Golden Age, January 7, 1920

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January 7,1920, VoL 1, No. 8 ra Publ&ud ecefj other Inal' v jfl; JS35 BraaduaVj NMr. yw York, N.Y., U.8-A-

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The Golden Age

VoL I New York. Wednesday, January 7, 1920 No. 8

LABOR. AND ECONOMICS

A Creeping Famine

IN THE olden days famine was a scarcity which often leaped suddenly upon the populace. Civilization, however, is threatened with what might be termed a creeping famine, under the name of the high cost of living. Like a creeping palsy this may gradually bring paralysis to a world.

The weakest, physically and pecuniarily, come first under this benumbing influence. A poor family has been accustomed to many necessities and some comforts. First, increased cost of living takes away the comforts one by one. The necessities are anxiously scanned, and cheaper substitutes take the place of one necessity after another. The effort is made to maintain the nutritive value of food and the warmth of clothing, but cheaper food and older clothes are the rule.

Income does not rise with expense; for the employers are fighting the high cost of business, and oppose and postpone wage increases as long as the worker can be induced to cut his living down to a subsistence basis. Labor must live, and a strike forces a little “raise” from a desperate or profiteering employer. But strikes raise the general cost of business; and the worker pays for Ids own wage-raise, plus the substantial profit the employer takes through incrdincfte price-increases.

H ia-li cost of living creeps rrp, and again the family food efficiency is impaired. Little sister, undernourishod. grows sickly; disease steps in, doctors, prescriptions, drugs and finally the undertaker—an appalling problem on top of all that has bonh endured. Less and still less can be bought; hopelessness comes—and the next strike for a raise is the work of a desperate man. Though the raise comes, it is less than needed; and the vicious circle is repeated.

How real this is and how rapidly the creeping death is mounting appear in the figures for the living cost of a family of five:

1018 1010 Increase

House (Rent, Insurance, Heat, etc J.-3306.18—. $3S8.30___27%

Food 681.00— 851.40—25% Clothing: Wife 76.75— W0.46—Jl% Clothing: Husband - - - 144.IS— 153^9— 7%

Clothing: Children (3) -------------- 156.00— 226.58—45%

Doctor, Books, Car Fares, Mise. _ 186.80_ 196.96— 5%

$1,550.86 $1,918.19 26%

The cost of living has not stopped rising; it is still on the move. Temporary expedients give it pause; but after a rest, it resumes the climb.

What does it signify? The Bible tells. We are at the door of the kingdom of God. TJie grandest blessings ever imagined are about to be ushered in. But first the present order of things is divinely permitted to break down, fall to pieces, disintegrate through its own imperfections. It was all divinely foreknown. Jesus said that at this time, “There shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows". (Mark 13:8) Margin reading says, “The word in the original importeth the pains of a woman in travail"—as though the troubles of the closing of the old-world period would come in successive spasms. Again, “I will increase [more and more] the famine upon you and will break your staff of bread". (Ezekiel 5: 16) But not for long; for in only a few years, after humanity's heart is softened by trouble and men have turned for refuge to God, “There shall be showers of blessing” (Ezekiel 34:26) ; and "T will pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it”.— Malachi 3:10.

It is not easy to pass through the birth-pangs of the coming age of blessings, but all who possess meekness, courage and faith will come through it in safety.

Clean Handx

THIS is not the first war that has presented opportunities for “easy money”. Every war has seen thousands of business men who have had a hard time making ends meet but to whom war looked good as a chance for making a little money, as well as profiteers galore who had made money and realized that a big war meant for them a “killing”.

This country might have profited by the example of other nations to minimize profiteering. Some inordinate profits would be inevitable, because rules could not be laid down to prevent all profiteering without stifling honest business. But to neutralize profiteering, tax laws were passed in advance providing that undue profits should automatically flow back as taxes into the national treasury. There would be few amassing inordinate wealth. It forestalled some of the disturbance of confidence that would necessarily follow war.

American foresight failed in this particular. The number of millionaires has doubled since 1916, and there are thousands of newly-wealthy men whose hands are not clean.

Where lives by tens of thousands have been cheerfully laid down, where hundreds of thousands have suffered wounds and rm Hinns have undergone privations, it is a moral asset to have clean hands. In a day of universal sacrifice hands that drip with blood-money are a public menace.

.Any class of business men that outrages public sentiment is doomed as soon as public sentiment is aroused against it. The liquor business abused public confidence, and the public turned upon it to destroy it. The public never forgave Commodore Vanderbilt's “public-be-clamned” policy of railroad management, and they turned upon the railroads with a publicregulation system that made railroad manage-tnent a nightmare. It is not hard to foresee that the new crop of millionaires and nearmillionaires have placed themselves in a precarious position.

Nothing arouses public suspicion like tampering with the private pocket-book. “It is a short cut to dispossession,” comments a man. prominent in public affairs; and “if the men responsible for policies in any industry wish to be deprived of it without fine discriminations as to rights and equities, the sure, quick way is to permit the public to believe that these men are profiteering’.

Whether profiteering is a cause of high prices or an incident connected therewith, the public have come to regard it as a leading cause for the lessened purchasing power of wages. Sooner or later public indignation is likely to look for a victim, and the man that today has acquired the worst name is Mr. Profiteer.

It was doubtless of this class that the Wise Man spoke many centuries ago: “There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men". (Proverbs 30:14) The Psalmist also said: “Why boasteth thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man ! God shall destroy thee; he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living*. —Psalm 52:1-5.

What Could a Laundry Do ?

TN AN eastern city something akin to a shock A was felt by the patrons of the laundries when they saw by window signs that shirts which once cost ten cents to have laundried would be fifteen cents, and those once twelve cents would be eighteen cents.

