The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1917-07-26
AFTER THE WAR, WHAT i?
INDUSTRIAL FORECAST
DESCRIBES FIERCE coMPETI.
TON WHEN PEACE is
RESTORED.

(Senator Watson, of 1ndiana)
| am all the more impelled to make
this suggestion in regard to the up
building of business and the mainte-
nance of prosperity at full tide be-
.ause We must be adequately prepar-
ed 10 meet the situation that shall
| confront us at the conclusion of this
war. When this conflict shall cease
what condition shall we inevitably
confront? The five billions of exports
that we each year send out because
of the war will be greatly reduced;
our exports must of very necessity
| enormously decrease soon after peace
shall have been declared The vast
influx of gold heretofore enjoyed will
be suspended; practically all of the
factories making munitions and parts
If munitions. directly and indirectly,
two millions of men now engaged in
those factories will be very generally
thrown out of that employment and
compelled to seek other fields of ac-
|tivity; unprecedented wages induced
by unparalleled profits must of neces-
sity fall; such an era of REIMBURSEMENT
and Encouragement as we have never
before known in our history will be
thrust upon us and must be prepared
for in advance; and, practically over
night, we shall plunge from the most
remarkable period of industrial ac-
tivty ever experienced in the history
of the earth to one of unexampled
change, if not to one of commercial
despair.
Soldiers in Peace.
In addition, twenty millions Of men
drilled and disciplined to the highest
degree of efficiency ever known, will
turn their thought and attention and
zeal into the channels of peace, into
manufacturing and mining and farm
ing, into commerce and navigation and
transportation; they will cease to be
the greatest consumers in the world
and be transformed into the greatest
producers in the world Instead of
furnishing us market for what we
produce, they will be invading our
markets with what they produce; in
stead of opening up their markets to
us and taking all that we furnish,
practically at our own figures, they
will be flooding our markets with the
cheapest products in the world made
by men who are transferring the in
describable skill and energy and eff
cheney of war into the channels of
trade and the pursuits of peace.
Commercial War.
They will carry into manufacture
and into commerce the same grim and
heroic determination to win that has
characterized them on the field of bat
tie. They must rehabiltate their own
own desolated lands. They must
reach out into other countries and en-
gage in a commercial war with rivals
and competitors around the globe.
They must regain lost markets. Y,
this end they will eat less food and
wear fewer clothes and work longer
hours at scantier wages and take less
profits than ever before. Therefore,
they will Immediately begin the most
severe competition with us, not only
in our markets but as well in the mar
kets of all the neutral countries of the
world, and, with their cheaper labor
and their far greater facilities of
transportation, will crowd us out of
those markets and further glut our
own warehouses with the unstable
products of our factories and farms.
Industrial Protection.
Now, we are in this tremendous
conflict Our thoughts are uppermost
'of the flag and of our great duty and
of the measureless responsibility.
do not understand it all. We were in
the midst of universal tranquility,
when, even more startling than the
proverbial thunderbolt from clear
sky, came the announcement of this
awful conflict. l shall not discuss the
past. Ill boots 1t to do that; but we
know what the present Is, and every
up to his responsibility and discharge
the obligations that he owes to his
country, his government and his flag
in a time when they are struggling to