Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-10-02
IN TINE OF WAR PREPARE FOR
PEACE
whs, Are We Doing Against the Day When
the Cannons Shall Cease Their
Firing? Nothing

nave WdSltu DllllOUS VI Ilunty anu NhON
sands of lives and much valuable time
because of the inertia of the Govern
ment.
Are we to enter peace equally unpre-
pared?
What is to happen to the hundreds Of
thousands of men engaged in war work
when peace comes?
What are the soldiers to do whose
places in civil life have been filled by
others?
What provision, if any, is to be made
for the women who have taken the places
of men in industry?
How are we to keep on the seas the
millions of tons of shipping that we are
building?
What is to become of the great indus
trial plants that have been built to do
war work?
Peace wiH come IN a dag, and 1Chen 1t
comes the production of 1oar material
UjH almost instantly stop.
Nothing has been done thus far to pre-
pare IOT lne new COnultlOnS WHICH VIII
confront us as soon as Germany sur
renders. She nay surrender before
Christmas or she may fight for six or
eight months longer; but it is as certain
as the setting of the sun that she will
be overwhelmingly defeated within a
year. Are we going to wait till that
happy time before we begin to think
about the problems that will rush upon
us with the force of an avalanche?
This is not to happen if the Republican
leaders Of the Senate can prevent it.
Senator Weeks introduced a resolution
last Friday calling for the appointment
of a committee of six Senators and six
members of the House to consider the
whole subject and after investigation to
recommend proper legislation. The Re-
publican Senators met in conference
yesterday afternoon and by a unanimous
vote indorsed the Weeks resolution. But
there is no political partisanship in it.
There may be partisan disagreement on
the proper purse to pursue in the read
justment of industry to peace conditions,
but men of all parties and of none must
agree on the Importance of finding out
at once how peace will affect the social
and industrial life of the nation, so that
the majority may decide what is to be
lone about it.
But there are broader questions to be
considered than those involved in the
mere readjustment of the nation to peace
conditions. We have been spending bill
lions on the war. The best mechanical
ingenuity of the country has been devot-
ing itself to constructing instruments of
destruction and to the transportation of
those instruments and the men to use
them across the ocean to the battlefield.
We have made a new gasoline motor.
We have invented great guns with long
range. We have found out how to build a
ship in two months that used to take two
years, and to build it cheaply.
Can zee not employ those capacities,
not only IN the Work Of reddjusting a
1~corring nation into Il peaceful one, but
in the Work of solving the problems of
peaceful progress?
Take for example the slums in Phila-
delphia. They are not so bad here as in
many other cities, but there are large
areas in which the housing conditions are
a disgrace to a civilized community. One
of the greatest economies possible to US
would be effected by wiping out the
slums and insisting that the owners of
them erect sanitary dwellings. Such a
course would decrease the labors of the
police, would conserve the health of the
whole city and would prevent among the
very poor the wastage of the lives Of
children through the forming of criminal
habits.
And what are we to do for our school
system? 1t is pretty good as such sys-
TENS go, but no one is so well awar as
the men in charge of it that it fails woe
fully in providing the best education pos
sible for the children. There are not
schoolhouses enough. The salaries of the
teachers are so low that only those with
a special calling to teach and the incom-
petent are attracted to the profession. If
a single generation of school children
could receive the kind of education that
it ought to receive-an education in the
things that they need to know as citizens
who must take their place in the indus
trial world, and also in the ideals toward
which the citizens of a free self-govern-
ing nation should strive-we should have
a new Philadelphia when they succeed us
in the direction of affairs.
1t is not necessary to ask what are we
to do to expand the commercial life
of Philadelphia and consequently of
America, for every one knows what has
been suggested and what should be done.