles. few-miles. Old, broken-down engines, the kind one expects to find In a museum. 1 was on a de luxe train, a diplomatic express. I commented upon the condition con-dition of the locomotive, which came to a full stop every once in a while. I commented upon the condition of the coaches. The chief of the train looked at me, smiled and said: "If yol think this one is bad you ought to see some of the others." The war disarranged plants and factories. fac-tories. The demand was for munitions. muni-tions. Peace gave way to war and plant equipment efficient for peace production gave way to plant construction construc-tion necessary to manufacture the weapons of war. Plants were commandeered. com-mandeered. Machinery was torn out, new machinery put in. A complete reconstruction re-construction and reorganization was effected. Now that the war is over and the demand for everything Is great, it is necessary to change these plants back and fit them for the production needed. It is expensive, it takes time, it retards production. It is strange that, while everyone can see and understand the difficulties and delays incident to reorganizing and rearranging machinery- and plants, many people cannot see or understand i tie. oroblem of rearranging men's lives, who for four years have been living abnormally. The effect of the war upon plants and equipment is conceded con-ceded by the very man who refused to see any effect of the war on the men who were in it. Women in Labor World. During the war women answered the roll call. They left their homes and went to work. . There is hardly a kind of work that I can think of that I have not seen women doing in Europe. I have seen them loading boats, shoveling shovel-ing coal, washing windows, driving wagons, cleaning streets, conductors on trains. Many of the women who went into the industries were young women. Now that the war is over and the men have come back there is a demand on the part of the men that tne women retire re-tire to their homes. This is impossible impossi-ble in many cases, for these women have grown) dependent upon their jobs for their living. Then, too, there is a shortage of marriageable men. Some employers of labor have taken advantage ad-vantage of this situation. They pay a woman less money than they pay a man for the same work. This makes both dissatisfied. The woman has the sympathy of the working man. He doesn't want her to compete with him to the extent that his wages will be lowered, neither does he want the boss to discriminate against her. Women have come into the world of work to stay. If there Is any meaning In the phrase "class conscious," they are living examples of It. They are more outspoken about their demands than men. They sense a wrong long before a man can see it. They have brought their intuition into the lnbor world. They are more radical than men, and they stimulate men to action. They have brought to the labor problem prob-lem a new and interesting angle. The key to the future is in the hands of these men and women. Production is the door that must be opened. Men and women must work, or winter and want will make a No Man's Land of Europe before the sun of 1920 thaws the frost from the ground. Children crying for bread, shivering in the cold these bleak winter nights, are praying that men will work when they pray to God for good and warmth. Their help cries are smothered by a great blanket unrest. Will men hear them? So I sought to find the causes of unrest, un-rest, knowing it would bring me close to the heart of the trouble. (Copyright. 1920. WeatPrn Newspaper Union) |