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Show DOWN TO KHO. In December, 195!!. there were 1 40,000 more employe js on the iail-roads iail-roads than in December, 1917 Yet the amount of freight handled in Decanilber1. 1918, was considerably less than in the corresponding month of 1917. We are doing less in a day now, and manu l'act'jring less, so there is not as much wealth as formerly. We are gradually getting poorer. In Kansas City there is a concern whose lumber mill turned out 70.000 feet a day five years ago. Now it . turns out 45,000 feet, although it has the same number of employees as before. A factory which employed 7 00 people and did a large business in manufacturing overalls, has found that contracts made on the basis of previous output are now incapable of filfillment. .Working hours in this factory have been so much reduced re-duced that, figuring the per capita loss of time, there are 4,800 fewer working hours each week than a short time ago. A cement concern has reported that a large increase in the number of its employees shows only a serious ser-ious decrease in production as the outcome. There is also trouble in the garment trade. Suits have be-j come hard to get, because suits have not been made. This is what has happened already. But cheer up; the worst is yet to come. There will soon be a falling off in the production of coal. The! program now includes a six houri working clay (more wages, of course), and soon coal will be considerably con-siderably scarcer than it is now. And the general movement to limit output continues in all lines of ac-: tivity, with the results that the work-! ing man, like every one else, pays; twice as much as he did for every-1 tiling. We may consent or refuse to face facts. We are carefully. sys;emari-cally. sys;emari-cally. and calculatedly preventing the production of the necessities of life. Dollar bills are we know, plentful. More so than ever. Nearly everybody every-body has them in abundance (on pay day), and it feels fine to drag them out of our pockets to unroll the fat wad. and gloat over it. The only drawback is that we can never j eat it, or wear it, and it isn't of much use in buying things. We can of course, burn it, and at the rate! we are going it may be cheaper to do that than to burn coal; but itj takes a lot of them to make a fire that will last. We can stich a bunch of bills together into a patch quilt, and sleep under them; it may soon be cheaper than buying blankets, but not q'Uite so warm. But we will all have one consoling consol-ing chance of reprisal. The coal miner can have the fun of co".!uell-j ing the taylor's cutter to freere: and the cutter can get even by keying; the coal miner in a state of perpetual per-petual nakedness. Yes, a little sarcastic, perhaps; j but we are hitting the nail so squarely square-ly on the head there is no room for doubt as to what is in the store for this country, unless we return to sanity. |