The Glasgow courier., 1916-12-08
DISTURBING CONDITIONS

| LurerS continues unaDateQ and the
managers are steadily advancing the
wages of operatives to increase their
products. Some are running their
mills far into the nights and say they
would not close down at all at night
except for the impossibility of obtain
ing enough employees, says Goodwin's
Weekly.
Such a sitpation is filled with fore
bodings, for the mind runs forward to
that time in the future, and it must be
the near future, when the orders for
more products will be shut off. and
when at the same time there will
come multitudes of new laborers who
Will have no means to obtain bread
save by earning it. Where are they
to obtain it? And how are those
who are now obtaining double wages
going to adjust themselves to a con-
| dition when they will be receiving
perhaps no wages at all?
Worse still, when for every place
there will be one very poor who must
work at such wages as they can OBJ
tain in order to live?
Many people are specializing as to
what England, France and Germany
will do when the war closes.
A much more serious thing to con-
slider is what our multitudes of skilled
and unskilled laborers are going to
do.
The most serious question of those
who have our general and state gov
ernments in their keeping, is to try
to anticipate what conditions will con-
front US then, and how they are to be
met.
Like a steam boiler a nation ought
always to keep it's safety valve in re-
pair.
In 1849 our nation was exceedingly |
poor. The volume of money in the
country was so small that prices were
at the lowest.
Men on the farms worked for $40
a month; good board could be OBJ
tained for 50 per week and everything
else was in like proportion.
Transportation was mostly limited
to stage coaches, canals and the
Great Lakes and little back from
every line Of travel, people lived in a
simplicity which to look back upon
now seems almost unbelievable.
Gold was found in California. Men
began to tend that way. One old
ship after another that had lain in
ooze Of New York harbor for years,
was hauled out, cleaned, repaired,
loaded and sent away around Cape
Horn. In the, Mississippi and Mis-
souri, valleys a thousand primitive ex-
peditions were fitted out to move west
in the spring; a thrill ran through
the few manufacturing enterprises of
the country because of the new ex-
pected demand; the movement was
constantly gaining in power and mo-
mentum; the old ships were supple
mented by new ones of marvellous
construction; from the Father of Wa
ters to the Pacific, the whole mighty
space was sanctified by the swear
words of the OK and mule manipulation
and the changes wrought in that first
decade did away forever with the
methods that had previously pre-
vailed.
When the change began, as a rule
everyone was poor. There were but
two men known as millionaires in the
land and they We're always referred
to as wonders.
Now millionaires are thicker than
bleckberries, so much money is car
ried to the banks that it has become
burden; men are searching for in
vestments in every direction, but this
same volume of money so enhances
prices that thousand of the poor do
not know which way to turn.
What is needed is safety valve.
Could there be new California found,