Golden Age, February 2, 1921

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Voi.t'UxZ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1921 Xunan 35

COMEM'S of the GOLDEN AGE

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Something About Hard Thaos 213

British Dapreaawn

Depretitlou Abroad;

The Part of the Prostitute Press........

Hard Ttuoea at Hosoe

Working for an Huarat

Dar* Work

A a Annual Depreudon

Many Remedies

Wbm Did It Start!

A Conspiracy of FlaaneTu MS I'tnaadar sad Worker

Sothlag Morii Wreng-1—2M

SOCIAL. EDUCATIONAL AND POLITICAL

Llbmty and Program--257 Progress Ur SaoiSee___288

. FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Temptation to Speculate^. 251 Inaiden Rann In Inside____JSt

The Fastest Schedule-----255

Easy Money lor Pens!__-253

Board ad Trade Gamblers 253

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN Notes on Liberty...........253 Jeffersonian Dtisioii my—2M

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY Rebuilding Palestine's Forests--------------2(3

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Radium, Earth's Most Valuable Substance

Its Um la Treating Cancers _____

Customers for Radium

Where Radium Comes From

Other Cam of Radium

Wireiees Telegraphy

Wireless Telephony__' 2ltl

Wireless Photography

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY Color and Sex_________243 Coming Baek

In Foreign Landa—Palestine

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Advanced Studies la the Divine Flan_________________

Juvenile Bible study._________________________________

The Ancient Ways__________________________ gre

Golden Age

Voltune n New York, Wednesday, February 2, 1921 Number

Something About Hard Times

THAT the people of the United States have been having a hard time cannot be doubted, and that this constitutes hard times is beyond question. A million or more men out of work, an unknown number of women and child workers on the street, and millions more on short time or reduced wages constitute part of the phenomena characteristic of an industrial depression. -

There have been hard times in other parts of the world. The first nation to suffer was Japan, which inaugurated its depression with a spectac-nlar panic, of the orthodox money-and-credit • variety. Japan had a panic because it possessed an old-fashioned, hide-bound system of banking and currency, which was neither able to contract credits and money when less was needed, nor to expand them when more was urgently demanded by perilous business conditions.

The specific cause of the Japanese money panic was that the country's money and the credit based upon the money became insufficient to hold up the fast-expanding business structure. It was called a mushroom structure, and this was because it was built of no stronger material than the Japanese credit system permitted; for with a properly elastic system of money and credit Japan might today be in a condition of moderate prosperity. But there came a sudden and most urgent need for credit that could not be supplied; business men took fright; all credit—which is merely confidence in payment of debt—withered, and then disappeared ; an<$ the nation collapsed into a slough of business^ uncertainty, from which it can emerge with’difficulty and through the exercise of the saving graces of production, thrift and conservatism.

Owing to the war Japan enjoyed an unprecedented economic and industrial boom. Wages went up and enriched the workers. Prices went higher and created daily new millionaires. For three years this continued, and all were confident that prosperity had come to stay. To meet the demand for goods for the suddenly prosperous workers, office men, employes and capitalists, and to provide materials for use in manufacture, the importers overstocked hugely with merchandise from abroad, having the reasonable expectation of ability to sell everything in hand and on the way. Old businesses were enlarged to meet the great demand; new enterprises without limit were started for the endless growth in sight—steel corporations, silk businesses, cotton mills, ship-building concerns, banks and countless other enterprises. Speculation became unbridled in promotions in Manchuria, Korea, China and Formosa. Stocks rose in price, and prices of commodities were’ foisted to a high figure, to be paid for by the enriched workers.

Suddenly, however, a bank failed, creating a dreadful fear of the stability of the credits based on a slender money basijj. More banks went down, and after them in wild ruin practically the businesses of the Empire found themselves unable either to collect from their debtors or to pay their creditors. Thecontributingcauses . were an unexpected boycott of Japanese goods in China as reprisal for the loot of Shantung, reduction of the Indian trade, the disappearance of real money in private hoards cutting the bottom from under the financial and credit system, the enormous cost of the government and of the armies in Siberia and Shantung, and of the huge navy. Workmen were discharged by tens of thousands, unemployment prevailed, clerks and efficient workmen were in bread lines, most of the railroad workers were discharged, freight traffic was almost discontinued for want of merchandise to transport, millionaires became poor over night, farmers recently rich on a high-price basis became poverty stricken of. the ruinously low prices, and the banks becm.'.e afraid to loan even 20 percent of the market value of good securities. Labor was suddenly awakened with a jolt, and started to think, to agitate and to fight for their rights against the capitalists whose greed and imprudence brought on the crisis; the socialist and labor-fanner movement gained in strength to champion the cause of labor, and the vote multiplied for anti - government and anti - rich leaders. These have been the incidents and effects of the money-panic in Japan, outlined here at some length as an example of a typical business depression inaugurated by a money panic.

Depression Abroad

OTHER countries are experiencing a postwar depression, thus far without the far-reaching effects of a money-panic. France, which before the war was on the verge of prostration owing to bad financial conditions, is having a depression in retail business, due to the refusal of people to buy things at the very • high prices. A quarter of the store-workers are out of work, sales amount to nothing, goods lie on the shelves, and everyone not absolutely compelled to purchase is holding off until prices go down.

The Teutonic nations are in the abyss of a depression, from which they are beginning to raise themselves by hard work, increased production and thrift—h goodly part of which, however, they are expected to turn over to other countries under the reparation claims. On Germany’s payments hangs the economic well-being of France; for during the war the pressure of war expense was staved off by not taxing the French people. The descent of unparalleled hard tirftes upon the unfortunate French hangs on the German reparations.

