Golden Age, March 31, 1920
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March 31,1920, Vol. 1, No. 14
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Volume I WEDNESDAY. MARCH 01, 1223 Number II
CONTENTS 0/ the GOLDEN AGE
LABOX and ECONOMICS Shipyard Workers’ Wages..419 Foreign Wage Itema
Other Government Miscellaneous Wago Itema..421
New York Waze Items........41’J Calm Judgment Needed
Massaebueetta Wage Items..420 British Economics________^...422
SOCIAL and EDUCATIONAL
MANUFACTURING and MINING Failing Mineral Resources..423 The Making of a Ford
FINANCE. COMMERCE TRANSPORTATION
New York Jitney Lines______427 Bufineas Conditions in C. 8. 429
POLITICAL, DOMESTIC infl FOREIGN
........Si Qu«U»»» to Cu>dld«t«
AGRICULTURE and HUSBANDRY
Profit and TjObb on Hosiery for Cattle
the Farm..........................433 A Farmer Congress
SCIENCE sad INVENTION
Theory of Relativity............435 Heads to the North
...........*38
SOUSEwIFERY*and HYGIENE
Keep Well.............—..437
Mixed Her Bedpec...
The Humble Bean.
TRAVEL and
Color. Bound. Form..........
Taming a Robin
RELIGION sod
TTie Bl Me Tcnorf* !......
Those Dear Familiar Feet..414
Internal Cleanliness ..........437 Health Food Recipes..—..438
MISCELLANY Unexpected Exits..........
A Correspondent Bees BeiL.440
PHILOSOPHY Juvenile Bible Study
TUe Cry of Jewry
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WOODWGBTN. KUDGINGS Md MAJKT1N
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Golden Age
Volume I Ne* York, Wedneeday, March 31, 1920 Number 14
SHIPYARD WORKERS’ WAGES
WHEN the constant sinking of merchant vessels convinced the United States that it mast enter the World War, one of the first things decided upon was to build a large fleet to replace the vessels sunk and to transport the American army to France. To build this fleet •within the short time in which it must be done required an army of ship workers. These workers had to be taken from other American industries, already crippled by the draft. The only way these workers could be obtained was by offering them wages large enough to induce them to leave their jobs and their homes and go to the points where the shipyards were located, and Eve in the overcrowded conditions then necessary. The wages had to be enough, in effect, to enable each to support two homes.
The wages necessarily paid in the shipyards affected the whole country. Other employers everywhere had to boost the wages in order to hold their men. Every time they boosted the wages of their men they boosted the prices of the things which the men made, so as to get their money back. Thus the wave of high wages and high prices spread.
Government employes in common with other workers felt the pinch of rising prices and clamored for relief. In August, 1919, over the protest of the Postoffice Department, the National Association of Postal Employes succeeded in securing the passage of a bill granting to the clerks and carriers an average increase in salary of about $150 per year. About 250,000 men and women workers w’ere affected, thus increasing the postal budget by about $40,-000,000 per year.
A Uttle after the bill for relieving the condition of the postal workers had passed, attention was conspicuously drawn to another class of workers in Washington, and the Nolan biU was passed making the minimum wage for Government service at the capital $90 per month. This raised the -wages of 66,000 employes, some of whom wrere then receiving only $60 and had not had an increase of salary in eleven years. One of these -was a woman eighty-four years of age who entered the Government employ forty-nine years before at $432 per year and was in the fall of 1919 receiving $729 per year.
Other Government Advances
THE advance of wages of Government employes was not confined to Washington. It also occurred in New York City, where an extensive campaign for better living conditions was carried on in the fall of 1919 by policemen, firemen and other municipal employes. As a result of the agitation the payroll of the city for 1920 was increased to the extent of $10,000,000, an average increase of about $100 to each of the 109,000 employes on the city payroll. Of this amount $1,250,000 went to the firemen and $2,750,000 to the police. These increases raised the pay of first-grade firemen and policemen to $1900 per year. Before the increase went into effect it was said that the policemen of New York were receiving less wages than the union dishwashers in the restaurants. No increases were made in Nev’ York to city employes receiving more than $3000. We think Mayor Hylan handled this matter in a very just and proper way. Others may well profit by his example.
New York Wage Items
ACCORDING to the information which reaches .us, window cleaners in New York City receive $36 per week, telegraph operators $37 to $40 per week, street car conductors $6.40 per day, and paperhangers $8 per day. Tailors get $50 per week for a forty-four-hour week; tailors’helpers get $40 and the women helpers get $35. Alteration workers get $45 per week. All garment workers get time and a half for overtime.
The president of one of the largest retail clothing concerns in New York, a concern which does its own manufacturing, has stated that the labor costs in clothing are now so high that fully 80% of the prices charged go into the labor required for making the cloth and trimmings and putting them into the finished suit. It is also said that in the last three years the workers have received advances in wages of more than 100%. A bright feature for dealers in clothing at present is that on account of the prevailing shortage in all lines there are no losses from shopworn goods, as nothing is carried over from one season to another.
In September the longshoremen of New York demanded an increase of 15 cents per hour, bringing their wage up to $1 per hour, with double pay for overtime and for handling salvage. In the same month the stevedores of Porto Rico, backed by the International Longshoremen’s Union of America, surprised the natives and surprised the world by suddenly presenting demands for an increase from 30 cents per hour to 75 cents per hour, with time and a half for overtime, night work, Sundays and holidays.
In August, 1919, the average weekly wages in New York state were $23.85. The average weekly earnings of factory workers were as follows:
Water, light and power___
___$28.80
Metals and machinery___
__26.44
Paper manufacture___
___ 25.96
Sjone, clay and' glass_____
__24.11
Printing and paper goods----------
____24.05
Chemicals, oils and paints--
___ 23.40
Furs, leather and rubber__
___23.30
Clothing___________________
__22.56
Wood manufactures ...
