The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1913-11-15
Norway.

Norway all along tho line. In fac
tories and In mines. on the farm and
on shipboard. In government as we'll
as in private enterprises there Is
everywhere dearth OF laboring men.
Manufacturers are finding difficulty In
fulfilling their contracts on account OF
their inability to secure workmen
enough to keep their factories going
at full capacity. In the agricultural
districts many farmers have found
themselves compelled to decrease
their herds Of dairy cattle and Of hogs
because of the impossibility OF secur-
ing help to take care of them. At the
same time wages are beginning to
soar. 30 that employers are finding II
steadily more difficult to make profit
on their business.
An exception to the general DIM
Guilty In securing laborers seems to be
found In the electrical factories at
Rjukan and Aura. Many workmen on
government products have left their
| Jobs to seek employment at these two
places, and paper mills are reported
to have been compelled to raise their
scale Of wages considerably in order
to keep their men from going over
into the service Of the electrical COM
panies.
The prime cause Of these di11cul-
| ties seems to be found in the fact that
industry has developed much faster
than the labor supply has increased
The laboring population is no longer
sufficient to supply the new demands.
and as result wages and the cost OF
production are constantly on the In
crease. Prophets of disaster are pre-
dieting dire calamities as the result
Of this situation, and assert that the
time will come when the exhorbitant
! cost of production in every line will
eventually compel industrial enter
prises to close down. The conse.
quence will be that workmen instead
Of debating wages will be thrown out
of employment. the public will have
to restrict it's purchases, and CONNER
cial stagnation will take place.
1t may Interest Norwegian Ameri
cans to read the opinion of the Spring
field Republican, Americas most clas-
steal newspaper. as to the language
movement OF Norway. to which | have
devoted much attention. The paper in
question says:
Artificial languages are not 80 new
or unusual a thing as might be sup
| posed. Homeric Greek was In sense
artificial, and so was classical Latin;
in modern times we have only to con-
slider the language Of Dante. Such
correspondence as in English between
the vernacular and the language Of
literature is perhaps the exception
rather than the rule. Yet in our time
there have been few examples OF this
process comparable to the Norwegian
Landsmaal, which a government COM
mission Is now considering for the Of
fetal language of Norway. II is the
invention of one man, Ivar Aasen.
whose centenary has recently been
celebrated, but it Is based on the vo-
cabulary and grammar Of the old
sagas enriched from living Morse dia,
lects. The result Is said to be Ian
vehicle for either prose or verse, and
1t has come into considerable popular
use and is given a place In the schools
the only drawback being that few
can yet speak 1t correctly or under
stand it we'll. Rather paradoxicaliy
this neoarachaic speech Is being push
ed by the radicals, while the conserva
. ali a. hA lay, In WI oh
Ibsen wrote, which by the reformers
is stigmatized as a Danish dialect. In
English there was a craze In the mid
die of the nineteenth century for pure
Anglo Saxon, but no Ivar Aasen ap
peared to make a new tongue out oil
old English and modern English
Scotch and Irish dialects. and little is
left for a souvenir Of the movement
except foreword' for preface"
Last week quoted a dispatch from
London to the effect that Doctor
Bruce. the English explorer, charged
In an address that Norway is trying
to get possession of the islands OF
Spitsbergen. but Mr.. Ihlen. Norway's
| hiHibt6I lOi iOiOi6u dhuii o. uChiOo lilo
charge emphatically. In an interview
with the special correspondent Of an
American newspaper, the minister
stated that Norway has made no ef-
forts to appropriate or annex Spitz-
bergen or encroach upon the rights &C
quired by other nations. On the con-
trary, 1t was in every way to Norway's
interest to obtain legal information
ally recognized arrangement. and 1t
had done everything possible in order
that the question Of such an arrange
ment might be discussed by the pow
ers interested.
The best hope Of securing legal or
ganization lay In an international
agreement securing the legitimate
rights OF everybody concerned
Press reports from Berlin state
Lieut.. Paul Graetz Of the German army
will vie with Carl 'Lumholtz. the Nor
wegian explorer, in exploring New
Guinea. Lieutenant Gratz plans to
make his expedition by airship, and es-
Inmates that his equipment will cost