But what could a laundry dot The small hand laundries do little or no washing, but send the work out to be washed by steam laundries. They iron out the pieces, do them up with their own tags, and get what profit they can—from $1S to $25 a week. This income is equivalent to $9 to $12.50 before the war, and is not an extravagant return for a man who undertakes the responsibility of a business. Perhaps now the hand laundry proprietor can get $30 to $40 a week, and be able to buy better food and clothing and rent a better flat for the children, and enjoy a very little of the “place in the sun" every one has the right to.

The origin of the rise was the needs of the workers to improve the meager Irving they got by ironing. The Shirt Ironers’ Union members have wives and children, and want them to be fairly well fed and clothed. They think it not unreasonable to ask ten cents for ironing plain shirts and twelve cents for shirts with collars and cuffs, for which they had received eight cents, a sum which became insufficient for food, rent, clothing and shoes for the family. For the pre-war wage of eight cents had shrunk in buying power to four cents.

The situation is made complicated by a side issue. Enterprising little promoters make the conditions difficult. They create independent laundries and apply forced methods of pushing the business to a point where it may be sold at a profit of one or two hundred dollars. In these promotion laundries there are no Union ironers, but the proprietor, his wife and all the children, do the ironing. With no proper wage cost it is easy to ask cut prices for work and show such a profit on the books that some would-be laundry proprietor can be induced to buy the business for a few hundred dollars.

In addition, the steam laundries have a rising cost of doing business, consequently keep raising the wholesale rate to the hand laundries. Between all these factors it looks as though fifteen and eighteen cent shirts might come to stay. For under all the circumstances, what else could a laundry do 7

In Bible days men were required to see that not merely the workers but even the cattle had plenty to cat; for it was the law that “thou slialt not muzzle the 01 when he treadeth out the corn'’. (Deuteronomy 25:4) We who look for the Golden Age surely ought to be willing and glad to pay a little more if it is going to help some fellow worker to get some of the plenty we would like to enjoy ourselves.

Money in Steel

THERE is money in the steel business, and the business is an empire in itself. The United States Steel Corporation was formed years ago out of twelve steel plants of various kinds. 132.000 acres of coal lands, certain natural gas wells, and the Mcsaba ore deposits, of Minnesota.

Mr. J. F\ Morgan, Sr., bought these properties in 1901 by giving the stockholders of the original companies bonds in the Steel Corporation, ■ Mir hr kep! flux capital stock of $600,000,000 for himself and his associates, to pay him for his trouble in organizing the company. The stock coat him little or nothing, hut it is the capital stock that controls the company. .

In eighteen years the Steel Corporation, besides paying large salaries and commissions to bankers and officials, and paying the interest and dividends on a billion and a half of stocks and bonds, has laid up assets to the value of more than six times the original value of the properties. In 1917 the Steel Corporation earned fifty per cent on the original value of the properties, and in 1916 another fifty per cent Ordinarily it earns about fourteen per cent on the original value.

The Steel Corporation employes more men than were in the United States Army at the beginning of the World War, and has dependent upon it more people than the entire population of some of the countries involved in the European disputes. It is an empire or monarchy within a republic. Its subjects long for representation in the government of the industry upon which their lives depend.

The workers for the Steel Corporation have the same just right to organize, and to bring together all the men in all the shops as the Corporation had to organize and to bring together the shops themselves. The President of the Steel Corporation, Mr. Gary, denies this right He is unwilling to treat with delegates of labor thus chosen.

It is estimated that from a third to a quarter of a million men went out on strike in the steel business when Mr. Gary refused to treat with their representatives. The statistics of steel production showed a reduction of forty per cent in the output, maintained for many weeks. No doubt the Steel Corporation felt that its tremendous profits made during the war are sufficient to carry it over until the strike is won.

In a great strike there are many hardships and injustices. Not infrequently, strike-breakers, or “detectives”, as they are called, use their efforts to arouse one nationality against another. Thus, they urge Serbians to go back to work, telling them that if they do not the Italians avtJI get their jobs. The Steel Corporation has done something at Gary toward Americanizing the aliens employed in the mills there, but it needs to do more and should instantly dismiss “detectives” engaged in the kind of work here mentioned.

A clever kind of camouflage which has been practiced in at least one locality is to give dead mills the appearance of being busy by burning tar in the chimneys and sending up a thick, black smoke, and to arrange electric lights in such a way as to convey the impression that a mill is running when it is actually cold.

Railroad Perplexities

OR several years railroad managers, or those responsible for the properties, have been in great perplexity. They have the inexorable payrolls to meet; and yet they are restricted by their charters, or otherwise, in what they can charge for transportation. In the effort to get around their difficulties they do some strange things.

Of course, as everybody knows, the financiers and others who could get hold of the properties, robbed the Erie, New Haven, Pere Marquette, Alton, Rock Island, Frisco and many other lines, in the most shameless manner; and the dear public, who paid the bills and who still continues to pay, could only cheer feebly wlien the first generation of robbers turned the properties over to another, presumably to perpetuate the good work.

The death of Mr. Shouts, and the efforts of the company of which he was president to chum up public enthusiasm for an increased subway fare in New York City, has drawn general attention to another railway, the Interborough, one of the greatest railways in the world in point of number of passengers carried, and in point of safety.

In the summer of 1918 the Interborough Company needed $33,000,000 to pay for certain improvements, and current interest obligations of $11,500,000 per year. The money was borrowed from J. P. Morgan and Company, and a statement filed that in the ten years from 1907 to 1917 the gross operating revenues of the road increased seventy-four per cent and the net income available for interest payments, 179 per cent. The statement went on to show that the company’s expected increase in profits on a five cent fare basis would be sufficient to meet all indebtedness ^up to 1926, and contained the statement^hat “the engineers state that in making the estimates, full allowance has been made for the unfavorable conditions brought about by the war”.

