The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1918-02-07


to facilitate transportation of food to
the large cities and to the front.
DR.. CART, eld did not give us any ad
vance notice when on January 16 he
ordered the country east of the Mis-
sissippi practically to cease using
coal in order to facilitate the trans
portation of coal.
Thus the expedients of the Bolshevik
government in Russia and of the Am
erican government are similar But
what passes without comment as to
poor, demoralized, distracted Russia,
governed by Lenine and a Trotzky,
usurpers of scarcely more than two
months, makes the great republic of
the United States the laughing stock
of the world.
1t is useless to discuss what DR.. Gar
field might have done. rather than
what he did. AS we have said in a
previous article, we feel inclined to be
thankful to him for precipitating a
crisis rather than to muddle along
any further. The people have now a
chance to cure some fundamental de-
fleets.
We think, however, that the learned
doctor might well have given notice
THAT he was going to drop the bomb,
so as to give people more opportunity
to prepare readjustments. Apart
from this, we think that the magni-
tude of the calamity, for calamity It
is, without doubt, has been overesti-
mated Many of our mills were closing
sary holidays during the year and
have got into the habit of making
Saturday good deal of dead day
Some unions with which we have mad
experience let their men labor only
four hours on Saturday, out of which
they contrive to give but three hours
of effective work ESQ we have wonder
ed why they came to work at alD.
DR.. Garfield simply decreed some ex-
ira holidays, but they will not be
wholly wasted, for good deal of
work will still be done, while in many
cases Saturday will be made a live
day and the working hours of other
days will be heightened.
But of course it is great pity
that any time has to be lost in this
supreme contest of nations, when
every hour counts so much. If we
We're going to offer any ex post facto
suggestion it would be on the line that
the fuel administration might have
called for an emergency exertion of
more work rather than the cessation
Of work. DR.. Garfield might have
called upon the labor unions to sus-
pend their time rules for little
while, might have called upon owners
OF trucks to give their services, ire
menduous effort to get coal through,
If the industry had been operating
itself under the natural principle of
laissez faire it would have done some-
thing of that sort and would have
managed things somehow.
When DR.. Garfield began to make
his exemptions he learned something
of the interdependence of industry
that makes government attempt at
control such an impossible thing.
Quoting from the Evening Sun:
"Officials of the fuel administration
discovered innumerable ramifications
of business and industry they weren't
aware existed Almost every plant
specifically exempted by the order of
Fuel Administrator Garfield, it was
found, depended on the products of
other plants not exempted, and the
latter in many cases in turn depend
ed on still other plants for part of
their materials or partly finished pro-
ducts.
Or. Garfield ruled generally that
Exempted plants must get their accus-
TONED material supplies or the exemp-
ton would be worthless, but it was
disclosed at once that in many in
stances the production Of these parti-
cular materials formed only a small
part of the business of the plants on
which the exempted industries de-
pended.
1.-THE problem then arose as to whe-
Their to permit the nom exempted
plants to run at full capacity on all
their work in order to produce the
particular. materials desired by the
essential war industries.
MANY manufacturers represented
that if they were using power to run
their plants at all it would be plain
economy of fuel to man their fac
tories to capacity as usual.
almost all asserted that 1t was
difficult to separate the production OF
supplies for the exempted industries
from their general output. AS the
day wore on the legal experts of the
fuel administration were disposed tc
, throw up their hands and give these
factories virtual carte branche."
1t is just the same sort of thinl
> that makes price fixing and the gen
eral meddling with industries one o
the causes of the disaster that II
: threatening our welfare. If ther'
were any human brain that could de
: sign the periodic law, the movemen
Of the solar system, even the biolog.
of a worm, that brain might arrang