Montana labor news., 1944-02-24

They are not fighting to become boon
dogglers back at home.
The only final solution is production
for use. !
If we use our heads, a new age of
light metals, chemical plastics, cheaper
and better houses, cheaper t~ransporta-
ton, higher living standards is at hand.
The government has spent one billion
dollars in rubber factories. These are
putting out $4,000 tons of synthetic
rubber the year. Our peacetime needs
are only 100000 tons. Why scrap those
plants? Why give them to Firestone,
Goodyear, Goodrich? These corporations
did not help to build them. The chem
ical formula even was shown us by Rus
STA, where synthetic rubber has been
made since 1892. It would be a national
blessing to get tires at a lower cost.
There are honest able men who can run
these plants for the United States. JEFF
fers, head Of the Union Pacific, built
them honestly.
Aluminium is just as common as dirt,
Yet, by owning the patented machinery,
Andrew Mellon levied tribute on every
kitchen in the country for fifty years.
Now, the government has invested
above a billion dollars in aluminium
plants, and is producing at six cents a
pound three times as much aluminium
as Andy's crowd made, and paying
much higher wages.
What is the sense of scrapping our
aluminium plants, to throw good workmen
out Of Jobs, and restore the monopoly
to the Melons. The one hundred mil
lion dollars profit they have already
made is enough.
We have invested almost three billion
dollars in government airplan factories
and landing fields. It is all rot that
public production is not efficient. Our
planes are the best made in the world,
as any Berliner or Hamburger would
admit if he were alive to tell it. Travel
by air is growing all over the earth. Why
give plants to Boeing, Curtis Wright
or others caugh tswindling in construc-
ANAA AhAfAAN W lAAC u D. n. OH dlI-
planes would create a worldwide mar
ket; like that for Swiss watches, wines
from Champagne, or Roquefort cheese.
We used to bring nitrates from Chile.
The last war forced us to build Mussel
Shoals dam to get nitrogen from the air.
1t is as common as air. Clovers, beans,
locust trees catch it and renew the soil
with it. But nitrogen fertilizer is often
cheaper. One honest, sensible man in
the Senate, George w. Norris, saved the
great Mussel Shoals nitrate making dam
from being captured by Henry Ford. It
is o iva; the threat which prevents
private electric plants from public over
charges in the Middle West, and pre-
vents floods in the Tennessee valley.
There is another wonderful advance.
The secret Of reducing magnesium has
been solved. Magnesium, when refined,
is lighter and stronger than aluminium.
The process is cheap. Dow Chemical
company gets it from sea water. The
government has invested 176 million
dollars in a magnesium plant in Nevada.
When peace comes, the harpies will race
for that plant. Dow Chemical has built
up a market for the metal, but our own
Anaconda might coil around and swallow
that plant. Nevada may have it own
Heinze-Anaconda struggle for what the
nation has built and paid for.
The economy of scarcity makes its
millions from dwindling natural re-
sources. The oil barons want no new
supplies of oil unless they own them, or
take immense toll from transport
ing and refining the crude.
As tn eWar goes on, we are more and
more amazed at the German supply Of
gasoline. They make it out Of low grade
and press it out of oil shale. It
would astonish certain ranchers in Bea-
7erhead county to learn that they own
mountains of ell shale carrying from -
% "a gallons Of petroleum to the ton.
IN eastern Montana, forty thousand
square miles is underlaid with Ignite.
The Bureau Of Mines has been given
thirty million dollars for research in how
cheaply obtain petroleum from shale
md Ignite. Shall the Standard Oil in
in Congress shut that work down
Is soon as peace comes. The old Tea
Pot Dome crowd has grown children by
low.
It required twenty years or more for
he ideas Of the French Revolution to
10 by way of Spain into South America
md cause the revolutions against Span
sh tyranny in the twenty-one republics
here. Now we know in the evening
What happened today in Russia, or what
happened tomorrow, by their time, in
5uadalcanal. If production for use is a
anywhere on earth after this war
ur soldiers will know quickly. The light
viii be too bright to hide under a bushel.
In 1889 corporation profits in the
United States were four billion dollars;
n l94S they were twenty-three billion,
.bove taxes. Count Tolstoi, ninety years
said of his class-the rich Rus
ian nobility: I'VE are willing to do
verything for the farmers and workers,
kept get off their backs"
The capitalists who by owning the
ress this nation, should consider
neither TO dismount gracefully or be
brown off by hungry, unemployed, dis
laced, DISTINGUISHED, wild-eye veterans.