Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-10-24
LOST CUSTOMERS

EVERYBODY who keeps shop,
whether it is one in which the open
ing Of the door rings a bell summoning
the proprietor.salesman or a giant depart
ment store, has a practical reason for
demanding good government.
Some years ago a new business idea
was invented. There was to be a chain
OF stores spread over America. The ad-
vance agents of the enterprise were men
with counting devices in their pockets.
They stood at street corners in every city
and town, counting the people who passed
at every hour of the day and night. When
It had found the busiest corners in the
country, the management put stores
there.
Security brings people to a city, which
II a street corner on a large scale Sec
tons where thugs are waylayins and
numbering people do not encourage men
with little cigar stores and candy shops
TO stay in business there, and when thug
gerry goes into every phase of municipal
government, as here, the same sense of
insecurity keeps big business away. The
merchant seeks out the crowded street
corner the manufacturer seeks out the
labor center. But what is a labor center?
1t is nothing more or less than a great
aggregation of people dealing at groceries,
tobacco shops and the like near their
homes. When some one pulled gun and
killed a man in the Fifth Ward, the peo-
pie fled in all directions, and many of
them are still running perhaps, out of
the Fifth Ward out of Philadelphia. Be-
hind the murderer there stood an invisible
man with counting device in his pocket,
ready to tell his employer, This is no
place to put one of your chain stores"
A breakfast-food manufacturing firm
once announced that it was going to build,
In certain western State, a new factory
which would give 5000 men employment.
~ hNSANhlNu bSN"ttll AWO lONHS. Ollt VI
them offered to exempt the factory
building from taxation; but still, in spite
of this manifest advantage the company
hesitated. Was the government of the en-
terprising town good enough to keep 5000
workers healthy, contented, satisfied to
remain there? All the tax-exempting
IN the world will not keep a population
stable and hopeful, in spite of the single.
takers arguments. Morality transcends
economics.
You can vote Ware into perpetual
power, but you cannot easily vote lost
customers and lost workmen back to Phil
adelphia once you have lost them. VIII
there be immigration after the war? Until
a few months ago nobody knew. But we
know now. There will be a tremendous
immigration after the war; probably more
than 100000 men will come to America
a few months after peace is proclaimed.
They will be our returning soldiers, men
whose lives the war has torn up by the
roots, who are to be toughened and made
independent by the soaring breath of the
war furnace. VIII those men tamely
come back to cities which offer them the
same old rottenness and hopelessness?
Heverl They will pick and choose. We
will have to have our dirty linen all
cleaned TO compete with other cities for
the homecoming Americans.
On November the shopkeepers OF
Philadelphia must send forth a thunder
Gus message across the continent. We
must th-ow down the gantIet to rival
cities. challenging them to friendly con.
test for the honor of housing and helpIns
to fresh start in workaday life the mil
lions who will some day come home to
US with the glow of victory upon their
brows.