• Conditions in South America—in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil — exemplify those of other countries There has been and is an actual shortage of skilled men, wages have been up and working hours down, and production only three-quarters of pre-war times, doubling pro- ductions costs, and there is a housing shortage.

Yet men are out of work, depression and unemployment prevail, and things will get worse, until the authorities having the depression in . charge decide that an approach to "normalcy” J has been made, and the common people can be ! trusted with work and wages again.

In Spain, so say the Spanish employers, it is imperative for workers to increase production, work harder, and toil for lower wages, or a most serious crisis, like that of Japan, will be ! reached. The high cost of labor is responsible : for the throwing out of work of nearly 300,000-workers—so say the Spanish bankers. But they say nothing about the high cost of profiteers who have bled Spain white. The Spanish people resent American dumping of products; for American manufacturers, owing to inability of the American people to buy at high prices, have increased stocks on hand which they are selling in Spanish markets with prompt delivery. This hits Spanish industries and increases the severity of the hard times. .

British Depression

GREAT BRITAIN has a rapidly growing.

problem which bids fair to rival the Irish question. Inability to buy high-priced goods and the expectation of much lower prices have \ driven buyers out of the market, factories have ; closed, and unemployment has broadened in the industrial districts. The hard times are particularly acute in engineering, ship-building, weaving, woolens, linen, lace, leather and shoes, the principal industries outside of coal and transportation. The rubber tire industry has had an unusually bad depression, owing to the dumping of American tires to an extent that ; has threatened the existence of the industry in ; Great Britain. Unemployment has been widespread, which on account of the power of laho~ has taken some serious aspects. Great demonstrations of the out-of-works have been made, and deputations of officials have gone to the government, received promises and returned -home, with no particular result. The men in authority do not seem to know what to do.

Demands have been made on the government that it provide money to furnish employment or to pension unemployed people. Firms employing women have been forced to discharge them and hire men. But that course does not help the women, who have to eat the same as men. The

•t

unemployed have demanded that the huge sums lying idle in the Prince-of-Wales Fund, the King’s Fund and the United-Service Fund be utilized at once in giving employment to the people. Ex-service men disabled by war and being taught skilled work, ask: What is the use of training more skilled men when the men who are skilled cannot get work! For quite a while the attitude of some of the mayors and other officials was exemplified, when in a momentous conference on ways and means some of the mayors laughed and joked, while others were serious. The net result of this conference, as might have been expected, was “just talk”. Some of the mayors declare that if nothing is done trouble will follow, for the unemployed are being driven to desperation. • _

Hard Times at Home

IN THE United States the depression has assumed large proportions. In Philadelphia the number estimated out of work was about a third of the workers, the same as in Detroit, St. Louis, and other cities—a suggestively uniform proportion. A great part of those remaining at work have been obliged to speed up and to work on half time or less. Wherever possible employers have cut wages down. In many places men have been, discharged and promptly hired back at half or two-thirds their recent wages. The wage loss to workers has run into billions of dollars—so much that most workers are glad to get work at reduced wages rather than go hungry. To the farmers the losses have been almost unbelievable; the loss on the 1920 crops, estimated by comparison of the prices obtainable in July and the early winter is believed to run to several billion dollars.

This started with acts of the Department of Justice months ago, when its agents 'vent about t# reduce the cost of living; they did reduce it in food products—at the cost of the farmers. Wheat, c'ton and cotton alone dropped from a figure affording the farmer a reasonable profit to a loss of twenty cents a pound on cotton, thirty cents a bushel on corn and thirty-five cents a bushel op wheat, the three great money crops of the^country. Yet the prices of commodities the farmer has to buy have not dropped proportionally—something for which the American farmer wants to know the reason. Compared with a year ago, clothing and feods have shown heavy decreases, while there long remained advances in retail prices of fuel and lighting materials, building materials, house furnishings and other goods not produced by the farmer.

The public press—rather the private press— as usual prostituted to the low uses of its New York owners, had a great deal to say about the depression both before “and during”. About New Year’s, 1920, the newspapers amenable to “regular” influences began to discuss possible and probable depression. The volume of depression and panic talk gradually increased and reached its peak about May, 1920, at which time something was “pulled off’ which will be mentioned later; for in that month there were three times as much anti-panic talk as in any other month. The thought was to get the people’s minds inoculated with the idea that economic trouble was brewing, with apprehension of panic and depression, so that when the big thing intended was done, the people would attribute what was done to the causes previously mentioned “in the papers”, and not to the actual cause.

The Part of the Prostitute Press

THE press brought out the orthodox old-line theories about panics and depressions. A period of depression in the six, eight, or twelve year business cycle was over a year overdue; it must come noon; the nation was facing a crisis, a depression is always preceded by an orgy of spending—by working girls and young men, of course, who never had anything to spend before. Just before a great depression there are always high interest rates, inflation of credits, and much labor trouble -with labor inefficiency.

Panics, said the press, did not cause depressions, but resulted from sudden fright over an impending depression. In February, 1920, the newspapers were helping to get the people ready for something by telling them that the United States was facing the worst financial panic in its history. Then a little later the papers said that the country was panic-proof as long as it had the Federal Reserve Bank system —praising up the new-fangled system and throwing suspicion away from it. Then in April they said—to scare labor—that when the crisis comes, which no Federal Reserve system can stop, thousands will be out of work—getting the

'': worker's mind used to the idea of soon being

,7 < out of work, so that when it should come it ; S .would be accepted without question because it ^.7- had previously been mentioned "in the papers”. , ' The public were told that money-panics, or de

pressions, occur when too much liquid capital .7 has been tied up into fixed capital, such as 5?' L buildings, plants, raw materials, unsold manu-• * factored goods, and not enough money to do

7 business with, and that the Federal Reserve ‘ system was intended to prevent a money panic.