. 21.99
Food, beverages, tobacco------
__21.69
Textiles_____________
___ 18.88
Massachusetts Wage Notes
AT BOSTON in October the National Indus
- trial Conference Board reported that in the five years from July 14,1909, to March 19,1919, the wages in eight leading industries had advanced all the way from 62% to 110% to offset advances in cost of living ranging all the way from 74% to 112%. Thus the net condition of the workers is worse by 12% to 2%.
Items frequently get into the New York papers which are calculated to misrepresent the workers in various parts of the country. The papers here have been circulating stories to the effect that shoe workers in Boston are making $120 per week. Like the stories of the fabulous wages paid to engineers and conductors, this is probably some isolated case where a single worker by working two days in one has made this wage for one week. We doubt that this is a truthful report.
It could hardly be true in Brooklyn, where the 8000 shoe workers average between $35 and $40 per week. The cutters make a little more than this, their earnings on piece work frequently running to $60 per week and sometimes as high as $75 per week. Those who make the higher wages have to work very hard for it, and they earn their money. The shoe factories are trying now to standardize costs, and the workers are trying to get a standard wage. Where the employes do not work at piece "work they are asking for $1 per hour for a forty-four hour week.
In Massachusetts there has been established a minimum wage of $12.50 for candy workers. This amount is said to be the very least that a self-supporting woman can exist upon and maintain her health. The $12.50 is itemized as follows. We hope the thoughtful will not fail to take note of the sum which is set aside for self-improvement. It represents the chance that the young woman has of getting a footing in a better occupation:
Board and lodging______
_____________$7.00
Clothing_____
-------- 2.25
Carfare __________.____
—..........7 6
Laundry _______
----.50
Vacation____________-_____
----- .40
Recreation_______._____
----.30
Doctor and dentist__ —
___ 30
Savings and insurance ____
___ 30
Incidentals....... i____
__25
Newspapers and magazines----
.........18
Self-improvement____________
----.15
Church___._______________
.......... .11
$12.50
Foreign Wage Items
THE wage situation in England is still in a very unsettled condition. Large sums were until recently paid out in unemploj-ment pensions. Table hands in England now receive minimuni wages of $15 per week. This is a great deal more than formerly received, but does not represent a higher wage when the cost of living is taken into account.
Wages for the well-to-do continue to improve! In 1909. there were in England 11,000 men whose earnings were $25,000 per year, and in 1919 this number had become 18.000. In 1909, there were 166 whose incomes were $250,000 per year; in 1919 this number was 321, almost double. In 1909, there were 65 whose incomes were over $500,000 per year; in 1919 this number was 148, more than double. As a class, the well-to-do are as anxious as other workers that their wages should not be reduced, and they generally move in select circles where their opinions count for something.
Miscellaneous Wage Items
WHAT wages ought a rich man to receive?
What wages ought anybody to receive? It all depends upon circumstances; upon what his value is to the community. It is often more profitable to a business, and therefore to a community, to have an expert brought in at $100 per day than to have all the wages of all the .regular employes in the business advanced 10%. The expert might save the business; the unwise raise in wages might kill it. The right way to compare skill and energy and get the liest results from both is an unknown w’ay. The nineteenth century did not know all about this problem. Perfect economic wisdom is ahead, not behind. We all want to do full justice to the workers of every class.
Ford, of the Ford Motor Car interests, is trying to solve the problem for himself and his men, and let economists of the next generation decide whether lie acted wisely or foolishly. But he is getting results. The minimum wage of his men until recently was $6 per day, but instead of bemoaning this, as is the case with so many capitalists, he has now raised the minimum wage to $3 per day, the wages in some instances going as high as $12 per day. Besides this, he expects by next summer to reduce the prices of Ford automobiles and to have back exclusively in his own hands all the stock of the Ford company, now approximating in value $1,000,090,000. Titis would bo the largest single enterprise over owned and managed by one man.
In September, the board of trustees of the University of Chicago increased the salaries of all faculty members by an addition of approximately 20% to partially cover the 80% increase in cost of living. This reached all those whose salaries were less than $7000 per year.
Turning from college professors to street railway men, the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes stated before the Federal Electrical Railways Commission in October that a minimum wage of $6.40 was desired for each employe as a living wage. To some papers this seems a terrible thing: they argue that this would be entirely too much to pay to a stenographer. Maybe it would; it all depends upon what the stenographer had to do with his or her wages. It costs stenographers just as much to live as it does other people, and it takes as much brains to transcribe shorthand notes and operate a typewriter as to collect fares or run an electric motor.
Calm Judgment Needed
IT IS a time for calm judgment. In his statement to the railway shopmen shortly before he began his Western trip, the President said:
“It is neither wise nor feasible to take care of increases in the wages of railroad employes at this time by increases in freight rates. Only by keeping the coat of production on its present level, by increasing production and by rigid economy and saving on the part of the jieo-ple, can we hope for large decreases in the burdensome cost of living which now weighs us down. Demands unwisely made and passionately insisted upon at this time menace the peace and prosperity' of the country as nothing else could, and thus contribute to bring about the very results which such demands are intended to remedy.'.’
In the spirit of the President's counsel,The painters, paperhangers and decorators of Hoboken in August last voted to renounce their demands for $1.50 increase per .day and decided to make the best of their $6.50 per day. At about the same time certain representatives of the Midvale Steel Company, in convention at Atlantic City, issued a published protest against further advances in wages, declaring, "That the persistent and unceasing demand of workmen employed in all classes and kinds of industries for a shorter day's work and an increased wage in order to meet the present high cost of living is uneconomic and unwise and should not be encouraged7’. We do not know whether or not it is true, as reported, that the Midvale Steel Company paid the expenses of these representatives to and from Atlantic City and •while there. If so, it would detract somewhat from the value of their published statement.
