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Show rM;& i :Vsrtj.:& Li Released by Western Newspaper Union. LABOR AND MANAGEMENT IMPROVED RELATIONSHIPS "BECAUSE I EAT sirloin steak each day you men think you should aave the same thing. You must be satisfied with stews." It was years ago, before the turn1 ot the century, I heard that state-' ment made by a manager-employer' to a labor committee seeking an in-' irease in wages. It represented the master and man attitude ol capital, and management toward labor of that time. The men who were asking a wage; Increase were working 60 hours a week, and for those 60 hours were receiving $15 in each Saturday's pay envelope. Men doing the same work, in the same plant, today, worki but 40 hours each week, for which they receive $62.50, on a wage scale established in 1938. The difference was that evolution: was solving the problems of labor and capital. A new generation of management was recognizing labor as a partner of capital and management in industrial production. produc-tion. The problem was working out by evolutionary processes, in response re-sponse to public sentiment, until into it was injected unneeded and unwise un-wise legislation enacted at the demand de-mand of a number of self-appointed leaders of labor seeking personal advantages. ad-vantages. That legislation changed evolution to revolution. It aroused' new antagonisms and made the labor la-bor problem a partisan subject. The evolutionary program was working because it was backed by American public sentiment. The people, generally, saw in labor something more than a commodity. They saw labor as a partner in industry, in-dustry, entitled to the rights and privileges of a partner. The public, pub-lic, generally, is opposed to the revolutionary methods established by law at the behest of those self-appointed self-appointed leaders of labor who personally per-sonally profit from an enforced union membership, labor regulation and an arbitrary collection of dues. Labor needs unified and sympathetic public sentiment for the promotion of its just claims as a partner in industry. It cannot create and permanently hold such sentiment on a revolutionary, revolution-ary, partisan program. HOME TOWN STORES ARE A DEFINITE ASSET WITH A LIMITED AMOUNT of gas at our disposal it is not so easy to step into the car and go to the city to do our buying. Those of us who live in rural America are learning learn-ing to better know and appreciate our home-town stores. We have found how essential they are to our comfort and convenience. Now that conditions have forced us to depend de-pend upon them, we are surprised to find how amply they supply our needs. To be sure, they may not always have all the things we want and formerly for-merly bought, but that same condition condi-tion is also true of those city stores we have patronized. On the shelves of our home-town stores we find practically everything we would now find on the shelves of the city stores, and we find them right at home where precious gas is not needed as a factor in the buying. Our predicament has been a good thing for us. It has forced us to better bet-ter know our home-town stores, to find out what they offer; and to many the investigation has been a bit surprising. sur-prising. We find the home-town merchants have been providing for our needs, there has never been a necessity of going elsewhere to replenish re-plenish either the larder or the wardrobe. ward-robe. Now that we have learned, through force of circumstances, what the home-town stores mean to us, what a serious disadvantage it would be not to have them, it would be well to remember these things when the war is over and the gas supply is again unlimited. Without those stores we would soon cease to have a town. ENCOURAGING FOOD PRODUCTION IF WAR PRODUCTION is to be encouraged, food, as of first importance, impor-tance, should have its fair share oi such encouragement. According to the National Conference board there was an increase of 49 billion dollars in the national income of 1942 as compared with 1939. Of that increase in-crease agriculture received 5 billion 800 million, one-seventh of the total. Industry, represented largely by wages, received over 40 billion. It would seem the farmers are loaded with the greater portion of the inflation in-flation prevention burden. The wage earners received a far greater percentage per-centage of increase than the farmers. farm-ers. THE PATRONAGE ENJOYED by any political party in power can, and does, have a tremendous effect on the vote of the nation. That ii especially true when there are upwards up-wards of four million voters on the federal civilian payrolls. It adds up to around eight million votes. A REPUBLICAN COUNTY chairman chair-man pronounced a sentence of excommunication ex-communication on any Republican who did not buy his full share ol war bonds. That was taking youi politics seriously. |