Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1919-03-21

ror une in the wage rates
when so little return Is to be had FOR II
The wage workers and the farmers
have reserves in hand that will be
used In the maintenance OF their ram
lilies, and in addition to the equipment.
That means that when we get into a
real postwar period, in the aggregate
a tremendous amount of additional
purchase will be made.
We are short in our normal supply
of labor somewhere between three mil
lion and five million workers; so IL
we could engage in u pre-war ac-
tivities on a postwar basis mmedl-
ately, there would be a shortage OF
the supply Of labor.
1t is not very generally known, but
it is nevertheless a fact, that the
strikes that took place at Seattle, at
Butte, at Paterson, at Lawrence, n
at a number Of other places recently
were not industrial, economic disputes,
in their origin, no matter how much
economics may have been involved In
the dispute. A deliberate attempt was
made to create a social and political
revolution that would establish the
Soviet form of government in he
United States and put into effect the
economic theories of the Bolshevik or
Russia. 1t failed because for two
years the Department of Labor n
other agencies of the government have
been fighting hat false philosophy,
not by the utilization of force, but by
appeal to the judgment, to the reason
of our people.
Interests Are Mutual.
Employers and employees have a
mutual interest; not an identical In
terest, mark you, but a mutual inter-
est in securing the largest amount of
production from a given amount of
labor, having due regard to the health,
safety, opportunities for rest, recre-
alton and development of the work
ers; for if there is nothing produced,
there will be nothing to divide; If
there is a large amount produced,
there will be a large amount to divide
and the interests of the employer and
the employee only diverge when it
comes to a division of that which has
been mutually produced; and If they
are wise in their generation, when that
divergence takes place they will sit
down around the council table and
endeavor to work out the problem on as
nearly a just basis as the Circumstance
es surrounding the industry will permit.
1 do not believe that any country
owes any man a living; but l do be-
lieve that every country owes every
man an opportunity to earn a living.
To place men at work on any job,
where the results from it are not
needed, is just so much waste of
time and energy and man-power. But
there is a tremendous amount of
work, a tremendous amount of i'm
provement that is needed; and so
that the minds of our workers will no
be fertile fields for the propagation
of false philosophy it is our duty to
see to it that these activities are now
engaged in to the fullest extent.
We have visions of industrial ac-
tivity in the heal future. All of the
wars that have been engaged in from
the beginning of the development of
the factory system until now have
been followed by periods of indus
trial activity. Now, with the vast
amount of destruction of life and of
property that has taken place in this
war, as I visualize the situation, once
we get back into a regular postwar
swing, there will be at least a decade
of industrial activity, a period in which
the false philosophers of Bolshevism
will find no foothold, and where we
can go on working out u social
problems, our economic problems and
our industrial problems after careful
consideration of each of them, as they
are presented, and thus move onward
in an evolutionary way to that higher
sphere that our country is destined
to occupy.