To settle the wage warfare we need the guidance of the wisest worker of all the ages. Not many have noticed the premium which the Lord puts upon •work. Not eternal loafing but eternal work in the interest of others is held out in the Scriptures as the reward of the Lord’s overcoming saints. Of the divine attributes it is said, “They have no rest day and night”. (Revelation 4: 8) Other statements of similar import are the following: “My Father worketh [right along] until now, and I work”. (John 5:17) “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work.” (John 9: 4) “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” (Ephesians 2:10) “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.” (Philippians 2:13) “We are laborers together with God.” (1 Corinthians 3:9) “Workers together with him.” (2 Corinthians 6:1) “Who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.”—Philippians 3:21.
British Economics
THOSE who have given the matter careful study claim that if the war interest is to be paid and if labor and capital are to receive their present rewards, England must produce two or three times as much as she did in 1913. But although there is less unemployment in England now than was ever known before, and although production is going ahead full blast, yet the production is not enough to enable the people as a whole to. turn over annually to the government the three or four billion dollars necessary to meet the interest charges owed to those in England and America who financed the war.
The economics of the situation would seem to say in stentorian tones that if it was necessary for the people to work and save during the war in order to win it, it is now necessary for them to work and save to recover from its effects. The people are working hard, but they are not working the same hours as formerly; and it is claimed that the figures show that in proportion as the hours were reduced the production was reduced. This helps to keep the cost of living up, and has the effect of narrowing the market for the goods produced, because the higher the prices of goods the fever people can afford to buy. Production is the backbone of prosperity.
The people are not as frugal as during the war, or even before the war. The food statistics show that they are eating more per capita than they did. This is partly due to the fact that more families than formerly have been able to lay in stores of provisions, and partly to the reaction which has followed the strain of the years of privation.
Then the war has had the effect of fostering extravagance. War profits in some directions have been enormous, and a get-rich-quick boom has been sweeping the country. Speculation is rife, the oldest cotton mills are changing hands, and war profits are being used for other things than the payment of debts. Small factories, capable of producing but half a dozen cars per week, have been flooded with orders for thousands of automobiles. It is estimated that 300,000 people have ordered cars and paid $250 apiece deposit upon them; but multitudes of these orders cannot be filled because raw materials cannot be had. Mills and factories are being sold at five times their pre-war figures. Trusts are in the making, and what was a land of small corporations promises to be a replica of America. Minds accustomed to war cannot accustom themselves to the economic conditions of peace.
The women workers, of whom 4,000,000 were drawn into industry during the war to take the place of men, cannot be induced to return to work as servants; and their griefs, family disruptions, unfamiliar work and high wages have made them factors of a kind never before encountered. The men, too, after living in the open for five years, can with difficulty bring themselves to face the daily grind of factory work, and are disturbed by the high cost of living and the inequalities of the wage situation. All of these items work against the phenomenal production which seems to be so necessary in an economic sense.
In order to allay discontent the government has been selling flour at less than cost, operating the railways at an annual loss running into the hundreds of millions, and producing and marketing coal on the same basis. This cannot go on indefinitely. It is folly to think that wealth is inexhaustible, and that any government can continue to expend without having a day of reckoning with those whose money it is spending.
SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL
America's Greatest Asset
HAPPY, intelligent, sweet-dispositioned children constitute the nation s most valuable asset. Kost children arc happy, intelligent and sweet if they arc well. The Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor describes a well-nourished child as one who “first of all, measures up to racial and family standards of his age in height and weight. He has good color, bright eyes—no blue or dark circles underneath them—and smooth, glossy hair. His carriage is good, his step elastic, his flesh firm, and his muscles well developed. In disposition he is usually happy and good-natured; he is brimful of life and animal spirits and is constantly active both physically and mentally. His sleep is sound, his appetite and digestion good, his bowels regular. He is, in short, what nature meant him to be before anything else—a happy, healthy young animal.”
It is a most unfortunate fact that the average American family is shrinking in size and that, as previously stated in these columns, the quality of the children, physically speaking, is poor. We think the people of this country ought to give more attention to building up those children and less to building guns and battleships. Nor are we anxious to have the children properly developed so that they will be the better cannon fodder when some wave of criminal lunacy and greed under the guise of militarism sweeps over the land. We want the children to .grow up so that they can enjoy the blessings of life and peace.
Some progress is being made in the care of the children. In 1880 the infant mortality in New York City was 286 per thousand infants Lorn; by 1918 this had fallen to 92. And even in the orphan asylums, where one would hardly look for progress along these lines, it is claimed that when recently a record was taken of the weights and heights of the children in New York state asylums, as compared with children outside the institutions, even the thrifty State Board of Charities found that only a small percentage of undernourishment existed. It is claimed that one important reason for this is that all the food the children do get in these institutions is properly utilized. The children go to bed early, and do not have their digestive -apparatus injured by meals that arc too heavy for them or by food between meals. A person who remains in bed several hours longer than the normal hours of rest does not require as much food as one that is awake and active during a portion of that time.
Herbert Hoover has expressed his conviction that, if the children of the United States are properly cared for, the whole problem of Americanization will be solved in twenty years, and that “the attitude of a nation toward child welfare ■will soon become the test of civilization"— rather than the number of battleships it possesses, we feel like adding. Mr. Hoover is supposed to be in grooming by the high priests of Wall Street as the joint candidate of the now practically unified European, British and American interests, representing what remains of former American parties. He is no doubt a very fine man, and has touched American hearts in the right place, in speaking to them about their children. That is what Americans want to know —how their children can be properly cared for, physically, mentally and in every way, so that they will be qualified for manhood and womanhood. Manifestly, then, the thing to do is to give attention to them,' to consider their needs.
