The Ely miner., 1921-10-28
WHY | FAVOR
ADJUSTED COMPENSATION
The Sponsor for the Legions Five-Fold Bill In
Congress Explains the Justice of
the Measure.
BY REPRESENTATIVE JOSEPH w. FoRDNEY
in The American Legion Weekly.

industrial welfare and prosperity
J of the entire nation by helping
nearly five million. of it's principal
breadwinners get back on THEN
feet financially-these are three
chief compelling motives back OF
the Adjusted Compensation Bill
and the three main reasons why
among others have heartily sup
ported it.
I have never been able to feel
any patience with system OF
policy which permits men to stop
bullets with their. bodies at dol
lar a day and to make bullets
with their hands for eight, ten
and twelve dollars day. Hun
dreds of thousands of men of
military age, exempted or placed
in deferred classes, in safety and
ease, were earning neat little gold
service stripes. It occurs to me
that the scales of justice under
such procedure We're hopelessly
out of balance and that they
should be set even as nearly as
possible at our first opportunity.
Neither have / felt it right that
thousands of business men and
business concerns should be allowed
to pad their Golfers with pro-
sperity which was at the same
time practically pauperizing mil
lions of their fellow-countrymen
endangering their lives at the
front. Here, too, the scales have
appeared to me to be out of bal
ance and in need of adjustment.
There is an account to settle be-
tween those who profited from the
war and those who lost by it.
Time is money, we say, but
certainly the time spent by millions
of young Americans in the service
during the World War was any
thing but money in their pockets
! Nearly five milliofs of our young
men, just on the verge of their
real money-earning power or in
the midst of their preparation for
business or the professions, were
taken and sent to war, their econ
omic life rudelyt interrupted, all
their threads of planning broken,
all their hopes for the future shat
tered or deferred.
When they came back, even if
they were fortunate enough to be
able to take up life where they had
left it, they were set back just SO
much by their service. And in
hundreds of thousands of cases
they have been forced to start in
| all over again, to build from the
ground up, to take new jobs and
make new beginnings. Many a
young lawyer came back to find
all his clients absorbed by the fel-
low who stayed at home, and the
same thing has happened with
many another business and profes-
sion. And / am ashamed to say
many service man came back to
find his old job gone and his en-
ployer's days of patriotic fever
ended.
/ would still be for adjusted
compensation for the men who
fought the war even if it meant
some sacrifice and hardship for the
people of the country as a whole
but as careful study as I have
been able to give the matter, after
hearing all sides of the question
economic as well as moral, I am
convinced that such an adjustment
of compensation as proposed in
the pending bill would rebound te
the benefit of all the people of the
nation, that it would be a safe
and sane investment for US as a
whole to make. | am not one OF
those who believe, so far as com.
pensation in cash is concerned
that those who take the cash will
squander it in two or three weeks
that the men whom we called ''the
flower of our manhood" in 1917
and 1918 have suddenly all be.
come spendthrifts and profiigates
And with reference to the other
features of the bill--land settle.
ment, home aid, vocational train.
ing and insurance certificates
there is hardly anyone who would
argue against thnir potentialities
for great good.
There is p RIB about the
ingratitude of blics. The
United States, -eatest Re.
1