The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1918-07-20
BAREFACEO FRAUD;
|N0RD|NATE GREED

The Philadelphia Ledger voices the
sentiment of many thinking people
in the following criticism of the re-
cent exposure of the criminal prof.
teers when it says
1T is not alone what the federal
trade commission characterizes as
barefaced fraud and inordinate greed
leading to corporate and Individual
profits in the steel and coal industries,
in flour and meats, that reach all the
way up to 263 per cent. That is bad
enough. Men and women who scrimp
and save to pay the expenses of this
war know how terribly difficult it is
to buy the bare necessities which the
profiteers are. exploiting. That is
barefaced fraud. That is inordinate
greed. If proved, the fatteners upon
a nation that is devoting it's best ef
fcrts to the war will deserve the
heaviest penalties that the law can
inflict. But what makes it so hard
is not the $121 100000 in excess years,
or the inordinate returns to- the oil
refiners, the millers, the bituminous
coaol operators and the United States
Steel corporation and tits affiliated
companies.
Why prices are SO high has hitherto
been concealed to >all but the most
expert eyes. 1t is that these men, in
order to make their profits, have also
checked production. They have
stopped it 40 per cent, SO per cent, 60
per cent, 70 per cent short Of what
should be the normal output; they
have reckoned the costs of idle ma
chinery, idle men and poor planning
as legitimate overhead expense and
have asked of the government and
the consuming public full reimburse
ment for that cost and their margin
of profit besides.
1t is crime that grows out of ig-
norance. The minds of business men
generally are in some phases of the
art of production wrapped in medic
val mysticism. They don't know what
their costs are. In the so-called model
mills and factories, where efficiency
engineers have speeded up labor and
machines, every effort has been made
to achieve so-called standard unit
Of work for those machines and the
men that are working. Little if any
account has been taken of the ma
chimes and men that do no work at
all.
1T would astonish almost any man.
ufacturer to be told that constantly
alta least 40 per cent Of his available
machinery is idle, not chiefly through
strikes and shutdowns, but through
experiments that do not work, failure
to get supplies, failure to get and keep
labor, failure in planning the prompt
sequence of operations and for other
causes which might readily appear.
once the factors of idleness were seq
regated from the list Of legitimate
overhead expense.
1.-THE men Of whom the federal trade
commission complain have simply run
riot in this blind area of business in
attention. OF course, it is cheaper to
them, more profitable to them in
money, if managers have no other
care than that OF idle mills and ma
chimes, the losses on which are reck-
oned as proper investments for which
the public must pay in the ultimate
exorbitant price of a small net out
put. Such managers would prefer to
pocket the. profits thus awarded to
idleness. They employ men skilled in
piling overhead upon overhead at ex-
pense to the public in money, but
principally at expense in nonproduc-
ton. Until the price-fixing bodies of
the government shall establish agen-
cies to go after and search the factors
of idleness in the great industries that
deal in materials of public necessity
and of war, they will not have
scratched the surface of the waste
that turns abundance into scarcity
and makes nations starve."