One of the first things that children require, if they are to keep well, and if they are to grow, is milk. Most children in America get the milk they need, although there are millions who do not, but in Europe, following the war, there are literally thousands upon thousands who were several years old before they had ever tasted milk, and who did not know what bread is. When these children were reached by the food reliefs they were emaciated or bloated from starvation; but after the condensed milk stations were opened, many of these poor little fellows that were not able to stand because malnutrition had so softened their bones, were able to walk and play in two weeks time, all because their starving bodies had a little watered condensed milk fed to them. The same children were so in need of fats that when given plain army soap to help them get cleaned up, they ate the soap.
As a result of the relief work, the disease mortality of the Belgian children is now less . than what it was before the war, despite the fact that they went through five years of famine. In New Zealand, where they did not especially feel the economic strain of the war, and where there is a superb nursing service, with hospital and medical care and instruction of mothers in the science of child nurture, the infant death rate is the lowest in the world.
Child Labor
THE national child labor law prohibits the employment of children under fourteen in factories, mills, canneries and workshops, and under sixteen in mines and quarries. It is estimated that child labor was reduced 40% in the .United States since this law went into effect, but the war affected these figures unfavorably and the conditions are still bad. There are forces working against effective child labor legislation. Southern cotton mills (financed in Wall Street) have contested the right of Congress to place a near prohibitive tax on child labor products, and the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional the law prohibiting the use of child labor on any products that enter into interstate commerce.
During the war the number of young children "gainfully’’ employed increased greatly, as was inevitable, and the hours of labor of those who did work were also increased. Violations of the law are so common as to attract almost no attention. In the summer of 1918, in one state, despite the law that the minimum age for employment in canneries is fourteen years, there were found 721 children under that age, including fifty that were not yet ten years old. The 1910 census showed 1,419,098 children between the ages of ten and fifteen employed on farms and 338,420 in miscellaneous occupations, not including manufacturing and mining.
One of the first acts of the Czecho-Slovakian republic was to pass laws making the minimum age for child workers fourteen. In Belgium the minimum age for child labor is fourteen, and children and women are positively forbidden to work in acid factories or other plants where their health would be endangered. These laws are strictly enforced.
The conditions of children in the Argentine republic are very bad, due to the fact that the father docs not earn enough to support a family properly. Like the South of Ireland, the country is largely under the domination of ecclesiastical politicans, and what else can be expected? However, in less benighted lands conditions are not as favorable as we would like to see them; for even in enlightened Massachusetts investigations have shown that 30% of the families can not give the children schooling beyond the compulsory age limit.
Prohibition in New Hampshire
IN THE eleven cities of New Hampshire:
Berlin, Concord, Dover, Franklin, Keene, Laconia, Rochester, Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, and Somersworth, with a combined population of 207,836, there were arrested for drunkenness in the year 1917, under the local option law then in effect, 9,260 persons. In the same cities during the year 1919 the total number of arrests for drunkenness were 1,660. This is a reduction of more than 80% for all the cities of the state taken together. .
‘ In three of the foregoing cities, Keene, Laconia, and Rochester, there were 369 arrests for drunkenness in 1917, due to liquor having been obtained elsewhere, as those cities were NoLicense cities in the year 1917. The wholesome effect of state-wide prohibition may be seen in the fact that in the same cities in 1919 the total arrests for drunkenness were 73.
This is a decrease in drunkenness, with its attendant miseries and crime, in which all decent men and women can rejoice. We discern the hand of God in the ruin of the liquor business in* America, and give God the glory for it.
Something Coming Down ___
THERE are four newspapers in Buffalo,
N. Y.; and one of them, evidently believing that the present high prices cannot continue and determined to build up a large circulation, suddenly surprised the other papers in the city by going back to the old rate of one cent for the daily paper and five cents for the Sunday paper. The cut in the price of the paper has caused considerable excitement, with numerous fights among the newsboys. It is said that the three higher-priced papers have combined to prevent newsboys and news-stands from selling the cheaper paper, and that the publishers have been compelled to hire girls to handle the paper in order to prevent street fighting among the newsboys, as the newsboys will not fight the girls.
MANUFACTURING AND MINING"
Failing Mineral Resources
TN THE GOLDEN AGE for October 1, 1919, * we presented facts showing that the oil basins in the United States are rapidly playing out. They will produce some oil for a long time yet, but the oil consumption for explosive motor engines and other purposes is now so great that the United States can no longer find within its borders sufficient crude oil to supply its needs and is importing large quantities front Mexico.
Fuel oil for steam-raising purposes is now being discouraged in the technical journals, the attention of users being drawn to the fact that the thermal efficiency of oil when used as a fuel is only 10% to 15%; whereas, when it is used in internal combustion engines, its thermal efficiency is from 30% to 35%. This gradually evaporating oil supply is sending up the price of'gasoline, and it must go higher and higher.
We used to think of the mineral resources of the United States as inexhaustible, and that is still a proper term to use in describing them; but it comes as a shock to have a Congress of Min, ing Engineers meet and solemnly consider what can be done to prevent the complete cessation of gold production in our country.
They call attention to the fact that the reduction in gold output of the United States in 1918, the last year for which figures are available, was $15,000,000 less as compared with the previous year. It is now only $68,476,700 per year. Gold is being used faster in the arts than it can be produced; and at that rate of decrease in production the whole story will be finished in less than five years. The trade demands for gold in the United States are about $90,000,000 per annum. It is now profitable to purchase gold from the United States Treasury, at the coinage value, and use it in the arts. In other words, gold is now really at a premium, though not monetarily so.
The gold-producing states, in the order of their importance as gold producers, are California. Colorado, Alaska, Nevada, South Dakota, Arizona, Montana, and Utah. Smaller quantities come from the Philippines, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, and Washington. Eleven other states produce negligible quantities.
