The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1917-09-08
BANKERS GETTING
Their EYES OPEN

What could be more surprising than
q public statement enlanating from
the American Bankers Association
declaring poverty and distress to be
due-not to any faults of the poor
but to the conduct of others beyond
their control? Yet such a statement
has been made by the association. In
an advertisement to push the sale of
war bonds, published in the New York
American Of June IA, the association
said:
suppose that a lot of selfish, care
less thoughtless people, throughout
the nation so conducted themselves
that you cannot get enough food for
your fanny, so that your wife fails
and grows weak and shaking before
your eyes, so that your children weak
en-, sicken and die. Suppose starva-
ton looks at you through the hollow
eyes of all you love best in the world.
Wouldn't you be filled with loathing
and contempt and bitter hatred for
the careless, thoughtless people whose
fault it Was?"
The rest of the advertisement is
devoted to showing that the persons
responsible for such poverty and dis
tress, are those who are in the habit
Of peeling potatoes before boiling
them, and also that by boiling pota-
toes with the skins on, enough money
can be saved for the purchase of lib
erty bonds, without self-denial.
Let not the reader smile at the logic
of these bankers. Having just woke
up to one great truth, it would be I'M
reasonable to expect them to be clear
on all of the details, and it would be
cruely Unjust to ridicule their errors,
however absurd These bankers
have long been blind to the fact that
most poverty is undeserved. They have
held it to be due to laziness, incompe
tence, intemperance, depravity or other
personal failings. They have now got
their eyes sufficiently open to see that
people suffer want through the mis-
doings of others. And the light that
has so suddenly broken upon them has
dazz]ed their eyes and rendered them
unable to see as clearly as those long
familiar with the causes of poverty.
When these bankers will grow more
accustomed to the light, they will see
that, however reprehensible may be
the waste involved in peelins potatoes,
it is as nothing compared with the
waste of stealing them from those
raising them. When, for instance, a
tenant farmer must give one-fourth
or one-half of his potato crop to some
one who has done no work, but hap
pens to, be his landlord, there is far
more waste than if he had been al
lowed to keep his crop and sell every
potato to persons in the habit Of peel
ing them. If he had been allowed to
keep his crop the landlord would have
had to go to work raising potatoes
or producing something of equal value
and there would have been more COM
modities on the market.
Or II the government had taken the
ground rent for public purposes. the
farmer could have saved the taxes he
is compelled to pay on all that he pro-
duces and consumes. At the same
time the requirement that all holding
land of any value pay the rental value
into the public treasury, would have
forced unused land into use and in
creased the supply Of all commodities,
including potatoes, to an extent far
In excess of what may have been need
9essly wasted in kitchens or else
where.
The American Bankers. Association
is calling attention to wasting at the
spigot and overlooking entirely the
much greater waste at the bunghole.
/ Let there be a little patience eNer-
clsed with these bankers. In time they
will see the whole truth, ss =, =. ri.
4 -