* In March, 1920, the country was permeated

with panic talk, and the date was set for March 15th, when the income tax payments were to > withdraw so much money from commercial uses

as to upset the money market, depress values, close factories and help’ right the situation by , reducing wages. But the date was set a little

too soon, and was postponed. Better posted

1 bankers and economists in January, 1920, had

. said that the country was due for hard times ’ beginning in the fall [after the election, when it

1 would not upset political calculations], when the

bottom would drop out from the economic situ-• ation, prices and wages fall, employes be

thrown out of work, bankruptcy prevail with bread and soup lines, and a period of depression < would begin rivalling that after the Civil War.

At the same time the same people were predict-r ing panic as the only way to force longer work, ing hours and larger production from labor, as

a means for raising the value of money and

* reducing the prices of commodities.

“ After it was decided that the March panic would be too soon, the press, in April, 1920, in

1 ~ less volume took up the panic refrain. In April business was headed for a smash on account of ' profiteering, advancing prices in materials and < labor, and from diminishing demand. Others . stated that the worst panic ever known was due unless the government cut down expenditures, t especially its floating debt of nearly three billion dollars, paid up the short time loans outstanding at high interest, kept the public ex-w penses within public income, stopped war '■ expenses, and began paying up the enormous bond issues, which would eventually constitute a mere fiat basis instead of the existing sound ' gold basis for the currency. Somebody else found another good panic reason: unless the carrying capacity of the railroads should be

greatly increased, the next few years would see the worst financial panic yet, because without an increase in carrying capacity equal to that of manufactures, the increased products could not be hauled to market, and intense business stagnation would ensue. Two or more billion dollars should be invested annually in the rail* roads; and the fear of panic was a potent argument in forcing through the $1,500,000,000 "raise” for the railroads. The panic of 1873, it was related, was due to overinvestment in roads and underinvestment in industries, and the opposite condition prevailing would produce exactly the same effect as its opposite. The burden of private conversations among the bankers and manufacturers, however, was that the one big problem was what to do with labors and the talk of the press owned by the bankers was the camouflage under whose concealment it wac determined to make trouble for labor so serious that labor would cheerfully “eat out of their hands” in order to get work and enough fa eat and wear.

Working for “An Honest Day’s Work”

THE line of attack plotted by the financiers— one of whose number had said a few years ago that God had entrusted the care of the riches of the world to them—was afterward seen to be to "reawaken the individual worker to his duty to render an honest day's work and to introduce machinery wherever possible to replace men”. Nothing was said about the financier's duty, likewise, to render an honest day’s work and to return to the people the money stolen through profiteering and the stealings from the United States Shipping Board and through army and other war "business”.

For public consumption the financiers published that it was absolutely necessary to reduce the price of commodities. Among themselves they said that the most expensive “commodity” was labor and that all efforts must be centered on wages. One of the reasons, however, for the campaign inaugurated, after labor had cast its vote for the Wall Street candidates and the election was safely by, was the employers’ zeal to "get back at labor” in reprisal for the (to the employer) many unpleasant experiences with labor during the last few years, when prices were rising faster than wages, and labor was

suffering from “over-prosperity"’. On the employer side have been heard many brotherly utterances, such as “Speed up, or get out”, “Work or starve”, and so on, demonstrating the brotherhood of employer and employe. Leaders in the manufacturers’ associations favored the importation of coolie labor from China and India, to furnish plenty of common labor at bedrock wages. This was only a few months ago, when it was widely published that the United States was short 2,000,000 laborers.

, Since this immense shortage has never yet been supplied, some of the simple-minded are wondering why with such a shortage, there is not work for every person in the country willing to work, without bringing a lot of serfs into the country.

The accusation is made that while a slight depression was due in the United States, the great financiers have taken advantage of that condition willfully to precipitate one of the worst periods of hard times yet, force labor to accept a much lower wage scale, and give the workers a good taste of depression with star- vation trimmings, and thus gently and tactfully ' “teach labor its place”, so as to be in the proper frame of mind to boost the “Big Brother” movement sponsored by Wall Street and all the churches. Labor says that the depression is needlessly severe, has been carried to an entirely uncalled-for extent, that wealth is reckless with the interests of the common people— and winds up with the expressed determination “to teach wealth its place”; that labor with the farmer constitutes 90 percent of the population, and, as the overwhelming majority, it is labor’s place in a republic to run the country, and that it is determined to teach the 1 percent known as “bankers” that their function is to take care of money and credits and not to run everything in sight. But labor finds itself actually checkmated because it cannot interfere—by striking —with tfib’ manufacturers’ closing down of their plants, this being the great unsolved problem of the.e labor leaders.

An ArtiRcitfl Oppression

NOT all the bankers speak as though on the inside. According to the well known Charles H. Sabin, president of the Guaranty Trust Company, of New York, “Conditions are so funda-mently sound that one wonders what was the necessity of a depression and*of the hard times, unless there were some ulterior motive, such as the forced liquidation of labor, for,” says he, “the crops are large, transportation congestion is relieved by governmental operation, the railroad system is on a sound financial and operating basis, four years of commercially sound government are assured,, the banking system is on a sound and workable basis, the accumulated surplus of five years’ corporation prosperity is available, foreign trade demands our products, we have a merchant marine to carry the trade in, and the country has not been overextended or overbuilt in any underlying activity; in a word, the United States is in the soundest financial, industrial and political condition of any important nation in the world.”

