The Sentinel=record., 1915-02-26
CONTINUAL ATTACKS BY CON. GRESS AND LEGISLATURES
 CAUSE OF DEPRESSION.
UNEMPLOYMENT AND DISTRESS
The Employees of This Country Are Paying the Price of Sending Men to Make Laws Who Were incompetent and Visionary.

Vhcago, Feb. 25.-TAe country is m the midst of a period of unemp'ov. ''elll and distress the like of which .he nation never saw before" VII. nam Sproule, president of tha pacif. Ic system of the Southern Pacific company, declared here tonight in an address at the annual dinner og the Traffic Club.
 lie attributed this condition to what ne said was long continued clamor against all sorts Of public businesses ana predicted it's end only when re. turning prosperity for employers s1ould spel! prosperity for the em. poyed
 beglhhing by outlining difficulties raced by the transportation business winch he said had lost it's momen- tum'' he broadened to the s.ate of business generally and took ylgorous exception to any suggestion that busi- ness conditions would be better if business men believed they would be | better
 me booster lifts nothing higher l than the level of his own teeth. :" de- clared the railway executive. "The trumpeter of prosperity begures only his own ears. Prosperity is real or it does not exist. We do not have so look for it; it comes to us. It grows WIthin our sight like plant coming l into flower It comes to us when tba | employer resumes employment and if will not come to Us until the people | generally, whether their capacity ha 1 large or small. whether they work with their muscles or their minds (and all work requires mind). dis. cover that their condition improves only as their employers prosper.
 'dt is the habit of the time to sneak of unemployment as if it rotated only to those who work for a specific hourly or daily, weekly or monthly wage. It is thought of chiefly as re- lating to those engaged in minor places or in the number duties of life.
 The facts run quite to the con trary It is the emp oyer who is first out of employment As natural SC. quence, he is followed by the employe who next finds himself out of work.
 But why is this period of unem- ployment? It is because all business is bewtldered and uncertain. A long period of misrepresentation misun- derstandings and pettifogging has so mised the public mind that through out the country every prosperous business, indeed every organization. prosperous or not, which is big enough to attract the public platform performer, finds that it exists in an atmosphere of attack.
 'The nation is filled with political economists. Business is filled to satiety with economic theories.
 When men ask for work they are handed an epigram
 ''Rut the sad fact is the more noliti- cal theories are proposed, the poorer become the poor.
 "I urge the prosperity of the aver age man.
 TO obtain that prosperity I urge the imperative necessity of taking business out of an atmosphere of at tack into the oldfashioned go-ahead atmosphere of business initiative and American enterprise. urge relief from the fads fancies and isms which have filled the streets with unemploy- ment and put away the dinner pail of the working man empty upon the shelf of the impoverished home urge the restoration of confidence in the fact that American business maa are the peers of any in the world. Finally, ! urge that the public inter est in transportation is that it shah be prosperous in order that 1t may be a successful and energetic aid to all the business it is designed to serve"
 That the president and many gov ernors are anxious students of the needs of our time" MT. Sproule said was happy augury and patriotic as- surance that the present is a passing phase.'