Apparently the Interborough wanted the money so badly in the summer of 1918 that it concealed the real facts, or else the real facts were purposely hidden from sight in the summer of 1919 when the process of "churning” for a larger fare was started. It is interesting to watch one of these "churning” operations, and see how the public is gradually hornswoggled. One step was to have a "strike” for higher wages on the part of the men. The Interborough paid the hall rent, lights, printing bills, and time spent in attending the meetings of the "union” that did the striking. Perhaps they thought there would be more money in getting the men to force them to pay higher wages so that they could force a much larger sum out of the public in the form of an increased fare. The wage increase is expected to run to about $5,000,000 per year, while the fare increase asked for will run to $32,000,000.

When the railroads are returned to the men who were running them previously (we can not say to the owners, for the "financiers'* who ran these railroads were not the owners) we shall probably see the Interborough clamor for increased rates repeated on a gigantic scale. It is always the calculation of those who rob the people on a grand scale that the whole matter will be forgotten in a few years; and it generally is. From 1900 to 1910 eighteen railroads of the United States .gave away stock bonuses aggregating $450,414,000, besides paying liberal cash dividends to stockholders; and now of course, the men to whom these bonuses were given are hoping for perpetual interest payments on these gifts.

President Underwood of the Erie has stated that the Government operation of the railroads would have made a much better showing than it has made if the payrolls had not been overloaded with unnecessary employes who were given positions for political reasons.

Early in the War it was reported that master mechanics of railroads had orders to make repairs of locomotives and cars in such a manner as to cause, not serious accidents, but little delays so annoying to passengers and shippers as to discredit governmental ownership. Similar reports were in circulation about railway signal systems. If the railroads were not managed by irresponsible individuals, it might be possible for the same rules for efficient service to apply to railroad executives, directors and financiers, as to railroad workers.

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Swm Dead Millionaires

DICING the Fall of 1919 an unusual number of millionaires passed away; and the manner id which their fortunes were obtained, how they were used and how they were disposed of are, as always, items of general interest, because they are out of the ordinary. As far as most of us are concerned, the nearest we can hope to come to this subject is to read about it. But there is one thing about it that is encouraging, or discouraging—depending on how we look at it—and that is that when we die we each of us leave as much as the wealthiest; that is to say, we leave everything, all we have.

Since the world began, nobody has given away such a colossal fortune as Andrew Carnegie. His known gifts aggregated more than $330,000,000; and inasmuch as at his death he left no more than about $30,000,000 he must have given away many more millions of which no record survives. In his will Mr. Carnegie remdjabered a half dozen British statesmen by life Affinities of $5,000 to $10,000 a year; also all tie living ex-Presidents and living wives of fdtmer Presidents. He is buried at Sleepy HoI14w, New To A

WaKam Waldorf Astor, who recently died in London, was the owner of $60,000,000 worth of real estate in New York City. A grandson of the original John Jaeob Astor, and at one time in publie life on this side of the water, even to occupying the post of minister to Italy, he eventually renounced his country, saying, “America is not a fit country for a gentleman to live in”. But this was before the passage of the Espionage Act

Mr. Astor was a "climber”, for about a quarter of a century trying to break in to English society, and finally succeeded. The war was^Jus opportunity; and for his gifts to the British cause, he was made a viscount, whatever that is. It is estimated that his efforts to get into the peerage cost him $12,000,000. His-daughter-in-law, Lady Astor, an American girl, ran for'the beat in the House of Commons made vacant by her husband when he moved up into the House of Lords. This shows a considerably higher line of thought than that indulged by a Mrs. Astor on this side of the water, a connection of William Waldorf, who recently distinguished herself by appearing in a mule race at the Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, N. Y.? fair. It is hard to see what America ever got in return for the millions that it gave to the Astors.

Theodore P. Shonts is dead, too. Mr. Shonts was reckoned as one of the world’s great engineers, having received at one time a fee of $7,000,000 from one western railroad. Chosen by the United States Government to build the Panama Canal, he made splendid progress with the work, but suddenly resigned to take the presidency of the Interborough, giving as his reason that his love for his family would not permit of his rejecting the offer the Interborough had made him.

Apparently, Mr. Shonts did think a lot of his family at one time, for the allowance which he gave to his wife and two daughters was, for many years, $93,000 per year. But he wrecked his fortune by plunges in the stock market, cut his family's allowance to $45,000 per year (which would still be large enough for some of us to live upon, in a pinch) and finally became estranged from them altogether, and engaged other apartments. However, only two years ago he paid one jewelry bill for his family amounting to $135,000.

Mr. Shonts left an estate valued at $475,000. He divided $200,000 among his two daughters, a sister and two nieces, reserved $100,000 for the payment of a debt to his wife which he acknowledged owing to her, and gaye her $5,000 outright. The balance of his estate he gave to a woman not related to the family in any way, an ex-actress. Mr. Shonts made eight separate wills since 1900, which indicates that the possession of money does not necessarily bring one rest of mind; and it can not be said that his career, as a whHe, is anything the youth of the country should emulate. Col. Roosevelt denounced him bitterly at the time he left the employ of the Government, issuing a public statement that Shonts had left his country for the sake of mere lucre. Col. Roosevelt, himself, is one of the wealthy men who died during the past year, his total fortune aggregating a little less than one million dollars.

Mrs. Russell Sage is another famous millionaire who died during the latter part of 1919. She was a wonderful woman, deserving of the greatest respect. Out of a net estate of $45,261,724 she gave $40,000,000 to philanthropy and education, while the appraisement of her personal wardrobe showed that its value was $288. She always dressed neatly, and her wardrobe was maintained for that purpose and not merely for display.

Then there was another millionaire, little knvmi. but nevertheless the possessor of a large fortune. Solomon Scliinasi, a Turkish cigarette maker, left an estate of $15,000,000. That seems like a large fortune to be collected out of such a business as making and selling “coffin nails’’. Wonder how many buildings were burned by the cigarettes for which Mr. Schinasi was responsible? One hotelkeeper in Willimantic, Conn., has stated that he was burned out seven times, in various localities, and that in each case the fires were proven to have been started by cigarettes.