Were the hard times unavoidable? An outstanding feature of the current depression, differentiating it from any previous periods, and clearly marking it as artificial and needless, is the suddenness with which it came on, with few of the marked premonitory symptoms of a genuine depression. First are the sound conditions mentioned by Mr. Sabin. Second, unfilled orders for steel remained high up to the very last moment, indeed after the “depression” was on; whereas in previous genuine depressions salesmen have been thrown out and eveiy possible inducement offered to the trade to keep orders coming in, none of which preventive steps were taken this time. When depression has impended, prices have always been lowered months beforehand that orders may be secured; but this time, according to Judge Gary, Chairman of the Board of the United States Steel Corporation, “Steel prices will stand. The present base selling prices of all [steel] commodities are to remain in force.” Accordingly the prices of steel billets at Pittsburgh, the basic figure of the steel industry, were $55 a ton in April, 1920, $55 in May, $55 in August, $55 in’ September and $55 in November. Pig iron, too, has been quite well maintained in price, the prices per ton. at Chicago having been $36.60 in November, 1919, $43.60 in January, 1920, $45.60 in May, and $40.00 in November, a drop of $5.60, or only 12 percent, whereas in the last previous depression, in 1914, the price fell from $46 down to $24.75, a drop of $21.25, or 46 percent

Under normal conditions, however; where the

The Golden Age for February 2,' 1921

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market is not a-controlled one, the universal experience has been that the price of pig iron collapses several months before the depression gets under way. The absence of the normal premonitory symptoms leads to the conclusion that the present exaggerated depression, with its suffering, anxiety and starvation for millions in varying degrees, is dearly not one forced upon business men and financiers by actual business conditions, but one which they have forced upon the people of the United States, needlessly, without good cause, and even if inevitable to some extent, certainly not with the severity employed.

Labor and the farmer, of course, bear the brunt of the trouble. The wage earner suffers. Women and children pay. Dealers and manufacturers lose more or less ordinarily; but in this affair, according to State Fair-Price Commissioner Frank B. McClain of Philadelphia, where 200,000 men are out of work, ‘Investigation discloses that many retailers of essential commodities, such as wearing apparel and footwear, are trying to maintain the peak prices of October and Nevember, 1919, and hoping that they can bluff the thing through and unload their high-cost stuff on the public at a profit, or at best at no loss”. Even when prices drop, wages drop still more, taking into account part time as well as actual reductions and lay-offs, and the wage earners are that much worse off. In some instances, as in the flour industry, the prices of the farmer’s wheat dropped so much that, after the millers had reduced their flour several dollars a barrel, the profit was greater than before. The farmer pays! The profiteer still profits, though it is a satisfaction to the people to realize that many a profiteer stayed in the market too long and lost practically everything. Most of them, however, through the confidential advance information circulated by Boards of Trade took time by the forelock and ware able to limit their losses in advance, by passing them on to others less well informed.

Many Remedies

IN THE face of these monstrous conditions the press, instead of telling the true situation, has since-parly in 1920 been urging upon the people the cultivation of the patriotic habits most helpful in adversity and depression. 'Save money, instead of spending it,” they counseled.

“It helps depression because money in bank iB never idle, and increases the amount of loanable capital, which is the principal thing to pull business out of depression, giving them funds to buy materials with and pay wages with, which the workers in turn use to buy the goods manufactured. Thrift builds buildings, plants, improves roads, builds and maintains railroads, makes machinery, develops ‘water power, gives work and wages to millions, and creates demand for goods on the shelves of merchants, thus furnishing the outlet for the products of farm,, mine and mill.” The crisis, it was advised in January, 1920, might be softened by increased production and decreased consumption, by concentrated buying through cooperative markets, by saving money, laying up goods, reducing expenses and increasing earnings. One of the ' remedies is proposed by Our Sunday Visitor, which tells why the labor and economic condition in certain parts of Canada is better than anywhere else in Europe or North America:

“This enviable position of affaire, as English-speaking residents of this Province know perfectly well, is to the church authority, who not only uphold an enlightened authority in these matters but, aa many employer realize, have an aptness for negotiation and smoothing over labor difficulties, which under other circumstances might eventually result in disastrous strikes. This position of affairs has in the past few years meant much to the Province, and we believe that as the facta become more widely known, it will be an increasingly valuable asset.”

However, the recent Shipping Board investigation does not bear out this idea, nor does the general condition of the well-Romanized municipal affairs of the chief American cities. Clergymen far and wide have been handing out to trusting flocks good advice on thrift and other virtues, thus helping Big Business in this depression operation, instead of coming out like all the Hebrew prophets of Bible days with ringing exposures of "the oppressors”.

For some time before the election it was common talk among financiers that after the election there would be a general shut-down of factories, laying workers off entirely or putting them on part time, for about three or four months. It was stated that the railroads intended, as soon as the time became opportune, to lay off hundreds of thousands o^’ men, in which direction considerable progress has been

made on the great roads of the country. The purpose was to reduce prices, increase per capita production, enhance efiiciency and “reduce” or “liquidate” labor. By the time the anti-worker campaign is over, no doubt, the country will have been made safe for Big Business, Big Politics and the Big Clergy. Seemingly in the estimation of these classes the American house has been infested with rats— speculative rats, political and religious rats and labor rats, and the financiers and their friends _ have set the house on fire in order to get rid of the rats—bad business and stupid.

Where Did It Start?

WHERE did this unpatriotic and criminal conspiracy against the common people originate 1

In the early summer of 1920 the people, impoverished by a long period of high prices, were delighted when in all parts of the country bargain sales were announced in clothing and department stores and in other lines, offering mercliandise at retail at a reduction of 20 to 25 percent. It was welcomed as the beginning of a period of lower prices. But the mystery was, Why did it occur? Thoughtful people soon noticed that it was countrywide, which suggested a common origin of the motive to sell goods at low prices.

