Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-09-05

w RESIDENT WILSON went to the root
of the deepest problem of the hour
when in the course of his Labor Day
message he urged that every citizen mot
only refrain from doing anything which at
the moment will tend to increase the cost
of living" but:
Let him do all in his power to in
crease production; and further than
that, let him at the same time himself
carefully economic in the matter of
consumption. By common action in this
direction we shall overcome a danger
greater than the danger of war We
will hold steady situation which is
fraught with possibilities of hardship
and suffering to large part of our pop
ulation; we will enable the processes of
production to overtake the processes of
consumption, and we will speed the res
toration of an adequate purchasing
power for wages"
Without steady flow and substantial
increase of production, efforts to regulate
the cost of living in the interests of the pub
lie will be OF no permanent avail; for so
long as the supply of necessaries is short
and the demand great, prices will remain
high. In the present situation, it is true
there are certain factors which make prices
higher IN some instances than even a pro-
nounced shortage of supply would seem to
warrant-factors such as inefficient distri-
button, boarding and profteering These the
government can do great deal to eliminate
if the people lend thoughtful cooperation;
and from what already has been accom-
plished the President can say, 81 confidently
look for substantial results, although
must counsel patience as we'll as vigilance
because such will not come instantly or with
out team work" But the virtue of all these
special remedies depends at last upon we'll
sustained and augmented production; for
what would it profit the patient to be saved
from fever of profteering, only to starve
for want of essentials?
For five years the processes of consump-
ton have been outrunning the processes of
production. We must enable the latter to
catch UP and to get ahead. There has been
not only unprecedented consumption, whilst
productive forces went limping and curtailed,
but also there has been unprecedented de-
struction Millions who labored in the field
or at the forge and the loom have been killed,
and millions more incapacitated. Vast guam
titles of the material and machinery with
which production was fed and carried on
have been blotted out. Billions of wealth
which normally went into creative chan
nels have gone blazing into clouds and thun-
ders of battle. Is it to be wondered, then, that
the world finds itself at the close Of this
first summer of peace it has known since
1914, with larders and shelves depleted and
it's economic currents turned all awry? The
obvious and the only remedy is to make up,
as far and as speedily as possible, the lost
time, the lost energy and the lost output OF
those terribly destructive years. This is as
true of America as of the world across the
sea, because, untouched though we were by
the devastation of war, our main activities
were modified for war purposes, and our
ordinary surplus from farm and mill ma
turally flowed, as it will continue to flow, to
relieve Europes distressful void.
Thus the worlds problem is ours also,
and we must solve it in big way If we are
to solve it at all. We must rally our strong
est and steadiest powers of construction to
fill the monstrous gap which has been cut IN
civilizations stores. We must build with all
our might if we are to offset those five ter
rife years of tearing down. We must think
and speak and live in terms which are con-
structive rather than merely critical. We
must think and live in terms of our common
interest rather than of any class or CUT.
And we must remember that labor, if it
moves in a spirit of service and high faith,
does indeed conquer all things.