Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1918-12-16
LET DAD FURNISH THE LAND.

Reconstruction plans at Washington
for putting returned soldiers upon un-
developed land are but the office
dreams and smoking room gossip of
more or less impractical bureaucrats
The American soldier has been away
from home not more than one to eigh-
teen months and all ne wants is to get
back there ?. D. Q. For the most part
he left a good job and the same job is
waiting for him. If he was employed
on the land that same land is need
ing his return at once. If he knows
nothing about land he would never re-
claim an American desert evea with
government help.
The war department and every 9th.
er department at Washington is alto
gether too much concerned about the
labor problem which does not exist
Munition factories should be demobil-
lzed at once and likewise all the troops
that are not actually needed in the
service. The country will absorb the
labor because labor was all EMPLOYED
on the day before We began to mobiI-
ize for this war
For four years our normal supply of
million men per annum from Europe
has been shut off by the war over
there. We have been compelled to get
along without four to five million i'm
migrants which We would have put to
work over here had'there been no war
10 burn up the products of mems toll
and We can at least guarantee our own
men their old jobs back again.
What Washington is really con-
cerned about is wages not work. There
is work enough for all Of our men and
for all who want to come over here
from Europe, but the war wage must
come down. The country will be bet
ter off when ii does come down. All
wages need not and should not come
down, but the unprecedented, impos-
sible wage which was inflated two and
even ten times its normal size must
come down before the country can
prosper.
Wages must come out of the ulti-
mate consumer and nine out of ten Ill
innate consumers are themselves wage
earners. Abnormal wages to q few are
gouge into the lower wages of the
many Wages can not permanently
come out Of capital for capital will
either raise the selling price to the
consumer or get another job at some
other kind of business So long as
Hungarians and Zechs and Slavoks and
Poles in the steel mills draw two and
half times their pre-Ear wage. ev-
cry other wage worker in the country
will pay more than he ought to pay
for things made Of steel. Meat and
coal will always stay up in price If
labor continues SO scarce as not to
meet the demand.
What we need most in this country
Is to get back to earth. Get prices
down to a fair basis that can last, then
turn every productive enterprise in the
land loose with throttle wide open and
plenty OF men to do the work; men to
pick corn at a fair price, men to move
coal, kill hogs, build railroads, make
steel, carry that bod and drive the
grocery cart. Building can't resume
until costs come down. So long as the
few connected with the. munition bust
ness are buying pianos and furs be-
fore they can read the Declaration OF
Independence, the rank and file Of this
country will be paying too much fol
shoes anu for every other necessity .:
life. II. n IA
Demobolize ana lat the men get bach