Soon it leaked out through financial journals that the banks had required merchants and manufacturers to pay up a part of the loans they had secured from the banks. Different concerns were called on for from 20 to 40 percent of their loans, the average being 30 percent Merchants who had bought part of their goods with money borrowed from the banks, were obliged to get enough money at once to pay up. The banks simultaneously ’ and everywhere . called for their money.

Manufacturers that were willing, anxious and financially able to continue operation at full time, began to find their work crippled: Not only were they held down in credits at the bank, but they were unable to obtain raw materials, which a month before had .been in ample supply. The railroads professed to be unable to supply cars—the fact being that their banker owners had crippled the operation of the roads so that tens of thousands of cars were held up on sidings, terminals and transfer points. In every conceivable way manufacturing operations began to be restricted, seemingly by design of invisible but all-powerful agents. Was it part of a gigantic conspiracy to lower output, lower prices, lower wages, and incidentally throw millions out of work, with the beneficent purpose of ultimately increasing industrial effici- • ency and bringing back the good old days of the despotic supremacy of the boss and the banker?

A Conspiracy of Financiers

FROM January, 1920, on, occasional protests appeared in small-city papers to the effect that the Federal Reserve Board should have been able to check the conditions ensuing from infiation, and that the‘Board was responsible and had failed miserably. The metropolitan press was discreetly silent; being eo-conspira-tors with the bankers. In April it was advanced—the suggestions being made step by step in orderly, well-calculated psychological sequence—that bankers throughout the country should stop further financing except for essentials, especially railroads, public utilities and telephones, etc.—should stop theaters^novies, automobiles, fine fabrics, petroleum and luxuries generally. In March, it was stated that the ordinary bankers were alarmed at the Federal Reserve Bank plan of defiation; there were gloomy forebodings over the policy of the Federal Reserve Board, through the local banks, to reduce credits 25 percent, manufacturers and merchants alike being greatly concerned when told that early that they must reduce their borrowings 25 percent.

The campaign had been launched as early as December, 1919, when one of the Federal Reserve banks officially said: “Our present task is to proceed with the defiation of credits as rapidly and systematically as possible; we repeat, that credit must be reduced?. On May 11, 1920, the same Federal Reserve Bank announced, as a broad hint to local banks: "We are carefully calculating the basic amount [of credit] for each member bank. You would like to be advised with reference to the basic amount of your bank, and to see how that amount compares with the present column of your loans and rediscounts with ns.” On June 1 came a still stronger urge for “all banks in this district earnestly and conscientiously to endeavor to limit credits”. Again oa September

23: “It is in eur opinion more important than ever that great conservatism should be used in granting of credit”.

Thus is established the fact that the great financiers used the Federal Reserve system to restrict commerce and manufacturing throughout the United States. Even in the island dependencies the sinister hand of Big Business was felt repressing the activities of the people. There the restriction of business was accomplished—much as in New York—by the raising of the interest rate at the banks, and the increased difficulty of obtaining banking accommodations. Manila business men “were puzzled that money should be so tightly held in the face of a favorable trade balance . . . But the chief concern,” continued the cable dispatches, “is the high interest rate on loans, the rate being set by a committee of the Associated Banks of Manila, an organization which is said to be in contravention of the anti-trust act. The possibility of criminal prosecution is hinted at . . . another alternative being the forfeiture of the charters of the banks involved in the Association.”

Why this unanimity throughout widely separated places? It was because the hard times prevailing throughout the world had their origin in the command of the Wilson League of Nations. The connection of the League with the hard times came out in Bulletin No. 2 of the First Federal Foreign Banking Association, of 40 Wall Street, New York. On September 27, 1920, this Bulletin said, “Under authority of the League a propaganda of international deflation has been launched. This was in advance of an international conference on finance, but the League seems to be already committed to the policy of drastic credit restriction through existing central banking institutions. England IS OFFICIALLY FORCING UP THE COST OF CREDITS and financing." Thus is uncovered the astounding and all-important fact that the hard times from which the American people have suffered, originated in the League of .Nations, and that back of the League’s action is ooc-n the cruel and minister hand of the British International financiers.

Financier and Worker .

AVE the bankers fared ill ”i h? ruin * t farmers aad the working oeop.?: In tbis struggle of the titans the hard workers—farmer and labor—hear the financiers’ smug satisfaction over their own unparallelled prosperity. The Comptroller of the Currency speaks for the bankers: “The shrinkage in the value of our principal commodities and articles of production during the fiscal year is the greatest in commercial history not only in amount but in the proportion of the decline to former values. It amounts to many billions of dollars [loss to the common people]. But the national banking system of the United States has not only endured unshaken the phenomenal changes, but ' has prospered and grown steadily in the midst of them.” The same official had just charged the New York banks with extortion and proved the charge. The national banks showed net earnings of 24 percent on their capital, or 13 percent on capital and surplus. The Federal Reserve Banks, which are supposed to operate as near cost as possible, showed net earnings of 150 percent on their capital.

Do these men, rich and comfortable beyond dreams of avarice, able with power and means to help the helpless beyond measure, lend a sympathetic ear to the cry of the oppressed? When, as related in the Manufacturers’ Record, the representatives of the ruined farmers presented their case to Governor W. P. G. Harding of the Federal Reserve Board, that great official answered:

“Nothing new has been brought out. I do not see why you are coming here so often with complaints we already kuow. This is the most inopportune time you could come here to take up our time, telling us things we already know, while this other important meeting is going on.”

This represented the attitude of the Reserve Bank rulers to the farmers and the common people who had had them appointed to office. What the people object to is that the national bank system, headed by the Federal Reserve system, under government auspices, has been run, apparently, in the interests of the financiers of Great Britain and the United States, and not of the tens of millions of common people, for the greatest good of all. It certainly has not been for the good of the people that the System, at the behest of the League of Nations, ■ has deliberately precipitated one of the worst periods of bard times for ordinary people within memory.

