The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-24
EXCESS PROFITS.

People have the happy faculty of talking in generalities. They hit oil phrases which are meant to convey a sort of general idea and becope satisfied with that. Excess profits is such a term. It may mean exactly what it is intended to mean or 1t may mean no such thing.
 Thus the turn over an industry may display a profit net of hund- reds of millions, whereas the capi- tai and labor invested may have actually reached that amount In previous years. Or the turn over may be well within the thousands and the capial and labor invested have never reached the hundreds. But both may be regarded in the popular mind as excess profits, when the excess is existing really in the minds of the people from an err roneous conception of what profits really are.
 Here is a plant paying high wages and still making millions. Here is another making but thou sands but paying low wages, actu- ally the latter represents a much higher degree of exploitation and . hence it's excess profits is literally highest.
 Very fortunately for the people however who find use for the ex- pression excess profits, there can be cited very few cases where the ac- pitalization is very great in propor- tion to the net profits, and when it is used in the question of tax ation. excess profits as a general term will right now apply generally and correctly enough.
 The proposal to tax excess prof1ts carries with it a contradictin. It officially justifies that industrial con aiition wherein excess profits are made. It legalizes excess prohts' when oftener than not such are due
 
 to extortion, another name for graft and the most intensive exploitation of labor.
 There is no denying that the profits which have been made during the past few years have been enormous. There is no denying too, that the turn over has been based upon no such thing as production costs, and that for the product or the plants which enjoyed such profits, the com papy owning plant could ask and receive whatsoever they wanted in the way of return. Dividends have been soaring. The profits made from industries related to the war, direct ly end .indirccsly, have been onorm- ous. The values of the plants rose accordingly.
 Take a typical case: the steel trust The net earnings in 1914, a rather favorable yaar during peace, amounted to $23,496,76S. In 1916 this company showed net earnings of $271,531,7S0.
 The plant represented little or no increased value, the raw material Tor the greater part increased in volume but not in value per unit of volume, the labor to all irtents and purposes remained stationary. There was more labor employed. From 1912 to 1916, according to the Un- zlcd States Bureau of Labor statis- tics, union labor, according to in dex figures rose only 9 points. while food costs rose from 46 to 105 per cent during the past three years. Tn fact the aver age worker has not shared in the so-called war prosperity at ali. He has paid for it with his labor.
 During the years that Uncle Sam has been supplying belligerents with war material, and we might as well get it straight. it has been the ener- gy that was forthcoming from labor in this country that produced that golden wealth that came pouring into the country in return for the product of that labor power.
 What happened for labor was that many more men were employed: there were not so many in the ranks of the unemployed and that in the estimation of those who do not work cagAt to satisfy the workers. The