The Pulaskian., 1919-01-10
PROSPERITY AHEAD. MAY BE POSTPONED
MORE SKILL REQUIRED TO CHECK WAR PRODUCTION THAN TO BUILD INDUS
 TRIAL MACHINE.

Business adjustments are under way throughout the United States and the truth is being daily manifest ed that more skill is required in the checking of our war production than was required to build the industrial war machine in the first instance, says statement of the Mechanics and Metals National Bank. America is entering the reconstruction period the most powerful and the most fa- yored state in the world. We were the last to draw the sword and We emerge from the war in an enyiable position, possessed of enormous wealth, highly developed industrial plants and splendidly organized com mereial and financial institutions Our position, the statement adds, among the nations is fortunate one, but fortunate as it is, there are se- rious problems immediately before us-problems that are made none the more easy by the suddennness of their appearance.
 We all want to look forward in the months before us to a period of good times, with business in a yigor- ous unlocking state," says the state ment. But can such period be inl- mediately ahead, while plants are be- ng readjusted from a wartime to a peace-time basis, and while the world is still bewildered by the rapidity with which epochal events are oc- curing? There is no gainsaying that the worlds requirements are very great and that America is destined to play prominent part in furnish ing the material with which the na- tions of the earth are to win their way back to prosperity. Pending the eventual swing into peace-time activ- ity, however, a situation full of un- certainty would seem to be before us. The worlds disorders of more than four years have drawn us far out of the beaten track of our lives, and it would seem that we could not, with. out wrench, return to our normal life as it was lived before the out break of the war.
 "The United States is the only great nation equipped with working forces, plant facilities and capital sui ficient to turn out what Europe will want in it's reconstruction period, and orders may be expected to be placed with us for enormous quantities Cf raw material, for steel and iron and other metals, for lumber, grain, cot ton, provisions, and thousand things with which 10 restore a conti- nent to a semblance of it's former self We all recognize mankind's need for American products, but we all recognize, also, that our own in dustrial condition is still to be ad justed to the new era into which We have entered.'
 Labor, like capital, the statement says, is confronted by the need of reftting itself into old grooves of in dustrial and commercial activities, and the wage of labor in months to come will be regulated exactly as the profits of industry and interest on capital are regulated; namely by eco nome forces winch are more powerful than any artificial means that men might employ to overcome them.
 Under any circumstances, it pre- diets, wages will not go back to the pre-war basis. Adjustments due to the ending of the urgent necessity can be looked for and labor will gain, nothing by refusing to recognize eco homie forces that are at work govern ing the situation.