The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-01-24


 tract manufacturers to Birmingham. An
 industrial survey of the district is badly needed to show us our disadvantages as well as our advantages.
 The comprehensivenesS of the 1919 pro- gramme is for the membership to de eide. We can secure consideration for our proposals and respect for our wishes only in proportion to our strength. The more completely we represent the city for which we speak, the greater will be our influence. We need increased rev. enue. If you are content to allow the representative commercial organization of Birningham-an organization that is expected to reflect and express the com munity sentiment on great problems af- fecting the entire city and district--to continue with the present insufficient in- come you must not expect the results that are sure to come if the additional support and personal interest needed are put behind the administration.
 INCOME OF CHAMBER
 The Birmingham Chamber of Com merce should have an assured annual in- come of s60,O00. With that revenue the working staff can be increased by the installation of several necessary depart ments or bureaus. We will have funds for publicity and convention work and be equipped to more efficient service than We have been in the past.
 Sixty thousand a year sounds big, and some one is going to say it is impos- sible. When a man says thing can't be done, he is usually contradicted by somebody doing it. Birmingham men put over everything they undertake to do and they will make another record for
 Birmingham when they tackle this job. A great deal of success that comes to a Chamber of Commerce is due to the at titude of the press toward the organiza- ton. We are fortunate in having the most efficient cooperation of all the newspapers of Birmingham. We value and appreciate the relationship existing between us and the proprietors, the edi- tors and the staffs and are especially appreciative of the daily visits to this office, made by the reporters.
 ACTIVITIES REVIEWED The retiring president, Arthur c. | Crowder, reviewed the trip to Muscle
 Shoals early in the year and later trip to Decatur to assist in the organi- zation of a Chamber of Commerce there, and other activities of the year.
 w. D. Nesbitt told of the Warrior river committees work and of the work that remains to be done before Birmingham l is in position to reap the benefits from the development of navigation under the government control on that stream. The new president, R. A. Brown, on taking the chair, stated that he was go- 1 ing to talk plain; that he would insist on the assistance and cooperation of 1 every member of the chamber in the work of that body, and that unless they expected something to be done and to help do it they had elected the wrong ! man president. MIR. WILSON'S ADDRESS Lucius E. Wilson, who had come here at the invitation of the Chamber of Com merce to deliver an address, spoke in- lterestingly. "A Chamber of Commerce is l no stronger than it's membership he said. Tt is striving for something money cannot buy. Birmingham is great city but she is never going to get what she ought to have until you teach her people 1 to think in teams; team work is the only way to get anything
 l Chambers of Commerce when first or ganized some 20 years ago. he said, had but one idea selfish idea, and that 1 was for the benefit of it's members. First organized in the west to exploit eastern men and separate them from their money. each man went into it to get something for himself out of it. Things have changed from those days and now | the Chambers of Commerce work along 1 lines intended to benefit communities. mat IS DuSlneSS! IL IS an organized effort to satisfy want. Increase your wants and you increase business. Three I fourths of the new things made in the last quarter of century were made to satisfy new wants. It is to satisfy your wants that you sacrifice time and effort. You sacrifice and work and toll because 1 you want more shoes, more clothes and more of other things. The business of ] the Chamber of Commerce is to present l high ideals.''
 HOUSING CONDITIONS l Housing, he said, is one of the big questions that must. be solved. The work l ing man must have good living conditions and when he gets these he will be satis- 1 fled; there will be no I. w. w. and no bolshevism when the people are con- tented. The most prosperous city five years from now, he said, will be the city
 that has the best living conditions. He predicted that within five years there 1 would be no poverty in America. or
 there would be no America, that unless
 we overcome poverty, poverty Will over come us. re.
 l America is a nation of ideals, he said, and he attributed the final defeat of the l Germans to their lack of ideals. They
 were stolid. minimizing mass because they had old age pensions, mothers pen
 sions and felt secure. They went along | without thinking. In four years of war 1 not German poem was written that will l be remembered, while thousands written | by American, English and French soldiers will 20 down the ages on the