Temptation to Speculate

PLENTY of evidence can be brought forward tending to show that it pays to speculate, and promoters who are always trying to get the ' money of the wage earners away from them are loaded with facts which apparently prove all they claim. For example, they point out what you could have done with $100 invested in almost any year from 1900 to 1917 inclusive if you had put the money into the right place; and the evidence is most convincing. Here it is. The table shows what $100 invested in the stock named in the year specified, would have yielded in dividends up to 1919 and what it would then be worth.

What You Could Have Done With $100 1919 rut STOCK DIVIDENDS VALUES

1900 American Car and Foundry_____________$431.00 *1,341.00

1902 Crucible Steel Company.____________________ 155.00 8,352.00

1908 Republic Iron A Steel Co_________________ 274.00 2,656.00

1008 American Can Company....................... ? 2,740.00

1904 United States Steel Co., Com............. 905.65 1,329.00

1904 International Marine, Preferred-...... 924.00 4,266.00

1904 International Marine, Common__________ ? 10.956.00

~ 1906 American Hide & Leather Co, Com... 1 1,724.00

' 1906 American Hide & Leather, Pref_______ 315.00 1.425.00

1907 American Beet Sugar, Common_______ 564.00 1.224.00

1907 Bethlehem Steel Company.................. ? 8.750.00

1908 Central Leather. Common................. 288.00 932.00

1909 General Asphalt Company................. ? 5.280.00

1909 Atlantic, Gulf & W.I.S.S. Lines.......... 957.00 5,582.00

1912 General Motor Company...................... ’ 16,000.00

1912 Cuban American Sugar Company...... 862.00 1.200.00

1913 Studebaker Brothers........................... ‘*7.i>0 2.616.00

1914 American Woolen Company................ 459.00 1.204.00

1916 American International Corp............. 100.90 1,104.00

1917 American Sumatra Tobacco Co........ 270.00 863.00

Gentle reader, we do not wish to be inquisitive, but which one of you is there that would not have put $100 into General Motor Company stock in 1912 if you had been perfectly sure that it would bring you $16,000 in the fall of 1919! But there was no one to tell you, and you could not have believed them if they had told you; and, most surprising of all, it would have been to your injury if they had told you and if you had believed them.

If you had made $16,000 in seven years on the investments $100, it is greatly to be feared that you would lave been misled thereby into thinking that you could always thereafter make what is called “easy money”. But you would have been mistaken, and would have lost your $16,000, and much more with it.

It is a well known principle of New York’s leading gambling district that most people have the speculative instinct, that most people who have a little money are much more inclined to speculate with it than they are to invest it, and that when they do start to speculate they never know when to quit and in the end are sure to lose. It is the knowledge of these facts that * keeps the gambling district running. Without their lists of gullible speculators half of the Wall Street sharks would go out of business in a day.

If you have money to invest, do not attempt to judge for yourself what stocks to put it in. It is the business of your local banker to advise you. He may not be an honest man, and he may not advise you right, but your chances are far better in his hands than in any other. It is his business to know something of the permanent value of stocks, based upon the physical value of the properties;.and he has a local interest at stake in steering you in the right direction.

Your banker knows that, if you have but a little money to invest, the safest and best place for it is in bonds that have demonstrated their value; and he will never encourage you to speculate with it, i. e., to attempt to guess what the future value of some unproven stock may be. He knows very well that money is as difficult to keep as it is to make, .and he might help you to keep what otherwise you stand a splendid chance of losing.

Stock should always be bought outright, if at all, and placed in a safe deposit box. If it has been earning dividends over a term of years no concern need be felt when its market price fluctuates, although, if it increases greatly in price, it might conceivably be good judgment to sell the stock at the high figure and reinvest again in short-term notes or bonds. Even then, it might be as well to hang on to it. Outsiders cannot tell.

Insiders Remain Inside

THE man who has a little money to invest is handicapped by the fact that he is an outsider and must remain an outsider, no matter what kind of proposition is made to him, or what kind of fairy story is told for his entertainment. Take for example the mining business.

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It is a common practice for mining engineers to supplement their official report, the report that is given to the public, with a private report to the directors, giving them inside information such as bad news affecting the life and productivity of the enterprise, or good news of discoveries likely to eause a rise in prices.

This gives the real insiders, the directors and the engineer, plenty of time -to unload their stocks on the buying public, or quietly to increase their holdings, as the case may be, thus taking advantage of the public, that can only act on the official reports and after the cream of the market has already been removed.

The same thing is true in the oil business. We have before us the prospectus of a Kansas City company which seeks investments in its properties in Texas. We know nothing of its properties, or of the company, other than that there a.re thousands of such companies in the United States and that the American people are wasting millions of dollars upon them every year. The literature is convincingly gotten up.

It tells all about people that a year ago bought ten-acre oil leases at $10 per acre (only $100 altogether, is the hint) and have since sold those leases in an undeveloped state at $110,000 per acre. Almost anybody would like to make $109,900 in a year on an investment of $100; and so the literature urges the reader to go to the savings bank, draw out his money and put it into oil-wells.

The letter-writer tells that the concern itself is holding 10,000 acres for itself, and has the full hope of getting $1,000 to $50,000 for every acre. Thus, by their own estimates, the concern has almost within its grasp a fortune ranging anywhere between $10,000,000 and $500,000,000 for its own private purse, besides all it hopes to do for those who will send on the $10 per acre which they are seemingly so anxious to get. Of course, the one who gets the letter cannot help but wohder why people who have so much ready money almost within sight should be willing to accept even $10 an acre from anybody, much less ask for it. The real reason is that they want the\$ltt to pay their rent and to buy their groceries^ If there is any left over after their salaries arc paid, it may go for development work. Ir cii is found it will be on their properties and not on yours.