And Some Live Ones

rp HE number of millionaires in Great Britain is about the same in proportion to the population that it is here. In Great Britain there are 148 individuals with an annual income of over $500,000, and in the United States there are 456 with like incomes. One of these lives in Chicago, and has a personal income of more than $70,000,000 annually. We do not know who this is, and it would be against the law to tell, if we did know; but we can make a guess.

Mr. Philip D. Armour is a very modest appearing and economical man, for one in his station in life; and he says that he buys two suits per year, one straw' hatr three neckties, sis suits of underwear, two dozen pairs of socks, an overcoat every other year, and a soft hat once in five years, occasionally touched up with ink in the meantime.

The five big packers, of whom Mr. Armour is perhaps the leading spirit, are interested in biggewthings than seeing how nicely they can doll up. They have gained a grip on many of the big hotels of the country. The supplying of meats to six of the great hotels in New York City is supposed in each case to net the packer who ha;? the'eontract about $50,000 profit per annum. "The National Wholesale Grocers Association declares that 375 American railroads arc giving the Big Five a favored service.

, Rabbi Levinthal, of Brooklyn, thinks that the Big Five have gotten a start that nothing can stop. He said recently: “The war has let loose the passions of the people as never before. It has opened up a flood of intense hatreds and strifes that can not be controlled. Speculators are greedily buying up the necessities of life; trusts, like Pharaoh’s lean kine at the banks of the Nile, are swallowing up industry after industry, and yet never seem satisfied’’.

A man with an income of $70,000,000 per year can swallow up a good many big businesses every year and not notice it. Even the little Milk Trust, in New York City, is estimated to clean up $350,000 per day, or $1233^0,000 per year, in the profits they make off from New York’s hungry kiddies, and that amount will buy quite a few industries every year. In England the taxes do something toward curbing the rapacity of the money-grabbers. The old estates are unable to keep the pace and are being broken up. This is a good thing for the country; it is distributing the wealth more evenly.

During the war, with 4,000,000 of the workers absent, we produced in the United States about $550 for each man, woman and child in the country; enough, if properly distributed, to give plenty to everybody. Harrington Emerson, the great efficiency expert, with eight other industrial engineers of similar standing, has issued a solemn warning to the great business men of the country that the cause of present unrest in industry is the acquisition of wealth for which no adequate service has been rendered.

The charge of these engineers is that labor shares with capital in this form of plunder: and their charge is just. The policy of either capital or labor, of exacting profit without rendering fully compensating service, has wasted enormous stores of human and natural resources and can not continue without a wreck that will smash every tiling in sight.

Wc do not know whether the lang and queen of Belgium expected too much profit on their recent trip through America. The trip is reported to have cost them $1,000,000: but we have not the least idea that they went back to Belgium with less money than they had when they came. The same may be said for Cardinal Mercier. He came over here “just to see America’’; but in every place he went bis admirers passed the hat, and the great American public, that loves to have it so, paid cheerfully.

| MANUFACTURING ANDMlNlNG__|

Coal in Spitsbergen

IS IT in. Oklahoma or in Arizona? would be the first question about Spitsbergen. But no; it is a group of islands within the arctic circle some 400 miles north of Norway, with a climate which Air. VilhjaJmur Stefansson, the arctic explorer, assures is "no worse than that of Winnipeg”.

"The mild climate of Spitsbergen,” says Dr. W. S. Bruce, who has investigated 1 he principal island of the archipelago, "is due to the warm drift that reaches the western shores from the Atlantic”. By a "mild climate*’ the doctor seems io mean that it is not quite as bad as ice-bound Greenland; and that Spitsbergen will be a good place to live is suggested by the dream that the islands will become a great steel center.

"Tor”, says Mr. Stefanssou, “there is no reason why great steel mills should not be erected in Spitzbergen, and their product shipped to all Northern Europe'*. This is a modern replica of the counsel; of Henry Hudson in 1607, who said that "it would profit to adventure Spitzbergen”, in otJ^er words, to make it the subject of a stock-selling promotion scheme. This may indeed not be impossible today, for was it not the Boston film of Ayer & Longyear, some years ago, ihal explored Spitzbergen’s mineral possibilities, but—probably wisely—sold out to a more optimistic Norwegian syndicate? And did not a British company go to the islands and start to "adventure” them? However, all the concerns that have tried Spltzbergen have quit, with the one result suggested by Mr. Stefans-son’s remark, "I do not know what they accomplished”. ■

The great explorer is enthusiastic over the possibilities of this "farthest-north” proposition: '‘The coal is better for steam purposes i han the best Welsh coal, and that means it is the best in the world. There seems to be an almost unlimited amount of the highest grade of iron ore; it is this ore which constitutes the wealth of SpitzbA-geft and which is likely to moke it one of the-greatest steel manufacturing centers of the world. The Pittsburgh district is the only one that has the same characteristics as Spitsbergen. The high-grade coal and equally good iron ore are practically contiguous, and both are so close to the sea that shipments can be made by gravity trams. Outcroppings of both coal and iron are all along the coast, and the weathered coal is so good that the miners can use it In their stoves during cold seasons.”

