The Logan Republican. [volume] (Logan, Utah) 1902-1924, 1917-07-14
Alex Smith, Prop.

toned together. 1t is perfectly pro-
per to discuss profits as matter Of
business, with a view to maintaining
the integrity Of capital and the eff
cheney of labor in these tragical
months, when the liberty of free men
everywhere and of industry itself
trembles in the balance; but it would
be absurd to discuss them as mo-
tive for helping to serve and save our
country.
Test of Patriotism.
Patriotism leaves profits out of
the question. In these days of our
supreme trial, when we are sending
hundreds of thousands of our young
men across the seas to serve behind
great cause, no true man who stays
behind to work for them and sustain
them by his labor will ask himself
what he is personally going to make
out of that labor No true patriot
will permit himself to take toll of
their heroism in money or seek to
grow rich by the shedding of their
blood. He will give as freely and
with as unstinted selfsacrifice as
they. When they are giving their
lives will he not at least give his
money?
II hear it insisted that more than
a just price, more than price that
will sustain our industries to pay
very liberal and unusual profits in
order to stimulate production; that
nothing bit pecuniary rewards will
do rewards paid in money, not in
the laert liberation of the world. /
take Il FOR Granted that those who
argu +. la ~ nj top to think what
that means. Do they mean that you
must be paid. must be bribed, TO
make your contribution, contribu-
ton that costs you neither a drop of
blood nor tear, when the whole
world Is in travail and men every-
where depend upon and call to you
to bring them out of bondage and
make the world a fit place to live
in again amidst peace and justice?
Do you mean that you will exact
price. drive bargain, with the men
who are enduring the agony of this
war on the battlefield, in the trenches
and amidst the lurking dangers If
the sea, or with the bereaved women
and pitiful children, before you will
come forward to do your duty and
give some part Of your life, in easy
peaceful fashion, for the things we
are fighting for. the things we have
pledged our fortunes. our lives, our
scored honor to vindicate and defend
liberty and justice and fair deah
ing and the peace of nations?
Demands Fair Value.
"Of course you will not. It is in
conceivable. Your patriotism is of
the same self-denying stuff as the
patriotism Of the men dead and
MANNED on the fields of France, or
else 1t is not patriotism at all Let
us never speak, then. of profits and
of patriotism in the same sentence,
but face facts and meet them Let
us sound business, but not in the
midst of a mist. Many a grievous
burden Of taxation will be laid on
this nation, in this generation and
in the next, to pay for this war; let
us see to 1t that for every dollar
that is taken from the peoples pock-
cts II shall be possible to obtain a
dollars worth Of the sound stuff
they need.
Let me turn for a moment to the
ship owners of the United States and
wv D'hNi oNNuh WHOSE eN-
ample they have followed, and ask
them II they realize what obstacles,
what almost insuperable obstacles,
they have been putting in the way Of
the successful prosecution OF this
war by the ocean freight rates they
have been exacting. They the doing
everything that high freight charges
can do to make the war a failure,
to make 1t impossible. l do not say
that they realize this or intend 1t.
The thing has happened naturally
enough, because the commercial pro-
cesses which are content to see OPP
crate in ordinary times have without
sufficient thought been continued in
to a period whore they have no pro-
per place. | am not questioning mo-
Z tiyeS | am .meralv stating n fn ~