The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-24

ed in keeping their machinery in mo- ton during the past year. inquiry would doubtless prove that 1t has been extremely difficult to make both ends meet There has been little or no money in the business.
 in considering this subject two facts show conspicuously on the sky line. One has to do with the law of supply and demand; the other bears directly upon equipment. Strange as it may ap- pear. the Fall River strike. which has cut off from consumers an enormous output that would have naturally found it's way to their hands. has had no ap- preciable effect upon the price of cloth in the gray. Nor did abnormally high priced raw material, which added to the actual value of that cloth, per- manently influence market quotations. Stocks in storehouses have not been de- pleted rapidly; there has been no mark ed increase in the volume of the de mand consequently upon the vacuum created by smokeless chimneys The only inference possible is that there has been excessive oyerproduction. As the situation now stands. the purchas- ing and wearing capacity is not equal to the number of spindles which are re- volving. A city of factories. represent ing an investment of forty or fifty mil- lion dollars, could be plotted from the commercial map and it's loss would not be felt.
 In the second place, it is patent to all who have investigated the subject that the day is not far distant when g competition so close as to leave room for the fittest only will force the cor porations of New England to adopt the latest devices in labor-saving ma- chInery, regardless of expense. Cu- riously enough, as one authority has pointed out, the object to any radical re-equipment just at present comes from the side of capital and its re- sponsible in no small measure for Fall Rivers embarrassment and the de- structive sacrifices which she has been making. As rule, and for reasons that are obvious, the objection to contriv- ances and inventions calculated to tighten toll and reduce the length of payrolls arises from the ranks of the operatives, frutile as 1t always has heen and must be.
 But for once managers, deterred by first cost and period of depression, have rebelled agains4 the outlay in- volved in the required changes. And in their effort to compromise with their pocketbooks by experimenting with a
 "stop motion" for looms they have
 driven the help beyond the point of human endurance. At least. this is the
 charge preferred by the operatives con- cerned. It Is not and has never been a
 question of wages solely. It follows that what is true of the Fall River ] companies in the particulars cited i must be true of a majority of the con-
 panies in this section, and sooner or later all of them will be called upon to meet the issue It is contended that Southern mills, of comparatively new construction, have an advantage in the matter of weaving alone which cans not be overcome by makeshifts Two conclusions are unavoidable. One is that in the absence of broader markets for American cotton manu- ! features the weaker links in the chain must disappear, with them going class lf workers who will not descend to over standards of living. The other is ; that modern processes must eventually be substituted for those which inposl a handicap. Fortunately, neither an extended foreign trade nor perfected mechanical appliances can be said tS ! be beyond the reach of New England enterprise and courage. Providenct Journal.