The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1919-10-20
For the Good of
the Community


Mr. Appleton was speaking of conditions in
England, where railroad and coal miners para
lyzed the country for time. This country may
well take warning from what has happened across
the Atlantic. For several weeks few hundred
thousand steel workers have been out on a strike
and now the country is threatened with strike
in the bituminous coal fields involving about
400, 900 men.
Striking longshoremen tied up all international
and coastwise shipping at the Atlantic ports for
several days.
The cost of living is high and is getting higher.
Production is not increasing and in the event the
coal miners stop work, that will necessarily in
volve other lines and compel suspension at large
percentage of the industrial establishments and
tie up the transportation system of the entire
country.
Looking upon the gloomy side of the picture,
want and starvation and suffering can be seen
everywhere. 1t is to be hoped that the wisdom of
the government and the employers and the en-
ployes combined may work out solution that will
avert the dreadful threat recent events have cast
athwart the horizon.
Mr.. Appleton, quoted in the opening para
graph, further says:
"The tragedy which threatens to overwhem Brit
ain proceeds in regular fashion. Gradually, but
definitely is unfolded the plot to bring misery upon
the people in the expectation that misery may ad-
vance revolution and exalt the demagogues who
would become autocrats. There has been the battle
of phrases, the avalanche of promises, and the sap
ping of moral fibre. Today there is the game of
tactics between the revoutionaries who control the
Miners Federation and the Railway Workers Organ
izaton Tomorrow may confidently anticipate
the outbreak.
circumstances follow each other with the regu-
larity though not the harmony of musical cadence
There has been preparation, there is percussion
and tomorrow there will be resolution and revolution
that may involve dissolution of the British empire.
"In the battle of phrases, the government has
Joined It has seen salvation in ninepence for four
pence, in acceptance of the demand that workers
should be remunerated according to their desires, in
cfoo 6Off hoir MING in "a
of the discredited labor laws and conditions OF Ed
ward III. 1t has permitted and does permit fraud in
high and low places to go unpublished or under pun
ished.
"The government is at disadvantage in the bat
tie of words and promises 1t is expected to make
good it's utterances and fulfil its promises This In
wolves expense and in endeavorng to raise the money
with which to meet expenses, the government incurs
opposition and unpopularity. So far it has met the
situation by words and more promises, and by
the creation of an administrative machine which it
estimates will, this year, cost one hundred and SIX
method of turning the developing tragedy into a
drama with happy ending 1t has still no ascer-
tainabe policy.
"The few men who brighten the government and
misead labor and through labor the whole empire,
start their campaign with many advantages. They
have, in the MAN, to deal with an minimizing prole-
tariat They may enrich their promises with
rhetorcs choicest ornaments they may build
not castles in Spain, but empires formulate. They
have no responsibility. They usually suffer from
moral obquity and constructive paralysis. To de-
mand rather than to provide is their meter The
their intelligence without influence upon their
sciences
"They will cheerfuy adopt and promulgate every
panacea of the ancients the moderns, and just
as cheerfuly discard and forget them. Whover dies
they live; whoever fails they are triumphant.
'It is no use Analysing intentions. nation faced
with strangulation only deal with effects and the
effects of the propaganda which these revoutionarles
have farthered are eliminating in disaster.
"The friends of the really responsible for the
troubles in the mines and the railways and in the
docks may argue that all of them atrulsts but to
the average it seems very much as II their al
trusm was for abroad and not for home. Whatever
their Intentions the fact remains that they have
brought English industries into perilous circumstances
and British workmen to the certainty OF grave suffer-
ing and possibly starvation.
Faced with restriction of output of coal and
inefficient and costly system of railways faced daily
with sporadic strikes, what will the government do
What will the nation do? The answer to the first
question is easier find than that of the second The
government will do what it has been doing since Mr.
Asouth gave his fatuous advice to follow prices with
wages It will temporize in the Micawban hope of
something turning up.
Salvation lies, now, always, with the nation
JInon the manner in which it faces the situation
everything depends. Each individual must accept his
own share of responsibility and perform his own
task.
This country heretofore resting in the security of
;ts isolation and comparative freedom of anarchstic
nloters can longer shut its eyes to the activities
- +ho hoshevss and other foreign elements that are