The truth about Spltzbergen is that it is a very cold place. The temperature is somewhat warmer than Boar Island, halfway to Norway; but the thermometer averages about twentythroe degrees on the warm west side, and from eleven to fourteen degrees on the cold east side of the principal island. The west shore is moderated by the warmer, yet cold, Atlantic Ocean currents; but the.east coast is bathed by a frigid arctic current, and is practically uninhabitable. In winter even the west coast is made almost unendurable by the persistent east winds ihat sweep with, arctic severity from the ice plains and mountains of the central plateau and the cast coast. Let us compare the Spitsbergen. climate with Winnipeg; for do not the explorers say that it is "milder than Winnipeg”, and that "records show that the mercury never reaches the same depths in Spitzbergen that it does in Winnipeg and other thriving settlements of Canada”? But Winnipeg has its summer heat enough for crops and trees to grow, while the Spltzbergen climate, according to the Britannica, permits the growth of only one "tree”, the arctic willow growing not over two feet high and bearing a few leaves not larger than a man’s finger nail. There are also some crowberry and cloudberry bushes, poppies, some grass in favored valleys and plenty of bright green moss. There are in fact 130 varieties o£ flowering plants of arctic species.

It has never been possible to inhabit the islands permanently. Hunters have occasionally been forced to winter there, and the islands have been made the basis of a few arctic expeditions which penetrated a couple of hundred miles farther north over the ice-covered Arctic Sea. The ice closes in on the coast in September and does not relax its grip until May, a condition quite different from Winnipeg, which is accessible by rail all the year round. Transportation to and from Spitzbergen is suspended while the ocean ice locks the harbors. From October 14 to February 3 there is no sunlight, .but twilight, except from December 1 to 20, the dark arctie night, lighted however by the bright clear moon.

Prior to the present discoveries of iron orc and good coal the archipelago has never been thought worth lighting over by the predatory European nations. In the summer of 1622, however, British whalers and fishers coming there informed the Dutch workers on the ground that they held a commission from the King ‘"for the depression of any Flemings or interloper’, but they hoped of course that the Dutchmen would go quietly. The Dutchman, however, said that “being a simple fisherman, he knew nothing about these matters; he had been sent by his employers, and would do what he had been told to do”. This it is claimed was the last attempt of the English to assert their “rights” against the Dutch. But now that the islands have assumed “importance” because there is something there worth grabbing, there may be further assertions of rights by one nation of Europe or another.

If any workers want to find a good lonesome place to winter in, they might try Spitsbergen, if wealthy promoters decide to invest some money there. It is not a particularly good place to bring up a family, so those that apply should be single, or widowers, or possibly grasswidowers seeking “ills they know not of," to escape the ills they have. It is probable that there would be movies supplied, and once in a while an airplane from Norway; for, says Mr. Stefansson, “Spitzbergen would not be cut off from the world, even when inaccessible for ships. The radio would provide communication; and with the rapid development of aircraft it is quite possible that a regular passenger and freight service might be maintained. It is seldom that yon find fifty miles of unbroken ice even in the farthest north, and seaplanes would find many open spaces in which to land.”

There is some hope for even Spitzbergen. In the carboniferous era the islands were all united, and were covered with extensive peat bogs in which “the marsh cypress flowered, dropping its leaves and blossoms into the marshes.. There were also sequoia, poplars, birches, ^lan&s and large oaks, and tliick underbrush freely developed under their shadow; and in contrast with the almost total absence of insect life now, thousands of insects swarmed in the tliicker.” In comparatively recent geological times the islands were entirely covered with deep ice sheets. That the ice is gradually disappearing when measured by a period of two thousand years or more is encouraging for tho belief that tho archipelago will eventually be entirely clear of ice fields and glaciers. The same Flood that deposited the arctic ice cap, and caused the glaciation of much of the northern hemisphere, played havoc with tho Spitsbergen climate. Its effects are slowly melting away, and in the course of the next few hundred years will probably be entirely gone, as the earth becomes more like the Eden it is promised to be. Then this group of arctic islands will come into their own, and there may be steel works in Spitzbergen. But not until then.

Building to Cost More

THE intending builder of a house should get his building under way at once unless he wants to pay considerably more for it—so say experienced builders. Next spring is expected to see a fifteen per cent increase in the cost of building materials alone.

The factors producing the rise are labor shortage, unrest, and mounting cost of labor and materials, according to one of the largest concerns in the East

Taking the 1909 cost as a basis of 100%, the cost of building each year has been as follows:

1909 ------

________100% 1914 ______

_______90.4%

1910 _______

________98.9% 1915 ______

________87.9%

1911 ■ , .

___ pft .W* 1910 . - _

—108.3%

1012 _______

_______95.4% 1017 ______

__iaae%

1913 '---------

. . .. ,92.8% 1918 ■ —

__171.6%

First halt at 1019 174.8%

If labor increases in cost with other items, a building next spring will cost at least 189% of what the same building would have cost in 1909.

One of the stablizers of a social order is a home. If all the people owned their homes, there would be only a fraction of the unrest there is. How to get the people possessed of the sense of security that comes from sitting down beneath one's own roof is a problem the wise men of today would like to solve. They will be no more able to solve this insolvable problem than any of the others that confront them. But nevertheless the time is near, when “they [the common people] shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them" (Isaiah 65: 21), for these are the things that will be brought about by the wise men of the Golden Age*

FlNANCE-COMMERCE-TRANS PQRTATION

R ailrcadFinanden

T HOSE who made unearned millions out of the financing of the New Haven, Pere Marquette, Alton, Frisco, and many another American railroad are perfectly sincere in their desires that the railroads should be returned te them without delay.

To the disinterested onlooker there would seem to be no particular reason why the Pennsylvania should wish to have its road returned; for the rental which has been paid to it by the Government amounts to 11.29% on its capital stock, and that seems like a pretty liberal rate of interest. But other roads have received even better returns. The New York Central has received 12.96% on capital stock, the Burlington 22.25%, the Reading 25.7% and the Lackawanna 32.61%.

And then that capital stock. How did it all come into existence 1 Far be it from us to tell; for we do not know. But it is currently reported that the capital stock of the New York Centra) contains $57,000,000 par value for which nothing was ever paid except the cost of printing and distributing it; and we partly believe it. On this $57,000,000 it is said that dividends amounting to $120,000,000 have already been paid. As a matter of fact the public has paid the cost of actual construction of the New York Central four or five times over, and continues to pay it all over again every few years in interest and dividends.

