The Alaska daily empire., 1922-01-24
A Platform of Optimism.
(New York Commercial ]

(New York Commercal.)
 What grounds have for looking forward into 1922 with any greater degree of optimism than we had stood the threshold of 1921? One an- swer is that we need only to compare present condi- tions with those of year If the situation is bad now, it was worse then There must then have been improvement. Has that improvement stopped and going backwards? We There fore we going ahead.
 If stops to analyze each particular line of business he finds squirt here and spurt there and then ul. Sometimes there is enough of spurt all along the line to denote definite progress. Before the days of motor trucks and tractors heavy loads were moved the roadways the farms by adding additional teams of horses. To get them under way there much shouting and strainng, but for time progress. Individual horses here and there pulled and tugged and then gave up until finally there moment when they all pulled together and the load moved. The only way for business to move is for everyone to keep on pulling and tugging until there time when there is enough combined strength to set us definitely forward.
 In other words the nation must keep right on tackling the problems at hand. Just as during the each did what to hand whether it was knitting socks, making munitions or turning the handle of a machine gun, must each one now give the best that is in him. If this only could be done it should be done, if there lazy horses that needed the whip misfts that had to be taken out of the traces entirely it would be simple matter
 If the politicians in Congress should think first of the nations welfare instead of their own selfish aims; if they could give tax law that was based scientific principles, tariff law equally unsefsh; {; if Senators would talk less and work more; if Con- would try understand the first principles If economies; if the farmers could be made to under stand that prices cannot be regulated controlled by artificial that remedies for their troubles lie in reaching down to first causes and that it is useless to deal with effects while causes remain un- changed; if labor would realize that wages can- not be maintained in times and that the longer they cling to such schedules the fewer there will be who have the opportunity of collecting them; if the ecessity for increasing foreign trade be understood by all citizens and especially those occupy ing seats in Congress of the United Staes if in short we can all take broad gauge, liberal views of the problems at hand, get ahead.
 But there need not be any fear that these prob lens will not ultimately be solved. They will not all be solved in 1922 but some of them will and those that are will register that much progress. The ob- struconiss will not succeed in permanently blocking progress. The average of American intelligence is high; subjects properly presented easily under stood and in the course of time the American public makes up it's mind what ought to be done There is to be element that believes ought to build wall around ourselves and live unto ourselves but the larger element believes otherwise. There was large element that believed in the theory of free silver there larger element that did not, and eventually the fallacy of the idea became appar ent. The public had become educated Those who talk loosely of "entanglng alliances and 'nterna- tional bankers will find that they appealing only to the ignorant and the prejudiced who of the minority.
 The initiative and energy of the American people won the war for and those qualities will win the present economic war.