The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-10-06
I'm m ense Value of
Workers Becoming
Capitalists Will Be
Realized More Fully
After the War

or nine miles, as they tried to do and
failed to do last year in certain Pennsyl-
vania centres.
"Munition works have grown up so
suddenly and so far from old centres that
the big problem has been to get the work.
men in and out, though the factories re-
lease shifts at II, 80 and 1, and at 5,
$50 and 6 on purpose not to blockade
and jam traffic all in one bunch" az
Lining the factory yard where he was
talking were rows and rows Of cheap cars
and trucks, each bought jointly by half a
dozen workmen, who used them as jitneys
to come and go. L saw as many as ten
men packed in one flivver. Divide Sec
ond hand fiivver by ten owners and the
cost per year is scarcely $40 more than
single car fare; and many of these men
would have had TO pay three fares to go
from a remote suburb where they lived
across city belt line to another section
where the munition plant Had sprung up.
| tried the street ear line myself twice at
the rush hours, and it made New Works
worst strap hanging jams look something
like Goldsmith's deserted village. Police
men had to handle car stops.
Unions Invest Their Funds.
The most conclusive evidence of how
labor regards Liberty bonds is found in
the policy of the unions as unions, not as
individual investors. The unions know
that after the war their members will be
coming back from the service, out of jobs,
some MANNED, some unfit for work for
life; and their reserve funds of union
money they are setting aside to take care
of such members.
They are setting such funds aside by
investing the total in Liberty bonds.
could give ease after case of such invest
ment, one Of 81 500; another of $4,000;
yet another of $4,000, and these were
only local unions around New York.
Take a few figures as to exactly what
labor did for the first, the second and the
third Liberty Loan. Members of the
carpenters unions in the Second Federal
Reserve District took nearly $4,000, 900
in bonds. Machinists invested $4,000 Of
their international funds in Liberty bonds.
Members of the boilermakers' unions
took 100000 in bonds. Electrical
workers invested 100000 of international
funds in bonds Typographical union
members privately took nearly $1,000, 900
of bonds. Of international funds they
put $4,000 in bonds. Firemen and engi-
neers put $275,OOO of international funds
in Liberty bonds; rail trainmen, $270,-
900; telegraphers, 100000; carmen,
100000; conductors, 100000; boot and
shoe makers, $4,000; garment workers,
0,0OO-these figures for the Second
Federal Reserve District only.
REPUTATION IL Wholly Complete.
As to the charge that labor is not pay
ing its share of the income tax, that, in
fact, labor paid only per cent. last year,
the refutation is equally complete. In
the first place We have been in the war
only year, and the income tax is only
a year old. This year, not last, is the
test year on the income tax.
In the second place, big wages to-day
are being paid In what are practically
Government supervised plants. To dodge
the tax could only be accomplished through
connivance of the Government.
Come back TO the challenge in question.
Is labor buying Liberty bonds! Is labor
paying its share of the income taxi These
questions have answered themselves.
1t is when you come to answer the third
and most dangerous question of all, is
labor toiling to win the war or using the
war as a club to bring capital to its kneesf
that light comes up over the horizon
that promises to abolish all the old contest
between capital and labor. You remem-
Der what Mr. Roberts of the National
City Bank said about a ground of COM
promise between capital and labor after
the war Listen now to what a labor