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Show ECONOMIC STUDY CLUB DISCUSSION At the last regular meeting of the Ogden Economic Study club, J . Kerns read a compilation from Justuw Ebert's work on American Industrial Evolution, briefly as follows' .Migration was particularly active ;.nd subject to classification along industrial in-dustrial lines just before hostilities rc suited In the clush of arms between the north and south. The stock raiser. BDtirnin ownership of the j land as an incumbrance, grazed his herds on the natural vegetation of the sr. tningly boundless range How-ever, How-ever, with ever increasing reluctance, the stockman was forced westward by the encroachments of the homesteads of actual tillers of the soil. The only logical sequence of this development involving the public domain was private pri-vate ownership as a final condition for occupation or rental of the land. "The passing of chattel slavery gave capitalism full sway to recruit a permanent army of exploited laboi. eliminate hand production and assure the ultimate reduction of the middle class of small producers to the ranks of the wage workers. Over production (or under consumption) the night mare of capitalism, In the absence of cheap transportation, forced Individual Individ-ual capitalists to migrate from a sphere where competition was the life of trade,' to pastures new along with the rest of the pioneers. But machine production still raced ahead of market capacity and competition naturally gave way to organisation and consolidation. In 1889 Wells stated that labor in cotton mills was reduced from :Y to 50 per cent in ten .ears. In 1840 an operative in the cotton mills of Rhode Island working 13 to 14 hours dally turned out 9600 yards of standard stan-dard sheeting a year in 188 operatives opera-tives in the same mill made 30,000 yards in ten hours a day. That is to say, despite the 33 to 50 per cent decrease de-crease In amount of labor, their was an increase in production amounting to 320 per cent. Mrs. Mary Menzies of the club se-j se-j lected extracts from 'Shooting up the United States" and "Reading the I Suns" in Pearson's for January. Last fall, moved by the promptings of a kind heart, ignorance of the constitu-: constitu-: tlon. or a desire lo make a plav to the gallery, a United States senator offered the following amendment t the Alaska coal lands bill "No lessees of any coal or other lands In Alaska shall employ, hire or permit on their premises or lands so leased armed bodies of men, commonly common-ly known as mine guards, under the penalty of $5000 and two years' imprisonment im-prisonment in jail." Another senator moved that after the words "mine guards." Insert or to defend their property in any manner whatsot Nfrdless lo sav the amendment was done for. Under the guise of "machinery" "ma-chinery" carloads of guns have been imported Into Colorado by the mine owners, posstbl as an offset to the charity vouchsafed the &Lm iiu Belgians Bel-gians "Widespread hunger is alvvas serious. seri-ous. Hunger is in part of the country coun-try now, and hun.L;T will spf'.id all over the country if the men who control con-trol the food supply are allowed to ship it away to any other country which offers a better price." I nless our government shall lay its hand upon the pri cs of the necessities neces-sities of life and say. 'Thus far and no further,' a strain that may well prove to be a breaking strain will be brought upon the majority of the people of the country." j This paragraph precipitated a dis-i dis-i mission as to whether prices are subject sub-ject to arbitrary control by government govern-ment or individuals, or whether on j the other hand prices are subject to an economic law enunciated by Karl Marx in "Value, Price and Profit." This all Important question will he taken up two weeks from Mondav The Keonomic Study elub meets Mondav evenings at S: 15, at 326 Hudson building. |