New Britain herald., 1918-07-05
Military Ages and Labor.

Before we are through with this war declares Senator Reed Of Mis-
 Souf1, we will have to put five to
 seven million troops in Europe l
 think. That is raising little the
 o.V0Q,oOO limit set by Col. Roosevelt, who may now come back with 9 dc
 mand for 10,O0O,O00. But the safer
 way IS that taken by President. Will
 son. ot taking off the upper limit and preparing in advance to meet any
 emergency that may come up. It is not possible as yet to calculate the maAllnum strength of the expedition ary force which is either desirable or possible Senator Reed may "thinII'
 that before the War ends we shall nave 7,000,G00 or so soldiers in ffance, but he does not know with 'eftalntN the answer even to the much 1 Slh1pIef question when the war will ehd- Military and industrial effort 1 nave to be nicely proportioned to y-eId the maximum national strength ana the problem has to be worked out by exact calculations rather than by 1 the munitions Of senators.
 l Senator Lodge says that he is in ] favor of raising the military age from oI to 40, but is unwilling to lower II below 21. To alter the limit in this manner would nos add greatly to the number of Class 1 men avail able for general service. Assumin& that the 'Work or fight" rule were ap- piled to registrants over 3I years of 1 age, such an extension would, how ever, give the military authorities some control over q vast reservoir of labor, It is not certain that the rule could be applied without modification ! not adapt themselves to new employ 1 ment with the facility of younger l men, and are often physically unfit for many forms of heavy work for the endurance of which they might have schoOled themse Ives at a more adapt 1 able age That there is a desire to 1 bring vastly greater number of men under the scope of the ''WOrk or fight provision was shown by the senate military committee, and is illustrated by the New York Tribune when it chides Secretary Baker for being "chary about deranging industry by miiitarizing it." The Tribune asserts | that it is the duty of congress to | ''create a war structure of industry enlisting, if necessary, the services of every ablebOdied man."
 l General Leonard Wood, in an inter- view at Ann Arbor, Mich, IS now quoted as saying that "every man in the United States between the ages of 80 and 45 should be carrying a gun today" So extreme a statement need not be taken literally, in view of the too frequent inaccuracy of the reports of casual interviews given by public men to the press. Yet the context seems to indicate very plainly that l General Wood gives little thought to the labor problem of the country in | relation to it's military needs. "LOOk around you in your cItieS," the Gen l eral is quoted as saying. ''in your vil- lages and country towns and on the 1 farms, and see how many strong, able 1 bodied men there are of the a geS 1 l mentioned fit and ready, yes, eager to 1 enter the battle.' One can see many
 such men, it is true, and undoubtedly they would willingly enter the military l services if such a course were for the best. But the fact remains that the men between 30 and 45 are now the l industrial backbone of the country and tlfat putting them en masse into
 the army, as General Wood suggests.
 would disrupt the processes of our economic life.
 l The latest statement by the United ! states tlllplOy iiFill SeTNlCe or the DC-
 pertinent of Labor, in starting a spe~
 cial campaign to secure for the war
 industries from 100000 to 100000
 common Ia ahorers is enlightening. The shortage in unskiled labor, it is de 1 Clarcd, especially in coal mining. lis
 mperiling all other prOduCtiOn'. Tn respect to skilled labor, the situat ton
 lis nearly as serious" War industries
 in Connecticut and Maryland alone
 are undermanned by 35,000 machin-
 ists. Manifestly, the wholesale draft ing for military service of men be-
 tween 31 and 45 would make the
 la bor situa ton, already serious, so
 acute that there might be a collapse
 in our production of the material of
 war. It however, the real purpose
 of raising the draft age to 4G or 45 is
 to subject all men, up to the max
 imum, to the governments control
 ly in the non essential industries,
 without taking them for military serV-
 ice, the problem is not so much the
 raising of armies as the regulation
 of the labor supply in the absence of
 an actual conscription of labor.
 These utterances by public men, in
 the light of the United States employ
 ment service statement, disclose con-
 siderable confusion of thOu&ht re-
 garding the question of the increase of
 our armies in relation to the mainten-
 ance of an adequate labor supply in
 the essential industries.