Golden Age, August 2, 1922
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Aug. 2,1922, Vol. in, No. 75
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VOLUME 3 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1022 NlUITSEa 75
CONTENTS of the GOLDEN AGE
LABOR AND ECONOMICS
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RELIGION
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Golden Age
Volume III Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, Aug. 2, 1922 Number 75
Notes on the Silk Industry
rPHE history of the silk industry reaches back to Queen Sie Lang Chi, of China, who is supposed to have reigned about 2,000 B. C. This lady found some cocoons of the silkworm and conceived the idea of a gown made of the fine, glossy, tough fibres. The result was so pleasing that the industry became proniptly established.
For centuries Chinese silks found th-nir way into Europe by caravans and were highly prized. The Chinese guarded jealously the secret of their manufacture; but it was finally discovered by two Armenian priests (sent there for the purpose by big business), who brought back to Armenia a quantity of mulberry seeds and silkworm-moth eggs. From Armenia the culture soon spread to other oriental countries and to those bordering on the Mediterranean.
At the present time Japan is the greatest silk-producing country, China is second, the Eastern Mediterranean region is third, Italy is fourth, and France is a bad fifth. The total yield for the world in the year 1919 is estimated at sixty million pounds. In that year the United States imported $400,000,000 worth of silk. At that time Japan was not only leading in the silk industry, hut hade fair to beat Germany in the manufacture of the cheap goods for which Germany has become famous.
The silk business received a severe jolt in the early summer of 1920. During the three years previous it had been a mint for everybody connected with it, whether he had any knowledge' of the business or not. In some districts in New York, as fast as the saloons were closed under the Volstead Act they were reopened by silk jobbers, all of whom did a rushing business. The demand was insatiable, and there seemed to be no limit to the price the public would pay. At about that time a silk importer who had already made a large fortune, went to Japan and purchased $1,000,000 worth of habitui silk. But by the time the silk reached America, the bottom had dropped out of the inflated market; and his purchases sold for only half what he had paid for them. The wholesale price of $18 a pound for raw silk in Japan in January, 1920, was only $8 in July, 1920; and jobbers who a few months previous had been turning down orders were offering their stocks at retail at less than the wholesale price. It was nine months after the break before there was any considerable resumption of activity in the silk-mills of the country, and even now business in this line is poor. And this is true of all businesses.
The Textile Worker reports that American silk markets have been flooded with poorly-made silk, manufactured by the new companies that sprang up during the war. Such efficiency has been achieved in the finishing of silk that fabrics which are less than half silk look so much like the real article that only a trained expert can tell the difference.
Improvements in Silk-Making
^PHE Chinese, who are among the cleverest merchants of the w o r 1 d, have recently strengthened their hold upon the American and French markets by shipping their silk in a better condition than heretofore. The silk has been re-r<'ol(‘d, and many of the fine ends and weak spots removed, thus rendering it more adaptable' for weaving. American capitalists approve this innovation, because it does away with a certain amount of high-priced American labor, and places the work where it can he done by capable workers who expect and receive but $10 per month. Every American manufacturer who is striving for cheaper and ever cheaper labor is helping to drive the silk business and myriads of other businesses to the wall. People that get wages of $10 per month can buy rice sufficient to keep alive, and little else—certainly no silk. Good wages mean good buyers. Good buyers mean good business, with prosperity in every direction; but poor wages mean poor business.
In New Orleans, Dr. Vartain K. Osigian, an Armenian-American, whose ancestors have been in the silk business for seven centuries, has developed a new typo of silkworm which is twice the size of the ordinary silkworm and produces 1,800 yards of silk to the cocoon as compared with 1,000 yards, the normal production.
The new type of silkworm is obtained through the grafting of mulberry shoots on osage-orange roots, producing a larger, fleshier leaf, of greater food value. By special treatment of the silkworm’s food. Dr. Osigian has succeeded also in producing silk of eighteen different colors, direct from the cocoons, thus doing away witli the interference caused by artificial dyes.
Dr. Osigian now has the largest silk farm in the world; and instead of one crop of silkworms a year as is the custom abroad, eight crops have been produced. With plenty of equipment one person can care for about 100,000 silkworms.
On Dr. Osigian’s farm the silkworms occupy three days in spinning their cocoons. The worm winds the fiber around and around himself in one continuous thread, at the rate of about a foot a minute, from the outside in. The expert silk-weaver, finding the end at which the worm began to weave, can unwind the entire cocoon.
It is said that-Luther Burbank lias announced a contract with G. Imai, one of the world's largest raw-silk producers, to produce a mulberry bush more compact than the one now in general use and more rapid in growth and heavier in foliage.
Wonderful Artificial Silks
THE chemists are transforming the world.
Now they are even jealous of the silkworm, and cannot let him alone in the solemn task, which he does so well, of winding for himself such a beautiful, shimmery, water-tight shroud. In fact, they are making the silkworm an excrescence on the body politic.