They say, in query form; “Is there any other

way in which you can invest say $300 to $500, ►

with such a very sound likelihood of getting back . • from $100,000 to half a million J” And then, for the cautious, is the gentler suggestion, also in I query form, “Don’t you realize that if you buy ; several ten-acre tracts you are practically sure I

of a profit of at least $5 to $10 no matter where i

they are located on our acreage ?” I

The teller goes on to tell that "Col. Green and j his-friends are drilling on every side of our leases”. It is well known that Col. Green was the only son of Hetty Green, the richest woman in the world; and of course it is judged that we must be impressed at the thought of practically being in the same business with the Colonel. J

Reading further in the letter, it appears that ! shallow oil has been struck, which obviously j means gushers as soon as the wells are deep

enough, and clippings are enclosed which tell

about the great gushers in the neighborhood,

and the fortunes they have made. Maps' are

enclosed, and blanks to be filled out; and it all ! looks so comforting and convincing that you almost feel that if you did have a few hundred dollars here is where you could retrieve all of ; your past mistakes. '

But here is where you would be wrong, ninety- L nine chances to one; for if you invested you would almost certainly lose every cent you put | in. Oil wells cost $20,000 to $60,000 or $100,000 apiece, whether oil is found or not. To bny : stocks on the prospect of finding oil is like i

betting that you can find a bottle tossing in |

mid-ocean. !

It is often claimed that as much money is j spent in seeking after mineral resources as the ; resources are worth after they are developed.

This is not strictly true, but there is so much truth in it that the man of small means had far better stay out of the game entirely.

Easy Money for Ponzi

Charles Ponzi, late of Boston, recently took several million dollars away from American savings-bank depositors. He had an original ; scheme, in which there was apparently no flaw on the surface. His plan was to take an Ameri- f

can dollar, buy with it a dollar’s worth of Italian J

exchange, have the Italian funds used in Italy to i buy international reply coupons, bring the reply coupons into the United States, Switzerland, > Norway, or some other country where the rate f

of exchange is very high, turn the coupons into stamps and the stamps into money. In this way , a dollar could, theoretically, he turned into three dollars, owing to the fact that Italian lire, normally exchanging at five for an American dollar, are now exchanging at eighteen for a dollar.

If r. Ponzi issued agreements guaranteeing to give investors 50 percent profit in ninety days, and he actually paid this profit to the first investors in his scheme. In a short time he had thousands of investors and a bank account running into the millions. Federal agents became suspicions that he was insincere, and a statement was published that he was insolvent.

There was a run upon his office; and in three days he paid out over a million dollars, satisfying all the creditors who then appeared. But when his.bank balances had been reduced to less than $250,000 it was discovered that he was paying off depositors with money but recently taken in, and that he did not have in Europe the fund of $8,000,000 which he had claimed. It developed that few if any international reply coupons had ever been purchased or sold, that he had less than $25,000 in Europe, and that he would eventually have come to grief anyway. He made a confession and was imprisoned. But this does not help the poor victims who swallowed the old bait of “something for nothing’’, and parted with their savings for good.

Board of Trade Gamblers

IN THE Hennepin County, Minnesota, district court, in February, 1920, the Qninn-Shepherdson Company, members of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Chicago Board of Trade, shamelessly admitted in open court that the buying and selling of grain for .future, delivery (in which the transactions of both bodies largely consist) is gambling, pure and simple, and therefore illegal.

This admission, or claim, was made so as to nullify the suit of one of the Quinn-Sbepherdson customers, who claimed that lie had been forced to accept $285- as his share, whereas his profits on a- certain gamble really amounted to $1440. This admission is an extremely interesting one, and has an important bearing upon this matter of speculation. The judge accepted the statement as a truthful one, saying, “The courts all over the country censure sueh transactions. They are immoral. A man gets something for nothing if he wins.” He stated that he could do nothing to help the man who had been mulcted of the $1155, but intimated that he thought the Quinn-Shepherdson Company’s fellow gamblers in Minneapolis ought to do something to clear the atmosphere. But it is doubtful that they will. Their way of making a living is much easier in their eyes than plowing, drilling, harvesting, threshing, hauling and marketing wheat; and they have scant sympathy for the farmers who are supporting their useless lives.

Every little while some new method of high-toned gambling shows up. In August the Interstate Commerce commissioners found that in order to create an artificial price for coal in New York city empty cars were being used for storage purposes, and loaded cars held for long periods in demurrage, so that they could not be used for bringing in coal.

In the long run it will be found that the plain, honest people who work for a living are the real nobility of the country. They may not handle as much money, but they are worth far more to the country in the end than the so-called financiers that are resorting to such a variety of contemptible ways to induce or force others to maintain them in luxury.

Notes on Liberty

ECLARATION of Pope Gregory VII at Roman Synod:

“We desire to show the world that we can give or take away at our will kingdoms, duchies, earldoms— in a word, the possessions of all men; far we can bind and loose.”

“No more cunning plot was ever divulged against the intelligence, the freedom, the happiness and virtue of mankind, than Romanism.”—William E. Gladstone.

“If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the convention when I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny and every species of religious persecution.”—George Washington.

Jeffersonian Democracy

MANY good people wonder why everything that Mr. Wilson stood for was completely annihilated in the last election. Let them compare Mr. Wilson’s savage autocracy, his many laws for suppressing human thought, and his use of unprincipled and usually Roman Catholic officials for accomplishing his ends, with the following statements of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States; and they will understand the landslide which buried in a well-deserved oblivion Mr. Wilson and his unAmerican policy of catering to a foreign monarch.

