The Connecticut labor news., 1921-08-05
OMeara Takes Issue
 Continued from Page One.)

'In the United States this jobber will intercept the finished article and sell it again to another jobber who in turn resells 1t five or six times. These 'grafters' have added to the cost almost 500 per cent. and in many in stances as high as 1000 per cent. In the New England district of this country we see rubber goods, clocks, corsets, food products and so forth, | instead of the finished article being placed in the retail stores they are sent to New York to jobbers who rates thereon, together with the costs of the jobbers organization, and by the time that these articles again get back to the very same city wherein they were initially produced a cost ranging from 100 to POO per cent. is added.
 And to top off the argument against the high cost of the article, the retailer has become hide bound to the time worn words, well the la Dor costs are still high
 This puts me in mind of a certain eastern railroad recently when spe Cial train was made up for the con venience of the board of directors who desired to inspect the roads property. Certain things were need ed to be done to the special cars that made up the train, such as vacuum cleaning cushions in order not to soil the palm beachers, that this extra cost was ordered placed on the labor part of another job in the repair shops in order to have the so-called I labor costs of railroad operation made as large as possible.
 Another instance of waste that in variably adds to the overhead or sal ary of a certain business man we'll known in this section of the country is this:
 "Today great numbers of his men are walking around the streets of certain city seeking work, but still his profits are such, in the past, that it permits him to send to a we'll equipped laundry in the city coats and blankets that belong to the family pet dog, and yet the cry is made con tinually that the American wage earner must be protected.
 l IVY 6 have evidence recently where in the national president of the Real tors Organization severely condemn l ed the attempt of the national con gress to. support the bill before it | that had to do with national help to the wage earners to build homes. 1 The national real estate owners do not want any more houses built; they want them to be scarce so that they can command exhorbitant rents and selling prices within their ranks of | business. We hear of certain rail road executives now raising a big howl against MT. Ford who is at tempting to reduce railroad freight rates on his privately owned railroad. | They do not want them to come | down ;they want 10 keep on yelling about labor costs in railroad opera ton, and still keep up the freight rates. 1 was wondering how and for ! what reason this new organization called the American Valuation Asso- citation have become interested in the gold starred mothers.'
 l "Why, these same business eXecu- tives have not turned one finger in the effort to help out the living and injured sons of the gold starred mothers to get proper recognition for the faithful services rendered to their country, while on the other hand they have secretly and with much forethought permitted the bill lions owed to the wage earners through their government to be left unpaid, and still make no effort to reduce taxes, even on the soft drinks for thirst quenching.
 q would say that if the effort to assist the American workingman was gone about honestly that we would do what we could to assist in the effort, but just so long as the hnan cial interests of this country go along 1 as they do and permit finished articles to be sold and resold and resold many l =. ,,r1, Of 1 living and housing go on and just so | demand wages to meet these illegal | conditions. But we are not fearful of the worn out cry of the foreign l worker being a menace to this Coun | try'S wage earnerS-
 At the recent hearings before the | congres sSional committee on the Ford ney tariff law not one bit of evidence was produced to show that cheap 1 foreign labor would be a detriment to the American workman.
 "It is a well known fact that when piece of work is given to the Amer ican worker that he or she will do 1t worker, and still after the American worker making the finished article he can go to France, Germany or Eng land and buy the article much cheap CT than he or she could right in his or her own United States.
 "The answer to this is dishonesty.
 "The metal combine, the food combine, the lumber combine, the leather combine, the wool combine, the coal combine, and others will play on and on with their crooked game of reselling that has brought na tiOnal curse to our country, and let me remind those with pure motives that if their efforts will in the future be directed against dishonesty and to stamp this evil out as quickly as pos sible there need be no fear of the foreign workman putting the Amer ican workman out of business, be- cause the American has the science and pep to put anything over when the test calls him Just give him