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Show Released by Western Newspaper Union. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY CONTROL SO FAR during the war the federal fed-eral government has invested between be-tween 13 and 15 billion dollars in the erection and equipment of war industry plants. These plants have been operated by private concerns working on government contracts. The National Planning board proposes pro-poses as a post-war measure that these plants be retooled for the manufacture man-ufacture of peace-time products and be operated by the government as a means of surmounting the after-the-war unemployment problem. Such a move would mean the beginning be-ginning of state capitalism in America. Amer-ica. Free enterprise as we have known it in America cannot live with state capitalism. Private capital cannot be induced to compete with the un-. limited funds of government. When government enters business, private capital quits. In the end we would all be working work-ing for the government, if we worked at all, and there would be no more jobs than would be provided by our present system of free enterprise. The incentive that produces invention, inven-tion, scientific discovery and progress prog-ress would be gone. We would be a completely and permanently regimented regi-mented people worker, farmer, pro-' i fessional man, all of us. We would 1 be permanently subject to the direction direc-tion of a bureaucratic system, as are the people of Italy, Germany and Russia. American people want none of -that. Such a system is not what our armed forces are fighting for, or for which the home front is willingly will-ingly making sacrifices. It is not a thing we can afford to encourage, even as a temporary solution of an employment problem. Once saddled upon the country, It means the end of the system which has made' America great and prosperous and given to us the highest living standard stand-ard the world has ever known. We must beware of any such expedient. i HUMAN RIGHTS ' ' AND PROPERTY RIGHTS WHEN IN 1920 Gen. Leonard Wood was a candidate for the Republican Re-publican nomination for President, we frequently ate lunch together at the Adventurers' Club in Chicago. A plank in General Wood's platform pronounced for property rights. I insisted that human rights were of far greater importance than property prop-erty rights. "If you can prepare a statement for me," said the general, "which defines human rights but does not encompass property rights, I will accept your statement." I tried, but did not succeed. Human Hu-man rights and the right to accumulate accumu-late are inseparable. It is the human hu-man right to accumulate which is the foundation of American progress. It has encouraged invention and scientific sci-entific investigation; it has built industries; in-dustries; it has put the soil under cultivation. The right to own, to have and to hold, is the incentive to work. General Wood was right BOX OF CANDY AND BUREAUCRACY A SMALL CHILD with whom I have established a friendship likes candy in a box, but the mother objects ob-jects to the child having more than a half-pound box. In a candy store I found an abundance of the kind of candy the child is permitted to have, and also a large supply of empty half-pound boxes, but none that were filled. Five young lady clerks were on duty and I was the only prospective prospec-tive customer in the store. But I could not buy a half-pound box of candy. I could buy the candy delivered de-livered to me in a' sack. I could not buy a box. They could not put the candy in a box and sell it to me. They could send to some place a mile or more away and have a girl at that place put half a pound of candy into a half-pound box, and then sell it to me if I could wait an hour. A law, not passed by congress con-gress but. created by executive decree, de-cree, made it unlawful for those clerks to put candy in a box. We are today regulated by some 40,000 such executive decrees. That is our modern bureaucratic democracy. THERE IS NO SUCH THING as a British empire. There is a British Commonwealth of Nations. Each is free and independent of the other, with the English king as head of each state, and he is but a symbol, with no actual authority. It is all seemingly simple, yet not easily understood. TO BE A GOOD LISTENER may be a greater asset than to be a continuous con-tinuous talker. FOOD RATIONING CANADA is at war, as is the United States. We are fighting the same enemies. Canada is a food-producing food-producing nation, as is the United States. Canada is helping to provide pro-vide food for England and the Allied armies. Canada has been at war more than two years longer than we have. Canada has not found a food rationing system necessary. Shetias iepended upon the patriotism and ?ood sense of her citizens, as we lid in World War I, and it has vorked. |