“I consider tha government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from, meddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, disciplines, or exercises.”

“Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”

“I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three months’ imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people infallible—a permanent reliance? Is is government? .Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter —will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men become his victims.”

“I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion that the question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? ts a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read and what we must believe ? If is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings jor not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If M. de Becourfs book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides.”

Under President Wilson in 1918 the sale of a religious book, “The Finished Mystery,” was • “carried before civil magistrates”, and America saw “a censor [the Attorney General of the United States] whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold”. Priests and parsons became our inquisitors, and Christian citizens were imprisoned for the sole offense of having published a religious book.

It seems quite appropriate that we quote here from a little 25c booklet published by The Statesman Press, 164 East 37th Street, New York City, entitled “The Book of the Prophet Wudro and the Fifth Book of the Kings of Eng” (Page 42):

“And he chose one Thomas, a man of Texas, and he was a Gregorian, and placed him oyer the lawyers of Amer, who made a man an offender for a word: and laid a snare for him that reproveth at the gate; and turned aside the just for a thing of naught; and caused many, to stumble at the law.

“Now at that time there were men in Amer of two sorts, one sort that was prudent and one that was simple, for the prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.” ~

Nothing Much Wrong

THERE is nothing much wrong, nothing except the inside and the outside, the top, the bottom and the middle, the front and back and sides, the center, the corners and in between; nothing serious, except that the foundation is on the sand, and the stones are hollow and laid criss-cross any old way without mortar, and a big storm is coming.

At the same time that the cotton farmers of the South are going bankrupt, the cotton mills are making profits as high as 100 percent, and the people are being charged eighteen times the amount the farmer received for his cotton. The . Amoskeag Cotton Mfg. Company and the Belton cotton mills are among the 100 percent profit Americans. But they are not the only ones. During the war the American people paid for their coal mines, steel mills and textile factories and packing plants more than their entire net worth in the excessive profits awarded to them for their patriotism. Senator Capper is authority for this statement.

In one year of the war the gross income of American corporations rose from 35| billions to .

■ 84} billions; 79,642 American corporations

7 averaged profits of more than half a million ■ apiece in a single year. The excess profit surplus of United States Steel aggregated $500,000,000 in five years, despite their great dividends and expenditure of $315,000,000 on improvements.

Is there any money in steel f The Pittsburg Tin Plate and Steel Corporation ought to know, and in inviting some friends to come in with them on more propositions cited holders of the ' common stock of one of these companies as having made a profit of over one thousand per’ cent and assured intending investors that "every operating tin-plate and sheet-steel mill has. made enormous fortunes for its stockholders^ many of their common shares selling at 1,500 ' percent premium”.

If you do not wear shoes you will be comforted to know that although sole leather has been selling at $2 per pound the farmer who raised the green hides got but 15 cents a pound for it Where did the difference go t Why ask, neighbor, why askl The accumulated profits of , ' Central Leather Company rose from 7J mil

lions in 1914 to 30} millions in 1919; the divi-. dends of the American Hide and Leather Company common stock were thirty-five times as great in 1919 as they were in 1915, when they were ample, and the profits of the great Endicott-Johnson Shoe Mfg. Co. were $9,791,580 in 1919 as against $2,174,430 in 1915.

If you do not have a Ford you may not care that during the war the price of crude oil was boosted from 40 cents to $3 a barrel; if you do not eat fruit you may not care that the total surplus which the United Fruit Company piled up in the last four years was 141 percent; if you do not eat anything made of flour you may be indifferent to the fact that the net profits of the Standard Milling Company have been in-j creased 100 percent; and if you don’t make a । strong-smelling walking-chimney of yourself .you certainly won’t care because out of every r dollar’s ^ortji of cigars sold by the General

K ' Cigar Company in 1918, 34 cents was profit, r while in 1919 it was 38 cents. However, con-

J ceming this last item, we rise to explain that 38

cents profit on the dollar was not enough, so the price of this company’s 7-cent cigars was increased to 8 cents. Cheer up!

Rebuilding Palestine’s Forests

ALESTINE’S population capacity could easily be greatly increased by improving the lands now unsuitable for colonization, according to Prof. E. Kern, noted Russian forestry expert, in a statement prepared in Petrograd and issued by the Zionist Organization of America.

Prof. Kern points out that if Palestine's population of 600,000 were doubled, the present density of population of 13 per square kilometre would then only equal that of European Russia and would be almost 10 times less than the density of population of Belgium.

"By cheeking the sandy hills on the coast, draining the swamps, fixing the shifting ravines, regulating the mountain streams, reestablishing the destroyed terraces and building up new ones, the present untenantable lands may be transformed into very valuable estates,” he declared. ,"The carrying out of the above works will both improve hygienic conditions and help to restore a regular water supply, in addition to increasing vastly the population capacity of the country.”

Prof. Kern, who achieved an international reputation by his sylvi-cultural work for the old Russian government by whom he was frequently sent to other countries, advocates a complete afforestation program for Palestine, not only to improve the land, but to establish the basket-making and paper industries, both of which he claims have great possibilities in the Holy Land.

"Nurseries of willows suitable for basket-makingi should be laid out and planted at once,” Prof. Kern said. “Basket-making will prove to be a profitable home industry, as willow baskets are better than anything else to ship fruit in and Palestine will have a large fruit industry. It is very essential therefore that a school of basket-making be started at once.”

He also urges the cultivation of the Algerian “Alfa” grass for the fixation of the drifting sands and also as a raw material in the papermaking industry.

Prof. Kern expects the afforestation program to be put into effect in a short while through the $10,000,000 Palestine Restoration Fund, which the Zionist Organization has been raising in non-sectarian campaigns throughout

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