The labor standard., 1918-05-01
MIR. AVERAGE CITIzEN-- DO YOU PRODUCE AS
 MUCH AS YOU CONSUME
Modern Society Founded on Prin- c.ple of Cooperative
 Effort of All.
WE DEPEND ON EACH OTHER
Simple Lesson tn Economies Proves That industry Is the Source of Ne eessities, Comforts and Luxuries.
 individual Has Debt to Organization.

Can you picture an average Ameri- can family seated at table in the average American home about to par take of the average American meal? It is familiar enough sight. There is the table covered with it's white cloth, the utensils made from porce- lain, steel, glass and silver, and there is the food-bread and butter, milk, tea or coffee, salt and pepper, sugar. meat, vegetables, fruit, etc. But scarcely anything there is the direct result of the labor. of any person who sits about that table!
 When you sit down to meal do you ever think who provided it? Do you even know, in most cases, where the different components of that meal came from? Did the salt and the pep pe- drop as mama from heaven! Did the flax or the cotton which forms the tablecloth grow upon the home place! Were the fbers spun into yarn by your housekeeper, and was the cloth woven on the household loom? Did you rear the animal which supplied the meat for the repast7 Did the fruit come from your orchard? Are the milk and the butter the products of your cow2 Who delved into the earth for the sfl- yer, the steel, the lead, the clay which have been used to make up the utensils necessary for your most simple meal7 And who changed those raw products into the knives and forks and dishes you use?
 No. thoughtful man can consider such questions without being tremen- dously impressed with the utter de pendence of even the most independent man in our present civilization upon the cooperation of hundreds of thou sands of his fellow men whom he has never met and probably never heard of, largely engaged in, some occupa- ton different minis own and scat tered about, not only all over his own country, but many of them located In far distant parts of. the earth!
 1t makes no difference what vocation man follows. He may be farmer and cause two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before. He may be a manufacturers retail merchant, a mechanic or a1banker- a mo matter what he is, he depends for his very ex- istence, not onIyupon those who till the soil and deal fin itsaproducts, but also and to the same extent upon the great organizations of manufacture, transportation, c0mmus -icatiOn and finance which are scattered about all over the earth. f.e
 It has taken the combined efforts, the cooperation of thousands of peo- pie and organizations concerning which the average individual may know nothing, to bring about the develop ment of what we call our modern civ ilization. The economic value of your efforts and those of your employee or of your employer, as the case may be, both depend upon the value of the eff forts of millions of other men, and the economic value of one cannot be dam aged without impairing the economic value of all.=
 Let us not become so thoroughly spe- cialists that we forget the other fellow. If our work narrOws down at least let our knowledge and sympathies broad en-. If we do not know something of the problems of each other and have some sympathetic interests in those problems we cannot hope to attain, ei- ther individually or collectively, the very great benefits which are known to be the direct results of helpful coop eration.-Industrial Conservation, N. '.