Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1922-09-01

IL was the age OF muscle power.
They had neither steam nor electric
| ity. Machines were unknown. Me-
chanics carried their simple tools UNI
der their arms. Fields were plowed
with sticks and reaped with sickles.
Wind or muscle propelled ships. The
horse was the swiftest and strongest
servant of man.
Yet they lived and multiplied. And
on top of making their living they
produced Moses, Buddha, Zarathustra,
Aristotle, Plato ,Soeretes and Christ.
They threshed their grain with
oven and ground their -four in stone
mortars by hand. And yet they had
enough food to rear the Pantheon,
the Coliseum and the dome of st.
Peter.
They covered their bodies with
woven cloth and there was sufficient
cloth left to clothe Rafael, Angelo,
| Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven and
| Goethe.
Since the beginning of the last
century more labor saving devices
have been invented and discovered
than in all the five thousand years
that have gone before.
At the end of the nineteenth cen
fury coal driven engines produced
seventy million horse power. During
the first twenty years OF the present
century their productive capacity has
reached one hundred and nifty million
horse power.
Today feebly men fly faster than
eagles, swim faster than sharks, carry
greater loads than elephants and
their voice reaches to the end OF the
earth.
And yet this stupendous progress
| has not even given a comfortable
animal existence to the wealth pro-
ducers of our age!
Today the "wise" men of this nation
are holding conclaves over the ques-
ton of how to reduce the food ratons
and stable accommodations OF the
workers to the irreducible minimum.
They concede that it requires an In
come of $4,000 per year to maintain
a family of five in comfort and de-
cency. They also confess that three
fourths of the workers earn only
about one-half of this amount. How
ever, even this income is more than
industry can bear.
"We can not pay the present high
wages without starving capital and
we can not operate our steamships,
| railroads, electric lines and power
driven machines without starving
these human attendants" they say In
effect.
The railroad labor board has re
duced the minimum wages of 250,000
section hands to $1l.04 per week.
The average wage will be $l5.69 per
week, provided these steam-age heiots
work full time.
Deduct from this income of fifteen
dollars per week five dollars for fuel,
clothing and rent and there is ten
dollars left for food. That is fifty
cents per meal for a family of i've
OF course, no grown person can
live and work on ten cent meals.
Hence the parents must be fed at the
expense of the children. AS matter
of cold hard fact, the most scientific
budgetary analysis allows the young
est of three children of a section hand
I3.S cents per day for food. Or just
about enough for one glass of milk
and nothing more!
Yet these people talk about wage
awards, give and take and arbitra-
ton. And they even grow indignant
when the workers refuse TO accept
their assinine and inhuman awards
(?) as the basis of their existence.
Arbitrate-Helll We can not arbi-
trate the pangs of hunger! We can
not arbitrate the degree Of malnutrl-
ton to which baby shall be damned.
And neither can we cut the very CUTS
out of working people and ask them
to look pleasant.
So we have strikes, violence and
murder and the best answer that these
wise men can find for these ever
multiplying evils is more violence and
murder and crazy arbitration boards
which seek TO determine the fuel and
food allowance of our bellies by the
! fluctuations of the stock market.
Say, gentlemen, did it ever occur
to you to inquire what became Of that
hundred and fifty million horse power