The weekly soliphone., 1917-07-19
WILSON APPEALS
 TO BUSINESS MEN
Excess Profits Must Not Be Made --Everybody's Duty to Help
 Win the War.

Washington, July 12.-President Wilson appealed to the country s 1 business interests last night to put aside every selfish consideration and 1 to give their aid to the nation as freely as those who go out to offer their lives on the battlefield. In the statement, addressed to coal operators and manufacturers, | he gave assurances that just prices | would be paid by the government and the public during the war, but warned that no attempt to extort Unusual profits will be tolerated.
 Your patriotism," said the pres ident's appeal, 'is of the same self denying stuff as the patriotism of the men dead and maimed on the | fields of France, or it is no patriot 1 ism at all. Let us never speak, then of profits and patriotism in the same sentence.
 "I shall expect every man who is not stacker to be at my side throughout this great enterprise. In it no man can win honor who thinks of himself.
 The president declared there must be but one price, government and 1 for the public. He expressed con fidence that business generally will be found loyal to the last degree, l. and that the problem of wartime iprices, which he declared will mean victory or defeat" will be solved rightly through patriotic CO., i operation.
 In unmeasured terms, however, MT. Wilson condemned the ship owners of the country for maintain ing a schedule of ocean freight rates which has placed almost in Isuperable obstacles" in the path of | the government.
 "The fact is," he asserted, that those who have fixed war rates have taken the most effective means in 1 lllclI power iO btItcb thS iiiN' engaged against Germany"
 Coal production and other indus tries for whose products the gov ernment has negotiated price agree ments are not taken up in detail by the president, his appeal dealing only with the general principles in volved in the determination of war prices. It follows in full:
 My Fellow Countrymen:
 '"The government is about to at tempt to determine the prices at to furnish various supplies which are necessary for the prosecution of the war and various materials which will be needed in the indus tries by which the war must be sustained. We shall of course. try to determine them justly and to the best advantage of the nation as a whole, but justice is easier to speak of than to arrive at and there are some considerations which | 1 hope we shall all keep steadily lin mind while this particular prob lem of justice is being worked out I therefore take the liberty of stat ing very candidly my own view oi the situation and of the principles which should guide both the gov |ernment and the mine owners and manufacturers of the country ir this difficult matter.
 "A just price must, of course, be paid for everything the government buys By just price l mean 2 price which will sustain the in ldustries concerned in a high state lof efficiency, provide living fol those who conduct them, enabl, them to pay good wages and make possible the expansions of thei
 enterprises which will from time tC time become necessary as the stu jpendous undertakings of this grea war develop. They are necessar! for the maintenance and develop
 ment of industry; and the mainten
 ance and development of industr!
 are necessary for the great task WI have in hand"