Gold is failing elsewhere. Conditions similar to those in the United States prevail in South Africa. During 191S, as compared with 1917, there was a decline of approximately $10,000,-000 in the value of the total output of gold in the Transvaal region. Added to the declining production is the gold hunger' of the war, the extravagances due to inflation, which have led myriads of people into the purchase of articles made of gold or plated with it, and the hoarding which has been practised by the timid, who delusively hope that they can thus avert impending calamities.
The loss in silver production is not as great, amounting to only about $4,000,000: but the total value of the amount produced is some $2,000,000 less than the value of the gold produced ; and neither production amounts to much for a country boasting of 110,000,000 people. The value of the silver production in 1918 amounted to $66,485,129.
The silver-producing states, in the order of their importance as silver producers, are Montana, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, and Arizona. Smaller quantities come from California, Alaska, New Mexico, Texas, Michigan, Washington, South Dakota, Oregon, and Tennessee. Twelve other states produce a little silver.
As a matter of fact, American mines are now actually producing a less tonnage of gold, silver, lead, zinc, and even of iron than they were several years ago. The statistics usually published make the value of the product seem to be more, but this is because of the vanishing value of the dollar. The actual quantity produced per capita is less than in former years.
The Scriptures seem to indicate that a time is coming -when gold end silver will not be as much prized as now. ‘T will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man that the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens [ecclesiastical powers], and the earth [usual social arrangements] shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. Behold I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it."—Isaiah 13:12,13,17.
The Making of a Ford bv r. f. Rocthoff ONE of the wonders of the present industrial world is the malting of the Ford car. System and attention to detail have won for this industry a world-wide reputation. A detailed analysis of every problem of production has enabled Mr. Ford to put on the market thousands of cars at a moderate price, and still be able to pay his employes a minimum wage of $6.00 per day, and also receive a comfortable return tor his own efforts.
A visit to the Ford plant reveals some very interesting facts. In the warehouses immense quantities of material are handled, necessitating a systematic and orderly method of handling. Thousands of tons of iron and steel, piled tier upon tier, are classified as to kind and quality and stored in such a manner as to be easily accessible and ready for immediate use.
In the production departments each piece of production machinery’ is carefully studied with a view of its achieving the greatest possible results with the least effort, and of avoiding every possible waste. Each man has his specific duties to perform and the work is so simplified that an unskilled worker can, in a short time, produce a nbrmal day’s work.
Every employe is given an opportunity to make good at work to which he can adapt himself according to health, strength, size and ability. A tall man is given a tall man’s job, while the little man is saved the extra effort of a long’ reach, and possible over-exertion, which might prove a handicap to him. Too often large concerns loss sight of the fact that there is a human element about their employes.
The parts of the Ford car are first assembled in units; engine, radiator, steering wheel, axles, wheels and other parts being each assembled in different departments as units. These departments are known as sub-assembly departments, and serve as feeders to the final assembly.
The final assembly is accomplished on a pair of rails or tracks about four feet apart and eighteen inches from the floor and running the length of the building. To this track at various points the sub-assembled parts are conveyed by chutes, chain carriers, and other modern methods of conveyance. Beginning at the end of the track, the first units to be assembled are the axles and chassis. These assembled, a traveling chain is hooked to the prospective car. which starts it down the trac-k at the rate of a slow walk, while the various parts and assembled units are dropped into their proper places and secured. In these operations each man has his specific duty to perform, and the proper equipment to do Ids work in an efficient manner. One man places the part, while another puts in the bolts, and still another tightens them.
Upon reaching the end of the track the rear wheels of the car drop between two revolving grooved pulleys protruding through the floor, thus forcing them to turn. A driver then jumps on the car, throws in the clutch, which starts the motor, and away it goes—complete, less a body. The body is supplied in another department from an overhead chute and is bolted on. Then the car is complete, this final assembly having been accomplished while the ear was in motion and in less than half an hour.
As many as 2,600 cars have been produced in one day, this being an average of about five cars every two minutes. This stupendous output necessitates a perfect shipping schedule to avoid congestion in transportation, as obviously sb great a quantity of cars cannot be stored. To avoid this Mr. Ford has assembly plants in the larger cities to which parts and sub-assembled units are shipped and the cars assembled in these branches. In this way great economy is effected, it being cheaper to ship parts than to ship a completed car.
The quota for the Ford Company for 1920 is set at 1,000,000,000 cars, or one car for every 100 people in the United States. Prospects are that this mark, will be passed, as for the six months beginning with August, 1919, the output has been 506,000 cars.
The Ford industry is without question the most wonderful industry in the world both as to production and management, and recent concessions to employes have granted a very reasonable return for their labors, and it seems as though the Ford interests are a little oasis in the desert of human selfishness of our day.
What developments in industry will be possible for the betterment of humanity in the Golden Age are hardly imaginable now, even as the present achievements were not dreamed of fifty years ago. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”—1 Corinthians 2:9.
FINANCE-COMMERCE-TRANSPORTATION I
New York's Jitney Lines
T N MANY Western cities, and in some Eastern * ones, automobile bus lines or jitneys, as they are commonly called, are familiar features of the streets, and are a byproduct of the precarious conditions into which the electric street railways have mismanaged themselves. It was characteristic of New York City to wait until all the other cities in the country had tried jitneys before having anything to do’with them, bat the trolley strikes last Fall forced the issue and finally the jitney arrived.
On account of the strikes, and for other reasons, some of the electric railway companies in Brooklyn and Manhattan ceased operating certain lines which they found to be unprofit. able, and operated other lines only part of the distance. The Board of Estimates of the city, which is the ruling power, considering that an emergency in the city’s affairs had arisen, undertook to bring about a remedy. 1
The Board claimed that the changes in Brooklyn's transit facilities, with the consequent creation of 970 new transfer points, caused such congestion of traffic and people at certain points as -to threaten disorder, and that such disorders actually occurred. They therefore put eighty busses at work in Brooklyn and a number in New York, temporarily, in some instances, using policemen as checkers and starters at the bus terminals. It was astonishing how the people took to the new conveyances.