There are three principal methods of making artificial silk, each of which is a chemical achievement. The first is made from raw or waste cotton by what is called the Chardonnet process, and is called cellulose-nitrate silk. The second is made from the same materials by the use of cuproammonhim, and is called cuproam-monium silk.
The third is made chiefly of spruce wood and 'A is calk'd viscose silk. This is the most impor-taut and widely used artificial silk. Many mil- ~ lions of pounds of this kind of silk are turned v out in the I United States yearly. It'has a great- 3 er lustre than real silk and is for that reason < seldom used as an adulterant for real silk. The mild nature of the chemical reactions to which it has been subjected causes the fibre to be much"^ less disintegrated than in any other artificialsilk process. The superior lustre is due to the curious shape of t-he cross-section of the fila-meats.
Hosiery is the principal knit-goods line in J which art ilieial silk has been used; but it 13 coming into more general use for shawls, caps, sweaters, knitted and woven neckties, braids - j and trimmings, embroideries, laces, imitation furs, tapestries, and imitation oriental silkrugs. Fifteen million pairs of “silk” stockings are now made annually from wooden silk, and many shirts sold to American consumers are as thoroughly wooden as a kitchen chair. ' ^|
The spruce wood is reduced to a pulp which.
makes it look and act like molasses. This mo- ? lasses-like pulp is strained through a fine screen, the strings dropping into a solution J which transforms them into yarn thread. This yarn takes the dye readily, is as strong as any J silkworm silk, and wyears well. At first it was highly inflammable, but the chemists have now .Jy overcome this. Caustic soda and carbon disulfid art1 Ilie principal chemicals used in transform- ? ing the cellulose into silk.
rflio spruce wood comes into the silk-plant ;; bleached, at about $G() per ton, and goes out as 3 silk at the rate of about $8,000 per ton. The viscose silk is supplanting real silk for insula- J tion and for making incandescent mantles. Some ' five thousand persons in the United States are 1 now engaged in the viscose-silk industry. The cost of tli.o product is about half that of natural ? silk. The industry was brought to America from n Belgium by the Du Ponts, and is located at one .. A of the war munition plants, at Hopewell, Va.
A new kind of paper fabric is being manufactured in Japan. It is a composition of silk and paper, called “paper silk.” It looks like the best mercerized cotton and is suitable for making blouses, sheetings, and dress materials. . ,
A Socialist Theocracy By 0. L. Rosenkrans, Jr.
* THE sporadic agitation of clergymen to revive Sunday observance on an extensive scale appeals to the average man of today as sheer futility; for public sentiment is distinctly apathetic concerning church-going. In fact, theology has been steadily losing ground for a generation, until in these post-war times its disrepute is not to be ignored. Such religious sentiment as still lingers in our world tends increasingly to favor what Herbert George Wells entities the "religion of the new thought.”
This “renascent religion” Mr. Wells undertakes to explain in his book “God the Invisible King.” It is, he magniloquently proclaims, the worship of the true God, whose proselytes are drawn from every religious system extant, every race and nation of man, and every walk in life. It is a religion without a founder, depending on no mysteries, no authority, no revelation, being the response of the sincere truth-seeker’s heart to the “still, small voice within.” Whoever experiences this perception of the true God is moved to consecrate his all to His service. As more and more people come to recognize His divine nature, the great majority will devote their lives to Him recognizing Him as the invisible King of all the earth, and all humanity will become His priesthood. His service means subordination of personal ambitions to the public weal. When His worship is established universally, all existing imperfect systems of government will have disappeared; there will remain only one government and one system of society and a world-wide Socialist Theocracy.
We know that Mr. Wells is both a Socialist and a very brilliant thinker, and certainly in this instance his genius has unerringly detected the great defect of Socialism — the need of a spiritual impulse to vitalize it. This Mr. Wells supplies by inspiring its adherents with religious zeal. Though Socialism has been termed "properly a religion,” such designation of it has been a misnomer; for it is antagonistic to religion. But couple religious fervor with the revolutionary spirit which is pervading the earth, and the two become irresistible. Mr. Wells is a keen observer of current tendencies, though not always a reliable prophet. In order to determine what the probabilities are of this Socialistic theocracy of his coming to pass, let us examine a little into the tenets of this “religion of modernity” he discourses on and satisfy ourselves respecting its adaptability to the current requirements; for unless it really gives expression to the latent yearnings of the majority of latter-day people it is unlikely to make much headway.
