Denver labor bulletin., 1918-05-25
HERE ARE LABOR'S TERMS FOR
WINNING THE GREAT WAR AND
BRINGING A PERMANENT PEACE

bility of greatly increased liberty tax
alton be no longer neglected. The in
come tax can readily produce another
billion, without any additional burden
on modest incomes. At the present
rates only a few of the very largest
incomes are adequately taxed. The
great bulk of the large incomes of the
country are now paying less than one
half and many of them one-fourth the
British rates. A large part of Ameri-
can wealth is not reached at all by
this tax; unimproved real estate even
when rapidly rising in value and other
similar property producing no tech
nical income, total of many billions
as well as many billions of United
States, state, county and municipal
bonds. Labor therefore urges and ex-
poets an early and comprehensive in
crease in the graduated inheritance
tax. The present rates of this tax
|, also are adequate only for the very
largest fortunes. This makes it pos
sible to secure a large additional
amount from those fortunes, where
the great bulk of American wealth is
concentrated, that is, fortunes from
$1,000 to 100000.
z A decidedly promising, but as yet
y insufficient and unsatisfactory,
beginning has been made in the
protection of wage standards and la
Dor conditions, the fixing of maximum
prices, the adequate taxation of
wealth and the limitation of profiteer-
ing. But as equally vital measure,
carried out in every one of the bellig-
erent countries in the very first days
of the war has as yet been wholly
neglected.
Unless America takes immediate
and effective steps by national or con-
certed state action to check the men,
acing increase of rents, especially in
the war industry centers, all the above
economic measures Will be in large
part nullified, landlords will absorb
what war profiteers have been forced
to surrender, labor's efficiency will be
reduced, disloyalty viii seize the op-
portunity and spread unrest and re
sentiment among our people.
n AS a measure necessary to the
" efficient production and admins
tration of the war industries, we
! advocate, further, the establishment
I by the government of adequate hous-
ing facilities for war workers whose
health and comfort are otherwise i'm
paired and their productivity lessened
y We are opposed to legislation for
the suppression of the so-called
non-essential industries. There is
at the present time a great voluntary
and automatic retrenchment in the
productiveness of these industries and
this retrenchment is being rapidly eN-
tended. Whatever the people do vol
UNFAIRLY is beneficent. Any violent
| Legislative or administrative action
would only cause harm and dissatis-
faction.
| o Organized labor will not offer any
Q opposition to the instruction of
unskilled workers in the war in
! dustries, but it warns the public that
allowance should be made for a tenn
porary reduction of the average out
put caused by the inefficiency of the
unskilled worker and the loss of time
of the skilled worker who is doing the
| instructing.
! A League of Nations.
IN From an early stage of the Euro
y pean war, and before America en-
tered into it, the American Fed
GRAFTON of Labor endorsed the league
of nations. At the Baltimore conven-
ton of 1916 the report of the execu-
tive council was adopted advocating
"a voluntary union of nations, league
for peace" American labor fully en-
dorses the plan for a league of ma
tons as formulated by President Will
son on January %, 1917:
IF the peace presently to be made
is to endure it must be peace made
secure by the organized major force
of mankind"
| Upon Americas entrance into the
war. the President proceeded to a still
more definite statement of the princi-
pies of American labor and democ-
racy in regard to the proposed league
of nations. In his address to Con-
gress April ., 1917, the President
made it clear that the concert of
power proposed is not a concert of
autocracies, but n league of free peo-
pies, declaring that America is fight
ing "for a universal dominion of right
by such n concert of free peoples as
shall bring peace and safety to all
nations and make the world itself at
last free"
Finally, the President still more
clearly defined the attitude of Ameri-
can labor and democracy in his state
ment of Americas war aims on JAN
uary of this year. In his address
the last and most important of the
fourteen points formulated was as fol-
lows:
"a general association of nations
must be formed under specific cove
nants for the purpose of affording
mutual guarantees of political indie
pendence and territorial integrity to
| nd -tas oil