On November 14th, 114 of the busses carried 75,000 passengers daily. A little later it was claimed that 150,000 people were making use of them daily. It was not intended to run them beyond December 31, 1919, but they became so popular that it did not seem wise to discontinue them at least during the season of icy sidewalks, and on January 5th it was estimated that in Brooklyn alone 3,200,000 passengers had been carried upon them, with correspondingly vast numbers in Manhattan. ’
It is not to be wondered at that the trolley companies have fought tliis innovation; for some of them were losing money even before the jitneys came. The companies appeared in court asking for restraining orders on this progressive movement, and the courts decided that the jitneys should be permitted to continue the use of the streets in the interests of the people. t u
When the trolley companies appeared in court to ask for the injunction, they used every kind of argument except the one they knew would not hold good, i. e., that the people would not use the busses in any case. They did say that the Brooklyn trolleys were carrying sixty times as many passengers as the busses and were carrying them 4.2 miles as against the busses’ 3 miles, and that the busses could not possibly be operated at a profit.
They went on to say that if the city gave up its street-cars and operated busses exclusively it ‘ would lose $2,956,500 due to the smaller carry- \ ing capacity of the busses, $6,000,000 in the longer haul, $2,395,899 in taxes and paving, $500,000 in snow removal and $900,000 in money paid for accidents, a total of $12,752,399. .....
New York is so congested that it seems able ’ to absorb and use every transit facility that is provided; and the city authorities are so well pleased with the temporary use of busses that . they are contemplating an appropriation for f 100 new busses to be owned by the-city and used J to alleviate traffic congestion whenever and > wherever the city sees fit.
These new busses are designed to hold 27 seated and 15 standing, with no seats on top.
The busses themselves would cost $550,000, and
the garage equipment and spare parts $20,000
more. The proposition of the Commissioner of
Plant and Structures is to operate 92 of these ■ busses on nine routes totalling 25 miles of streets, 8 busses being held in reserve.
Despite the predictions of the trolley compa-
nies, the Commissioner estimates that with a
total annual expense of $650,000 per year, in-
eluding the employment of 180 chauffeurs at 1 $1,800 per year, the city’s profit on the venture would be $376.80 per day, all fares being on the five-cent basis. 1
This estimate would make the average operating cost per bus about $20 per day, necessitating the carriage of 400 fares to each bus, to cover expenses. It must make ten trips each way, or sixty miles in all, and carry 20 passengers each 4 way in order to do this. This seems like a big undertaking, but the Commissioner and the bus
< . operators have figured that they could do it and T' even make the route four miles instead of three and still ma!:e a profit on a five-cent fare.
We.do not know whether we are approaching - a time when we must bid goodbye to the trolley, it is all a matter of cost. If it costs less in the J long run for a trolley car with cheap iron wheels I to travel on a smooth iron track, propelled by electric power from a single plant, then the trolley it will be; but if it costs less to travel on - rubber tires over the pavement surface, pro-| pelled by individual engines, then the trolley 3 ■ ■ • lines must go.
A bus company with $2,000,000 capital has been incorporated to operate throughout New h Jersey, promising to charge five-cent fares in •' competition with the seven-cent trolley fares. it . We cannot but wonder, Will it pay* The owners of these busses will be subject to great expenses V for repairs and depreciation. They will not be without labor troubles. They must provide for supervision of their men, for bus licenses, chauffeur licenses, and the inevitable damage h suits for accidents.
j. •
The city of Buenos Ayres has just granted a fifty-year charter to a bus line to operate four lines from the center of the city to certain suburbs. At the expiration of the charter the lines are to revert to the city. The fares will be the same as charged by trolley and subway lines.
If the jitney can be made to pay better than the trolley we would think that fact would have been discovered earlier, but perhaps now is the due time. There are advantages in the trolley; there ate places where the trolley cars are sometimes heated in the winter. There are advantages in the jitney; it can run anywhere, track or no track, and on any schedule; but is the latter an advantage or a disadvantage!
First the omnibus, then the horse car, then the cable car, then the trolley car, and then back to the omnibus. Is this to be the cycle? Sometime we shall arrive at the true solution of the problem of urban and interurban transportation. How long must we wait for it! Not long, we think. Multitudes of bright minds are working on these problems, and in due time the Lord will guide some one to the right solution.
Chart of Present Business Conditions Prepared by the Chamber of Commerce of the United Slates
P POLITICAL-DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN
Justice and, the Poor By Reginald Heber Smith, ___ of the Uuxton Bar THE end of all our legal institutions is to -L secure justice. What is Ilic just decision in any controversy, we determine, not by the arbitrary will or opinion of any individual, but in accordance with definite rules of law. This is the method of justice according to law, and because it so far surpasses all other attempts at human justice it stands as a basic principle from which we cannot safely depart.
Our system of justice according to law has clear defects which exist, first, because law is not omnipotent but has limits beyond which its action is ineffective, and second, because the system, like all finite projects, has its own particular weak points. From the ensuing discussion, defects traceable to these limitations and disadvantages must be eliminated; for so long as- we desire to retain the manifold benefits of justice according to law, it is profitless to quarrel about its concomitant and inherent shortcomings.