When railroad presidents look about them and see managers of steel plants making salaries of $1,000,000 per year, they cannot understand why the “financiers” who put them into office should object to paying them salaries of $100,000 per year; and the corporation attor-ney^-and consulting engineers see no reason why they should not be well rewarded for any special services they render. Hence fees running far into the thousands, and occasionally into millions, have given another class a heartfelt interesCin the disposition of these railway properties.

And aside from the salaries, and fees of attorneys and engineers, and honorariums of $50. or more for each director who spends a few minutes at a directors* meeting, there is the great, juicy American stock market, where a person who knows what earnings a railroad has made or is going to make, and what kind of report they will publish, can often make a fortune by “wise” moves in the market just before the report is made public.

We do not know how it is now, but a few years ago there were “auditors”* who were on to their jobs so well that they had complete reports of the actual receipts of the road for a month in the hands of the management several days before the month had ended. This was accomplished by a careful withholding or acceleration of deposits sufficient to make the published reports agree with the facts. And in two or three days, in a lively stock market, a “financier” can do a great deal for himself and his friends. It is a great life.

Jesse James Employes

THE dear public would have stood a chance of curbing the old time financier, and Congress was actually making some progress with the difficult problem, when the great railway brotherhoods accidently discovered a way to get some or all of the money that has heretofore gone to financiers, officers, attorneys, consulting engineers and stockholders.

There are fourteen unions of different classes of railway employes, the four big brotherhoods of engineers, firemen, trainmen and conductors, and ten others that are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The four big brotherhoods were the first to discover and to use their strength; and if there is anybody that doubts that these four brotherhoods held up the whole country at the point of the pistol just before we went into the war, now would be a good time to bring the truth to the light.

They have exacted such wage concessions from the Government as to make their increased wages amount to more than the total amount which the Government has paid to the railway companies for the rental of their properties. Freight and passenger conductors now receive over $300 per month, and freight engineers receive $392 per month. The latter amount is only $296 less than $5,000 p6r year. There are thirteen states in the United States that pay their governors not more than $4,000 per year; and one of these is Texas, the largest state in the Union. We believe that men who run on the railroads should be well paid, better paid than most men; but we cannot forget the under-dog in this pretty little game of hold-up; and the public, and the lesser railway unions, are the under-dog, very much so. Big dogs ought to be friendly to little ones.

Some of the financial papers are criticising railroad engineers for wearing $12 silk shirts when they are off duty, and for permitting their wives to wear $10 silk stockings. But perhaps these railway men. have as good right to wear such finery as the “financiers" and “auditors" who have milked the same cow in the past, but have done it in a more quiet and gentle manner.

The average wage of all railroad men in July, including over-time pay, was $121-50. If this represents a full month’s work for each man it is not too much, but the men in the lesser unions complain that the four great brotherhoods get most of the money and will not permit the rank and file to receive any benefits at all except as they rise with them and above them. There would have been a strike of some 500,000 shopmen in August, but they postponed a walkout at the request of the President in order to give the Government a chance to reduce the cost of living.

Since the threatened shopmen's strike the trainmen and conductors have renewed their demands for immediate wage increases to conform to the increased cost of living. The Government declined the general increases asked, amounting altogether to an enormous sum, but did set aside $3,000,000, which was used to equalize the compensation of such engineers, firemen, conductors and trainmen as are employed in the slow freight train service.

The railway officials claim that as railway wages have increased, the efficiency of the employes has decreased; and a Pennsylvania railroad official goes so far as to claim that it now requires ten men to produce the same results as were accomplished by six men before the war. There is‘an offset to this in the fact that railroad e’ftgines haul three times more today than they could haul thirty years ago, their weight having increased from 127 cons to 254 tana, so that fewer employes axe required for the tonnage moved. In the Same time the Average freight car has increased in capacity from 20 tons to 50 tons. The traffic of this country has doubled every ten or twelve years, but the employes have not doubled with the traffic; nor has it been necessary that they should do so.

Railway Financa

A TEW A YR go to pieces rapidly. On the

Chicago and Northwestern Bailroad, the line loses eleven cars per day; and taking the country as a whole, there are from 80,000 to 100>000 freight cars scrapped annually. Ties decay and rails wear out. Bridges are an important factor, and they too wear out. On the New York Central lines east of Buffalo there are over 4,000 bridges and trestles, and 15,000 culverts and other crossings. ’

There are various ways of strengthening weakened bridges and prolonging their lives, such as riveting reinforcing material to weakened parts, putting in additional girders, making long, weak spans, into short, strong ones, and .using weak bridges for places where only light duty will be required of them. But even with all this they do wear out.

For four years the railroads have bought comparatively little; and since the armistice the Railroad Administration has been restricted as to the amount of funds it could spend for additions and betterments, so that it is now estimated that during the next three years the railroads should have $3,500,000,000 to invest in 20,000 new locomotives, 10,000 passenger ears and 800,000 freight cars, with another $2,500,000 for new trackage and shops.

The maintenance of the roads has been supposed to be kept up, as was agreed upon when the roads were taken over by the Government; but early in November the President of the Cotton Belt Road declared that much of that road was at that time unsafe for normal operation, aud in some districts was at the point of danger, due to rotten ties, loose and missing bolts and defective drainage. Perhaps funds will be needed to agaiir put some of these properties in first-class condition.

As to bills payable, the railways owe the Government $771^551,000 for expenditures made for betterments. As to working capital, they need a month's working expenses, estimated for all the roads at $353,000,000. Then they need $30,000^)00 more every month, to make good the average loss which the Government now susiains for over)’ momh that it continues, to operate the roads, provided they continue to pay the present returns of interest and dividends, (It should be remarked in this. connection that more than thirty-nine per cent of railway shares pay no dividends.) Atop of all this is the insistent demand of the railway employes for more and ever more wages.

