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Show MOST ELOQUENT ' SPEECH OF WAR Credited by Baruch to Donlin, . President of the Building Trades'. LinLE TALK CLEARS THE WAY Was Made in the Dark Days of the War When the Cry From France Was "Men, More Men" Never Got Into Print. Washington.' The most eloquent speech made during the war, according to Bernard M. Baruch, former chairman chair-man of the war industries board, never nev-er got into print. It was made in the dark days when the cry from France was "Men, more men," and the supply available in the draft was running low. "General Crowder," says Mr. Baruch, Ba-ruch, "served notice on the board that he must have something like 300,000 men, and the question was where they were to come from. The draft had taken out everybody available, and fjie only way was to take men from industry. Hence the appeal to the war industries board. "We put men to work on It, and in due time a plan for weeding men out was presented. Among other things it put the private chauffeur out of business, busi-ness, as well as salesmen and men In the white goods trade. This would not " have been enough, anil the placing of women In men's work in the trades had to be considered a real dilution of labor. Labor Called In. "The scheme was all right, but when it came to us for approval we found that everybody except those most important im-portant had been consulted. I meaii the representatives of labor. So they were called in and the scheme, ns well as the necessity back of It, were explained ex-plained to them. "As might be expected, there was a lot of opposition to putting women in the men's trades and the putting of the men thus released into uniform. During It all one man sat still, giving not the slightest indication of what he thought of the tliir.g. After about everybody else had hod his say he took the floor. " 'Mr. Chairman,' be said, 'this thing is very simple. If I am going home Saturday night with my week's pay in my pocket und a guy steps up and tries to take It away from me, I am a fool If I keep my left hand on the wad and try to beat him off with my right. If I do that the chances are that he will get me and the wad and get away clean. " 'If I take my left hand off the wad ' and go after him with both hands. I'll save the wad arid get him. Use Both Hands. "'Now, Mr. Chairman, that's, the case here. This German guy is just around the corner. If we keep one hand on our wads he'll get us and our wads', too. If we use both our hands we'll, save the wads and get him. Unless Un-less we get him, if he gets us, our wads or anything else won't be worth much. So I say, Mr. Chairman, let us take both our hands out of our pockets and get sifter him. So far as I'm concerned, you can have every man in the building trades that can pass the doctors, and the boys, I'm sure, will back me up.' "John H. Donlin, president of the building trades department, was Ihe chap that did the talking. His little speech settled the question, and all the way was left clear to us to weed nil the men out of Industry that might be needed. "Fortunately, as It happened, we did not need to 'dilute' labor, but Dunlin's little speech took us over what was one of the nastiest situations situa-tions in the war. It was the most eloquent speech made during the ivur and one of the most effective." |