Freedom and equality of justice for the poor depend, first, on an impartial substantive law and, second, on an even-handed administration of that lav,’. The substantive law is primary; for through it are created, stated, and defined all the rights, obligations, and relationships between individuals and the state, and through it are secured the social interests in the health, safety, security, and general well-being of the individual and the community. It is an absolute condition precedent; for if it acknowledged differences in right between rich and poor, a perfected machinery of enforcement would serve only to accentuate the distinctions and make them the more intolerable. •
The body of the substantive law, as a whole, is remarkably free from any taint of partiality. It is democratic to the core. Its rights are conferred and its liabilities imposed without respect of persons. While in this age of transition. it is confronted with tremendous problems as yet unsolved; while it is slow to employ the more liberal premises demanded by a new era, it deserves to be recognized as a remarkably satisfactory human achievement. This is the opinion of our greatest legal scholars and of the most searching critics o- our judicial institutions— such men as Roscoe Pound, Jonn H. Wigmore, and the group who compose the membership of the American Judicature Society. A careful examination of the substantive law’ from the point of view of the poor has recently been made by Judge Parry of the English Count)7 Courts, from which it is instantly apparent that the legal disabilities of the poor in nearly every instance result from defects in the machinery of the law and are not created by any discriminations of the substantive law against them.
Three branches of substantive law, it is true, have been much criticized. With regard to public service law it has been popular to claim that the railroads, traction companies, gas and electric light corporations were imposing on the public without let or hindrance from the law. The better opinion is that the provisions of substantive law were entirely fair and adequate, but that the courts, without administrative machinery, were unable to cope with the problems of enforcement and supervision.
Again, much of our landlord and tenant law is still feudal in its conceptions. The'rule that . most of our city dwellers,-because they occupy without written leases, are only tenants "at will” and so liable to immediate dispossession does not accord with modern conditions and often causes extreme hardship. Legislative attempts, as in Massachusetts, to invest such tenant with a measure of security by requiring notice to quit two weeks in advance have been frustrated by the courts’.adherence to the common law rule that the landlord may give a written lease for a year to a third person, who then has a higher legal estate with rights of possession after forty-eight hours’ notice. In practice this means that fictitious leases are delivered to ejectment companies, which exercise their superior title by removing the tenant’s household furniture to a warehouse to be interned till all charges are paid. This anachronism could easily be remedied, however, by giving to proper courts discretionary power to control the time in which tenants, for cause shown, may continue in possession after the landlord’s notice to vacate.
Finally, the redress afforded injured employes by the law has called forth the bitterest attacks, and here the impartiality of the substantive law has most justly been challenged. The workman who sought to recover for injuries sustained at work, due to the negligence of his employer, was placed at an enormous disadvantage by the rules defining the master’s liability. The fellow servant rule and the doctrine of assumption of risk, growing out of two cases which are now severely condemned, and elaborated by a process which can only be called judicial legislation, came perilously near to constituting an actual class distinction in the law. Happily this stigma no longer attaches, because within the last seven years workmen’s compensation statutes, which supplant the outworn doctrines of liability with the principle of insurance, have been enacted in nearly every jurisdiction.
On examination and on authority, the statement is warranted that the substantive law, with . minor exceptions, is eminently fair and impartial. In other words, the existing denial of justice to the poor is not attributable to any injustice in the heart of the law itself. The necessary foundation for freedom and equality of justice exists.
In sharp contrast, there are grave defects in the administration of the law. It is the wide disparity between the ability of the richer and the poorer classes to utilize the machinery of the law, which is at bottom the cause of the present unrest and dissatisfaction. Denial of justice to the poor is due to the conditions, imposed by our traditional system, upon which alone can suits be brought and conducted. There is something tragic in the fact that a plan and method of administering justice, honestly designed to make efficient and certain that litigation on which at last all rights depend, should result in rearing insuperable obstacles in the path of those v.'ho most need protection, so that litigation becomes impossible, rights are lost, and wrongs go unredressed.
The present inequalities and defects in the administration of justice are not the result of any deliberate intention. No dominating group or class has consciously set out to foreclose the rights of the poor. The procedural laws have been passed by the legislatures in good faith. The courts have interpreted and applied the adjective law without bias or favor. Corruption has played no part.
The fact is that no one clearly perceived the general trend of affairs. A Bureau of Justice of the type advocated by Dean Pound before the Conference of Delegates of State and Local Bar Associations in 1917. could have detected and prevented the breakdown before it became serious; but as yet our judicial administration lack's that necessary adjunct. Complaints gradually became audible that whereas all other business was pointed toward efficiency, reduction of costs, and a general speeding-up, judicial machinery remained cumbersome, wasteful, time-consuming, and very expensive. Tnese complaints sounded in terms of delay and annoyance, not prohibition. Even today it is only dimly understood that this faulty organization and procedure, which is exasperating in large suits between persons of means, in all small suits and in all litigation to which the poor are party causes an absolute denial of justice.
The conditions, under which our customary system requires litigation to be conducted, impair rights guaranteed by the substantive law because law is not self-enforcing; only through application in the courts does the law have life and force. The most fundamental rights remain idle abstractions unless the courts are able to give them efficacy through enforcement. The Mexican Constitution exceeds any of our bills of rights in its solicitude for life, liberty, and property; and yet in no country have these rights been more steadily violated with impunity. For this reason the mechanics of the law occupy a place of great importance. The vital problem of today in the administration is to repair the breakdowns and to overhaul parts of the machinery so that it may work more smoothly and may be workable at all.
The defects in the administration of the law fall into three distinct divisions. In the language of Piers Plowman:
"To the poor the courts are a maze. If he plead there all his life, Law is so lordly Arid loath to end his case; Without money paid in presents • Law listeneth to few.”
These three difficulties are not yet overcome. They still weigh heavily on the poor. Delay plays its unfair part. Money must be paid in fees and costs, or else the courts are closed. The law is necessarily an intricate and compli-, cated science, which may not be understood or \
utilized without the assistance u£ a trained counsellor and advocate who must be paid.
These are the conditions of modern litigation. The articles that follow, consider their precise nature and their results.