Expecting that shortly, in harmony with the President's promise, the roads would be returned to their former managers, these managers are now saying some pretty severe things about the Government They are accusing former Administrations of having starved them and ruined their bank and investment credit by insufficient traffic rates, and the present Administration of having mortgaged the body, life and soul of the railway properties to gratify the exactions while stimulating the excesses of the four great brotherhoods.

They declaim that since the beginning of the war railroad wage rates have risen 85%, and costs of materials 100%, taken together a rise of 90% in cost of operation. To meet these rising costs the average rates for freight and passenger service have been raised 35%. During the war the average trainload was increased from 452 tons to 625 tons, but even with this saving in operating costs the net cost of transportation during the war was increased 80%.

Higher Rates Propaganda

THE next thing for which the dear public may prepare themselves, in view of the hard facts which the railway managers must face, is a strong propaganda for higher freight rates. We are informed that such a propaganda is in preparation, with a fund of $1,000,000 back of it to see that the work does not lag. In a little while the churning process will be in full swing and the person who does not fall in line will be a pro-G-erman or a Bolshevik or some -other animal suitable for incarceration.

The need of financial relief is evident, Pres-» ident Elliott of the Northern Pacific even going so far as to say that the railroads must have an increase of 25% in the rates, even if there are no more wage increases or higher material costs. On-£he other hand there are wise people who think that if the railroads carry their rates any higher they will stimulate the trucks and bus lines and will have less bosineas and probably less returns. Nevertheless, the lack of tonnage, due to the falling off ia steel and coal production, od account of the strikes in those industries, is forcing the issue; and some Increase in freight rates is certain, to take cafe of the great overhead expense from which the railroads cannot escape.

But just think for a moment of what an increase of 25% in the freight rates will mean to the country. When, the consumer pays this increased freight rate experience has shown that he always pays five times the amount of the increase. For instance, if the freight rate on coal is increased ten cents per ton, the customer pays an increase of fifty cents, the other forty cents being always divided up among the dealers and middlemen as profit on the transaction. Hence the anticipated increase of some $875,000,000 per year would in practice increase the living expenses of each family of five persons by something over $200 per year.

Proposed Rail Remedies

WE ABE not going to propose a new rail remedy. Congress has had fifty of these plans under consideration, and thirteen of them have been pushed with a great deal of energy. The President admitted to the Congress that the question is so intricate that he had no solution to propose; and the Congress is finding it equally hard to know what is the best thing to do. In view of the importance of having the question settled wisely the American Federation of Labor has urged Congress to continue Government control for two years from the conclusion of peace, so that the subject can be coolly discussed at length, and without politics earning into it. The temptation is very great, on the eve of a Presidential election, to let the railroad question develop into a political issue; but in our judgment this would be very unwise. The President has vetoed a bill taking out of his hands the power to fix rates, and this is generally held to mean that he expects to retai a the roads until July first.

In November two railway bills were introduced and passed, the Cummins bill in the Senate and the Each bill in the House. Neither bill becomes a law until it passes both houses and is signed by the President. The Esch bill was passed as a republican measure, the democrats voting against it. It provides for the continued use of joint tarmin^a and other real advantages which have come about through government operation; it requires the railroads to appeal for advances in rates within sixty days from the time- the roads are turned over, if they expect to receive continued assistance from the Government; it provides for continued loans by the Government for a year after the roads are returned, all Ioans to be repaid to the Government within ten years, and interest at six per cent. It also provides a Labor Court of forty members, half employers and half employes, and a Supreme Labor Court of nine members, one third employers, one third employes and one third public representatives, appointed by the President, with assessments of damages against railway property for lockouts (that could never possibly happen) and against union property for strikes in violation of contract. It leaves the rate-making to the Interstate Commerce Commission, providing only that the rates must be just and reasonable. The financial papers believe that the principal features of the Esch bill will prevail over those of the Cummins bill in the joint conference now under way.

The Cummins bill plana for four or five competing lines between New York and Chicago, and twenty to thirty-five railway systems covering the entire country; it authorizes the pooling of freight and puts all issues of securities under federal control; the standard authorized return on the value of the property is fixed at five and one half per cent, and it is required that the rates shall be such as to maintain this standard; in viewr of the fact that a rate which is sufficient to provide a fair return for a weak road affords an excessive return for a strong road, the excess earnings of the strong roads are to be diverted to the weak ones, which have heretofore suffered many wrongs at the hands of their stronger neighbors.

When the Cummins bill was first passed it created great excitment because of a provision making railway strikes criminal and providing punishment for them. In support of this feature of his bill Senator Cummins said;

“A general suspension in the movement of traffw. for a fortnight would starve or freeze, or both, a large number^af men, women and children; and if it were continued a month ox two months it would practically destroy half our population. Our business afiairs would be so disordered that the loss would be greater than in any conceivable war in whinh ve mi^ht engages It is

jiist as much the function of the government in these circumstances to see to it that transportation is adequate, continuous and regular as it is to maintain order, punish n-rimp and render justice in any other field of human activity.” •

As a general thing the Chambers of Commerce throughout the country seemed to favor this legislation; for several of them sent memorials to Congress urging such legislation as would absolutely prohibit strikes or lockouts in connection with railroads or other public service corporations engaged in interstate or foreign commerce. But the railroad men were not enthusiastic for it, some of them even going so far as to say that if the bill became a law there would not be jails enough in the country to hold the violators.

