New-York tribune., 1918-04-21
.HE suspicion is quite obviously
l. beginning to take fast hold

l. beginning to take fast hold
in Washington that the nom
essential, or the waste or the luxury
industries must be compelled to
wait for coal till the other indus
tries have had their needs supplied.
But this is only for the case where
there is not coal enough to go
round. The food must be moved
by the railroads., the ships built,
the bunkers coaled, the cannon
cast, even if the candy, the
furniture and the touring cars
should occasionally be ungener-
ously supplied. Sometime there
will be a choice to make. Then we
shall make it. And we know now
how we shall choose. There is,
then, hope that the white ways, in
candescent and city Examinations,
brilliant even later than the break
ing of dawn, and the electric ad-
vertisers in general, may also take
their place in the waiting line.
But why not draw the inevitable
Observation-Disclosures necessary,
logical and wholesome? If, with
coal scant, the filigree industries may
not absorb the fuel, why, when all
of the time and everywhere labor
and supplies are short, are these
same non-essential industries per-
mitted to absorb the men and the
supplies? Is then, at any time,
coal more important than the labor
that produces it and other things ?
The coal itself is nothing but labor
and capital in the guise of one
variety of product. If the indus
tries that don't deserve the coal
may waste the labor needed in the
producing of the coal, why not let
them also waste the coal? The
greater clearly should include the
less-even though the official mind
be not narrowly logical; it may still
be intelligent. And if, when tenn
porarily the coal is not plenty.
these industries are permitted to
hold in their service the labor that
might else be providing the other
and the essential things, why at any
time or on any occasion, deny the
coal?
There is indeed a rumor that the
farmers need men for the making
of the crop in order that there may
be- food for whatever men the nom
sense industries leave available to
be sent abroad as soldiers. It is
time to realize that men wasted
here in America means that the age
limit for soldiers has to go up in
England even to ffty-five years {:
means also that revolution has to
be faced in Ireland to enforce the
conscription of man-power there ::
and means further that, even
though England can find the men,
America may fail of finding the
supplies to permit of their enlist
ment-to make possible their SER
vice in the trenches, instead of re-
naming at home to produce the
things that we neglect to produce
and send.
We easily delude ourselves with
the cheap expediences of our war
finance. And still it is clear that
initiating the currency does not ex-
pand the supplies of land or of
machinery or increase the popula-
ton. Nor does it set idlers to work.
ing or wasters to saving. We can
have the right things produced
only by going without the produc-
ton Of the wrong ones. And
whatever we produce, whether lit
tie or much, we can have it for war
only by going without it for other
purposes. More than in any Ore
vlous time has war become a oues-
tion of resources in men and in
military equipment-a war, there
fore, of industrial organization and
effectiveness.
War finance is merely a means
Of redistributing our man power
and our productive output-fun-
damentally, therefore, question
OF economizing our powers of pro-
duction and of directing the nature
OF our consumption. There is for
US no wonder box or Aladdin's
lamp to be manipulated or rubbed.
by WHICH wonder products can ar
Give at our disposal. New dollars
ire not new wheat. If everybody
could find somebody else in Amer
lea to whom to sell each his last
dollar of wealth out of our alleged
ESQ billions and if the proceeds
of all these sales by everybody to
everybody could be invested in
bonds, there would be not one
bushel of wheat or any soldier the
more, or any ship the more or the