Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-05-24
THE BOLSHEVIST BLUNDER
MUST NOT BE MADE HERE
American Working Men Know That
Wealth Depends on Production and
Not Redistribution

~ problem of labor attacks the subject
from the wrong point of view.
President Wilson suggests that Con-
gress should consider the relation of en-
poyer and employed and the development
of the spirit of cooperation.
The Russian Bolshevists began their
release of the workers from wage
! slavery by seizing the machinery of pro-
duction and in many cases destroying it.
When confronted with the consequences
of their acts they discovered that the
surest way to injure labor was to stop
production, and they have been trying
ever since to undo what they did in their
first enthusiastic ignorance.
Henry Ford has clearly stated one
phase of the issue when he says that
prosperity for young men depends, not
on speculation but on production. He
might have gone farther and said that
all prosp ..,y depends. not on a redistri-
button of the things already produced,
but on the production of new things.
The difference in the value of a Lancas-
ter county farm and the same area of land
in the heart of Africa is due to the fact
that men have succeeded in producing
crops from the Lancaster county acres.
They have applied their labor to the re-
Sponsive soil and forced it to yield abun-
dant harvests. Men have gone there with
little or no capital and have dug out Of the
soil by their hard labor enough to pay for
their farms and to provide them with
comfortable balance in the bank. The
more they have made their land produce
the richer they have become.
The National Department of Agricul-
ture and the agricultural department of
the Pennsylvania State University are
devoting themselves to the task of teach
ing the farmers how to produce bigger
crops and how to raise cattle at profit;
that is, how to increase the productivity
of the earth
The wealth Of the world today is due
largely to the production of new things
of which the men who lived a hundred
and fifty years ago had no conception.
1t is impossible to estimate the wealth
that has been created through the devel-
opment of the industry started by Mat
thias Baldwin right here in Philadelphia
in the last century. Raw steel and
iron have been converted into locomotives
at the Baldwin works. which are of them
selves worth untold sums, and their use
in hauling freight and passengers in all
parts of the world has facilitated the Gre
alton of new wealth there
The automobile industry, in which
hundreds of millions of dollars are in
vested, has been created out of nothing
within the memory of men less than
thirty years old. It has made business
where none existed before. And the
value of its product is due largely to the
value of the labor used in transforming
cheap raw materials into efficient ma
chimes. lntelligenty directed labor has
produced new wealth and has shared in
the benefits of the production.
The automobile is at present dependent
on the petroleum industry, which did not
exist when John D. Rockefeller was a
young boy. The oil was hidden in the
earth, useless and inert. 1t has been
pumped out, refined and turned to many
different uses, each of which has been
productve' of vast. wealth.
1t is not necessary to multiply modern
the score. The point we wish to make is
that the way to wealth is through the
| production of something for which there
! is already a demand or for which a use
can be found.
This principle is at the bottom of the
conclusions of the British royal commits
sion which studied the labor situation in
! England. The men who drafted that re-
port did not attempt to find way to set
tie old disputes between employer and
employed.
! The commission concentrated its atten-
ton on the future and devoted itself to a
study of ways and means for increasing
Nhe productivity of British labor; that is.
for increasing the wealth of England
through the creation of something valu-
able out of something of less value.
1t assumed that the surest way to in
crease the wealth of the British working
man was to increase the volume Of his
product Every farmer knows that this
is sound assumption, for he knows that
if he raises two hundred bushels of pota-
toes on an acre which last yver produced
only one hundred bushels his profit in
creases likewise.
Working men in England have delber-
ately kept down production under the
mistaken view that they were helping
themselves by providing jobs for more
workers. Thsy have learned something
during the war-and their employers also.
For example, when airshps were i'm
peratively needed for the armies it was
taking the men forty hours ormore to
make a propeller. The contractors be-
sought them to work faster, and as last
resort they offered them forty hours pay
for every propeller they turned out, no
matter, how few hours they spent on it.
Through the impetus of reward the men
were soon making propellers in nineteen
hoursl
The working men learned what they