While we appreciate as keenly as any the fact that an interruption of the circulation of goods is as serious as an interruption of the circulation of money and that the one would inevitably lead to the other if long continued, yet we can not see how any employer can ever profit by holding an employe against hi-s wilL

Foreign Railroad Notes

EKMANY is troubled by lack of coal for her railways, but is not saying much about it Germany does not have much to say in these days. Before the war the railways were state-owned, the employes were state employes and it was illegal for them to strike. The freight rates in Germany have been nearly twice as high as in this country; but they have had an advantage over us in one item of the passenger service, as a person could buy a card ticket for a certain sum, giving him the right to travel all he wished during the year. This stimulated passenger travel, and was a good thing all around.

In France only one sixth of the railroads have been state owned and operated. The line which has been under government operation has had forty per cent more employes in proportion to its earnings than the other lines, and the French Minister of Public Works recently made a public denunciation of the whole system, declaring that the road was run in the interest of the employes and nobody else. On the twenty-first of October all the railroads of France were placed under the control of a committee composed of representatives from all the different classes of railway officials and employes*

POLITICAL— DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

The Old Alliances Again

IT WAS the honest expectation of President

Wilson Tvhen he expressed the hopes of ImTyinnity in the Fourteen Principles that thereby a solution -would be furnished of the many serious problems threatening the peace of the ■world. He found it impossible to impregnate the selfish, hardened European leaders with the better ideals. The juster regulations expressed in the proposed basic law of earth seem far from what was hoped for, but perhaps the best obtainable from the aggregation of diplomatic sharks that had long kept Europe in turmoil.

It is not surprising to see one of the leading French publications beginning to come frankly out with what amounts to a repudiation of the hopes of the world and a return to the darkness that culminated in that catastrophic blunder of diplomats and kings—the World War. This was the inevitable outcome when, on the same day a year ago, President Wilson stated that the United States would take no part in a reversion to th& attempt to keep international poise by a balanie of power, and when Clemenceau said that he adhered to the system known ns the balance of power, and had never been in agreement with President Wilson in all respects. The Tiger of France has had his way over the Idealist of America; and in accord with him are the munition makers, the militarists, the nobles and the kings of Europe.

The hesitation of America to commit herself to the repugnant policy of entangling alliances has given the European reactionaries the chance to say that there is to be a renewal of the old alliances, and that it will be "the consecration of a new (!) policy born of American hesitation". It is plainly "Europe for the Europeans". Starting with the Anglo-French Alliance other Alliances will be added, and notice is served that Europe intends to perpetuate "the direction of the policies of our Europe". America is left out not merely because of her delay, but because she is not wanted. America is wanted, however, but only to furnish money, credits, munitions and troops, as needed; but American ideals find an extremely narrow market among the controllers of European policies.

The importance of the French pronouncement is that it is the unmasking of European diplomacy. During the presence of President Wilson at the Peace Conference no open breaeh of courtesy was committed. There was no overt act of opposition to him, though the news of a year ago, read between the lines, indicated the deep undercurrent of determined opposition to the ideals of liberty of speech, press and religion for which the real America stands. Savage attacks on President Wilson have token the place of the studied courtesy of a year ago. The half-hearted cooperation of statesmen and diplomats is replaced by a general lining up against what the American President stood for among them. Thus was it ever with Europe, concerning which Washington said 134 years ago:

"Against the insidious wile* of foreign hflwaa, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizezu, the jealousy of a free people ought to bo constantly awake; store history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the moat baneful foes of republican goYarwnagt.

“Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causae of which are essentially foreign, to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

"If we remain one people under on efficient govora-ment, we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude aa will eause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice shall counsel.

“Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Kurope, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice ? ‘

“’Tia our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

What has been the mental attitude of European diplomats is becoming that of Europe. Fostered by carefully camouflaged anti-Wileon propaganda the people of the Continent are becoming,at one, with the sentiments expressed that the American' Senate “is in favor of, America's not meddling in European affairs. Well, so are we”. The beneficent aspirations of America's President, which might have interfered with the designs of the European poHtic-ians, are turning against him. It was in Europe that the term “Machiavelian” .was attached to statecraft—alias “diplomacy”—and the European politician needs no tutor in the use of propaganda to paint white black.

Doubtless the best American policy is to pay no heed to Tories* and Bourbons, but to observe the admonitions of Washington and those less known ones of Paul and Peter “That ye studyto be quiet, and to do your own business,” (1 Thessalonians 4:11), and “Let none, of you suffer as a busybody in other men's, affairs”. —1 Peter 4:15. ..

DoesAmericanization Americanize ? .

STARTING more noticeably in 1917 came a movement to Americanize the “poor, ignorant foreigner” by means of teaching : him a reading and writing knowledge of the American language. Chambers of Commerce seemed to be acting as godfathers, but who the real parent was is not so certain. Some thought it was a part of a vast British propaganda work, and that the word “American” was used in such connections to represent things American as the British foreign office is supposed to think that word should mean if America were a properly dutiful daughter—to represent culture for the few and genteel servility for the majority;

Certainly no one living in this land can honestly doubt the propriety of helping everyone who is desirous to be helped to a better understanding of the principles for which the word American has stood and should stand—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it is difficult to understand how foreign-born persons in opr midst are to be attracted to those principled when such threatening and bull-dozing tactics as have come within our knowledge are employed to ‘’Americanize’'. Any system which does not encourage the self-respect of the foreigner cannot succeed; any system which does not leave him the power of choice as to whether ne will become an American citizen or not, cannot succeed; for if he is to be a slave he may just prefer to be a slave among relatives and acquaintances of his own native tongue.

Thousands of our foreign-born population in several of the larger cities have eagerly availed themselves of the opportunity to attend night schools where dramatic methods of teaching the American language are employed and where they can quickly grasp a working acquaintanceship with that difficult, though very useful speech. Many librarians and teachers have cheerfully carried extra work to render assistance in this comparatively new field. Because of the individual and true Americanism of the teachers some foreigners have doubtless come into a knowledge not only of the American language but also of the American principles. This is surely commendable, and worthy of encouragement regardless of what motive may have been hack of the starting of the movement

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