(This is the third of a series on “Justice and the Poor" by Mr. Smith, published in an important book of limited circulation by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, of New York. The articles to follow are: (41 The First Defect: Delay ; (.’) The Second Defect: Court Costs and Fees; (6) The Third Defect: Expense of Counsel)
English Labor Politics
rp HE present parliament, convoked in Febru--*• ary, 1919, is supposed to remain in power for five years, unless in the meantime it is evident that it no longer has the confidence of the people; and the people through a long-established custom equivalent to the recall, seem bent on helping them to arrive at that conclusion. The war issues are now virtually extinct, and the people seem to think that however well the present coalition government has worked in war time it is now cumbrous and disappointing.
Mr. Asquith has denounced the present Lloyd George government as “a perpetual game of log-rolling between groups of business and interests determined by the exigencies of the parliamentary hour”. Lloyd George himself has expressed the fear that in a few months he may be relegated to the rear; and the fact seems to be that, as in Canada, the two old parties have been thrown into the melting pot and a new administration of the government will emerge. The country will not go on supporting an administration which is merely opportunist in its nature, and the present one is believed to be little else than a combination of diverse elements that are fearful of labor domination.
In the last three important bye elections the labor candidates polled a total of more votes than either of the old parties, and they drew the clerks and young professional men "with them by reminding them that when they got into power they would need the services of technicians, experts and business managers. Then there were great numbers of the middle classes who were made poor by the war and who think they see some chance of relief in labor policies. The labor victories were won not only in districts having a large labor element, but in some ■bi' the most aristocratic sections; and as all the /voting seemed to take the form of pronounced / dissatisfaction with the coalition government it
is generally taken for granted by students of ’ political conditions that England is to have a parliamentary revolution. <
In the Bromley district a December, 1918, coalition majority of 12,501, was reduced in a year to 1,071. In the Spen Valley district the successful Labor candidate, and the Liberal candidate, who stood second, polled together “
22,206 votes against the coalition candidate's 8,134. This alarmed Mr. Winston Churchill, and he declared that “a return to party government
in England would simply mean turning the country over to the Labor party”.
The Labor leaders merely smiled and said,
' Well, suppose it did; it could hardly fall into
more incompetent hands than it had been in
when the Antwerp fizzle took place, or the Gallipoli disaster, in which the lives of thousands of men were sacrificed to no purpose”. In the
latter place the whole attacking force was likely to be destroyed with dysentery because the water supply had not been looked after. These criticisms rather spiked Mr. Churchill's guns, | for the reason that he has had full credit for the • v Antwerp and Gallipoli campaigns and their outcome. Mr. Churchill says that Labor is unfit to govern. Labor says that Mr. Churchill was unfit to govern and cites instances. -
Not all the great men of England take the gloomy view of a Labor landslide that is entertained by Mr. Chuchill. Viscount Haldane, one j of the most prominent of English statesmen, has declared that “the Labor party alone has a vision which will enable it to possess and serve the future”. The Northcliffe press, a very ira_-_. portant factor in the making of public opinion in England, has swung to the Labor side.
The British Labor leaders are generally considered dear-thinking, moderate men, brilliant campaigners, opposed to ultra radicalism, and opposed to the rule of Ireland by ecclesiastical politicians. They are also opposed to large armaments, claim that their aim for all the subject races of the British empire, as well as all other empires, is self-determination, and desire to study closely the problems of nationalization of as many industries as will be to the best interests of the people as a whole. They are said to recognize the difficulties in the way of establishing a good government under present debt-burdened conditions, but think they can obtain capable assistance in solving their problems.
Questions to Candidates
THE Ohio Fanners’ Defense League is out with the following statement of things upon which it demands that political eatididates in 192U must lake a stand: .
••Political candidates in 1920 must make their position cleat' as io why Congress expended $47,<JOO.vOu.oOO since the declaration of war against Germany, which is more, by $3,0u0,0ou,000, than the entire cost of operating the entire government from Washington's administration up to Wilson’s.
They must show why the young men were conscripted and not the dollar, or war profits gathered in by the profiteer; why the profiteering upon all articles of subsistence was permitted and is still being permitted by Congress; why the collection of the interest on the $9,500,000,000 loaned to foreign countries has been waived; why our soldiers fought iu Russia when no declaration of war existed ; why soldiers should fight at any time or in any place without a referendum by the people; why military training and conscription arc approved after a war which is alleged to have been fought • for the abolishment of these conditions and which forces the demand for over a billion dollar appropriation by the war department for 1920.
“Why was the 1919 crop of sugar not purchased at 5| and f>A cents per pound? Why have this important • product and all articles of subsistence been exported in greater proportions than in the periods just prior to the war, if not for profiteering purposes ?' Why did not the Congress that declared war declare peace on the next day after the armistice? Why has a resolution of peace any . relation to a League of Nations or a despicable alliance with foreign countries ? Now that peace has been granted to the German generals of war, why have not liberty and peace been granted to all political prisoners, who simply voiced their opinions of the world war?
‘•"Why have the political rights of the people at the ballot box* been disfranchised and their duly elected representatives been denied seats in the legislative halls and in Congress, establishing taxation without representation, the very cause of the Revolutionary War, and why have our representatives violated their oath of office and particularly the vital principles of the Constitution ?
“These are a few of the questions which must be answered satisfactorily to the voter of 1920. Briefly, it is an off-year for the class already in the field, also for attorneys, doctors, and professors. We must have business men, upon a specific platform; else our government and cherished institutions will fail.”
These same enterprising people have also written to us, urging that we follow the railroad article which appeared in our issue of January 7 with further information:
‘•Explaining to uhat remote extent the government
controlled the railroads; that the present’owners of the j,
lines never figured their earnings or profit as on a basis J
…