The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1938-01-13
Industry's Outlook

SLOWS uoWn or pulls OH 10 The Slue uu-
til the fog lifts.
Today, industry is blanketed by just
such fog of uncertainty.
Uncertainty rules the tax situation,
the labor situation, the monetary situ-
alton, and practically every legal con-
dition under which industry must OPP
crate. Are taxes to go higher, lower,
or stay where they are? We don't
know. Is labor to be union or nom
union, is the A. F. of L. or the G. I. O..
to dominate it, and in any event what
will be expected of the employer? It
is impossible even to guess at the
answers. Are We to have initiation or
deflation, more government spending
or less? Are new restrictions to be
placed on capital, new limits on profits?
Industry doesn't know. The whole
future is a gigantic question mark.
say this in criticism of nobody.
Perhaps the uncertainties of the recent
past, which were, in part at least, the
outgrowth of world conditions beyond
any one nations control, justify and
excuse the uncertainties of the present.
That is for history to decide. What has
been done, wisely or unwisely, is be-
hind us. Let us leave it there. It is
no time for postmortems.
However, if industry is to be given
the fair opportunity to work that it
seeks, some definition should be given
of what, to those of us in industry,
would constitute fair opportunity. My
own thought may be summed up in a
sentence: Give industry reasonable
degree of certainty upon which it can
count in planning current and future
operations. In short, lift the fog and
let us see the road we must travel.
| At this juncture, the sterilization of
tax rates over definite period, plus a
simplification of the tax structure, may
be almost more important than the ac-
tual level of taxes. Simplifcation of
the tax structure would, indeed, amount
to tax reduction, because it would
decrease the high and ever rising cost
the taxpayer must bear to determine
what taxes he owes. The present fear
that we face a rapidly ascending tax
scale, as well as new taxes, the nature
of which nobody can guess, stands like
wall in the path of industrial expan-
sion.
The labor situation should be stabil-
lied. Strikes, broken contracts, wars
within labor's own ranks, the constant
threat of sweeping new laws, have re-
duced industrial planning to the cate
CORY of gamble, so far as the labor
factor is concerned. Employer, labor
and public alike are suffering in con-
sequence. Unemployment is increasing
New plants that were planned have not
been built. They dare not be built in
the face of the uncertainty. Here again
is situation wherein the sterilization
of fair conditions over definite period
may be more important even than the
details of wage rates and hours or the
precise form of labor organization.
If industry is to have a fair op-
portunity to work, the legal rules which
it must operate should be stabilized
Immediately. As long as. the law
making mills grind, the fog of I'M
certainty mocks the industrial planner
Business needs more than a mere
breathing spell from legislative expert
mentation. 1t needs positive, reliable
assurance that the complicated terms
and conditions under which it must
function are finally determined, sub
ject only to an unmiStakable public de-
nand for their amendment. AS it is
the business man is the subject of more
legislative concern than the criminal
The latter enjoys far less uncertainty
of the laws prescribing his operations
The criminal laws are stabilized.
Few people realize the cost of putting
one man to work. A recent study of
more than 100 factories employing
10000 men and women showed a COM
puted average investment per employee
in excess of $4,000, of which almost
So, 900 represented working capital. On
the basis of these figures, which I'M
doubtedly are low for industry as a
whole, the task of providing the fac
ilities and working capital necessary
to give jobs to the existing labor sur
|
imposes an investment by private in
dustry that would be no less than
twenty-five billions of dollars, and
which might greatly exceed that sum
That is to say, it will take twenty five
billion dollars, or more, invested a
year, two years, perhaps even ten years
in advance of any hope of return on it
to create 100000 industrial jobs that
do not now exist. If anything, this is
an understatement of the problem.
Such an expansion of the present
employing structure can only be
achieved by the discovery, development
and popularization Of new products, by
vastly broadening the market for exist
ing products through lowering their
cost, and by maintaining rule of fair
return for all effort, not excepting
capital effort.
The task is staggering in it's size and
completely, even assuming a reasonably
clear road and reasonably stabilized
conditions. However, it is neither
hopeless nor impossible.
Since 1900 more than $4,000, 900 per-
sons have been added to our population.
The best estimates are that we will add
less than two-fifths of that number in
the next thirty or forty years, after
which the population will decline. The
future problem of providing a job for
every worker is, on its face, a much
smaller one than was that of the three
or four decades Immediately behind us.
At the same time the facilities for
creating jobs have been augmented. It
is elemental to point out that science