At a first glance the "renascent religion” would seem to embody ideas and aims in accordance with those of Christian believers. It expects a kingdom of God, governed by an invisible King, whom the author styles “God-as-Christ”; it predicts the end of the reign of selfishness, and foretells an ultimate “conquest of death.” But Mr. Wells is careful to disabuse our minds of the opinion that the promised invisible kingdom will be under the auspices of Christianity. He frankly notifies us that he considers the Bible a mass of antique nonsense, and that his god is not its god. His god, whom he calls “God-as-Christ” or the Redeemer and more often the “God of the Human Heart,” he is willing to recognize in Krishna, Buddha, or Quetzalcoatl, but not in the person of "the man Jesus.” Indeed, he refers to the “mistaken identification of the latter with the theological Christ,” as if Jesus were an imposture of the Christ-hope long latent in the heart of man. Again, he insists on assuming that the triune God of ecclesiasticism is necessarily the God of Christian belief, and that to repudiate the three-in-one is equivalent to abjuring the Bible altogether. Finally, he informs us that various heretical sects, such as the Paulicians, Albigenses, Manicheans, and sundry heathen religious like Zoroastrianism, regarded God the Father as the evil principle against whom God the Son is perpetually in rebellion in a vital struggle to deliver mankind from the law of death.
This latter view, which is certainly unscrip-tural, peculiarly appeals to our author as the long hidden truth, the mysterious key to the phenomena of existence. Hence he proceeds to elaborate his distinction between God-as-Na-ture or the Creator, and God-as-Christ. The former he describes as an inscrutable “veiled being,” beyond the limits of human understanding, “enigmatical and incomprehensible,” neither beneficent nor malignant,“knowing nothing of good or evil,” “brooding eternally in a great stillness.” He sets in motion the laws of existence and is sublimely indifferent concerning the welfare of his creatures. But not so God-the-Redeemer who is “our friend and brother and the light of the world,” who “is thought and steadfast will,” who “by our poor scales of measurement” is “boundless love and boundless generosity,” who “works in men and through men,” and has been called the “Life Force, the Will to Live, the Struggle for Existence, Mother Nature.” This is a finite god, not omniscient, but increasing in knowledge and perfection as humanity grows; a kind of personified soul of the human race, the “Will to Be” against every adverse pressure of nature.
This god is “aware of itself not as a whole but dispersedly as individual self-consciousness, starting out dispersedly from every one of the sentient creatures it has called into being,” to live with us and comfort our prayers, to die with us individually, merging us into its consciousness at the death-pang. Originally it was an emanation from the veiled being with whom it is in perpetual conflict. The author supposes it to correspond with the Demiurge of the Gnostics; but obviously it is, in a sense, a plagiarizing of the Christian thought regarding the Logos. It is, says Wells, the “god whom men have sought and found in all ages as the Messiah or Savior,” as distinguished from the infinite Creator. The attempt to reconcile these two opposing conceptions he considers to underlie all the religious activity of the centuries preceding the “violent crystallization of religious belief into the Nicene Creed.”
The writer suspects this “renascent religion” to be one of the most diabolically insidious perversions of truth that has ever been perpetrated. It is as if Satan, realizing the growing restlessness of mankind under antique theological restraints and formulae and groping vaguely upward toward the light, cunningly resolves to divert and frustrate the efforts toward enlightenment by posing as the enlightener. Discerning the popular disillusionment respecting theology and its triune God, Satan now advances as the champion of the anti-Trinitarians, denouncing with virtuous indignation his own pet system while impudently pretending the same to be the real Christianity. First he foisted this atrocity onto the Christian creed and then used it for an argument against the Bible, condemning the Holy Book because of the errors he himself introduced into it. So we are reminded of the “Hebrew-Christian God of Nicma,” which trails after it “1000 misconceptions and bad as-
sociations,” who is vindictive, jealous, spiteful, revengeful, and yet who rebukes these faults. This exponent of a new religion, presuming oh-a sympathetic audience, proceeds, as it were, to ent capers and finger the nose, alluding contemptuously to the Christian deity as a “magic god, very great medicine in battle,” ingeniously represented by early missionaries as being so all-powerful that it was futile for any other god to attempt to cope with Him. Doubtless the idea of divine omnipotence is distasteful to this world and its god! Faith in the divine inspiration of Holy Writ is sneered at as Bibliolatry, and we are informed how the “idea of textual inspiration presently swamped textual inter- ■ p rotation.”
But why concede disinterested purity of mo-fives to the apostles and deride the gospels they composed ? Why should the apparent harshness of Jehovah he censured.while complacently lik-eniug the “God of the Human Heart” to a general who unlliachingly sent his soldiers to torture and death? The mercy of Jehovah makes .
provision for a compensation for the victims .. who serve as examples; the servants of Mr. Well's god perish unrequited. Their devotion and self-sacrifice, while affording manifest enjoyment to this “God of Youth,” receives no guerdon from him.
Though the latter god is depicted as “boundless love,” the author scorns the implication of his being humble or compassionate. They of the new thought religion, he declares, cannot tolerate a “pitiful God.” “The accepted figure of Je- 1 sus, instinct ■with meek submission,” is not the tone of their worship. Death is conquered, not by submission, but by fighting; so he would represent his god’s image with one hand torn loose from the cross and eyes turned defiantly to the sky. Yet how paltry is such puny defiance of fate, such impotent rage at the irresistible, like that of any cornered rat, compared with the sublime self-abnegation of Jesus and His unfaltering trust in the benign purpose of His Father! When we consider the career of the Nazarene, unparalleled in human annals, what puerile vaunting it seems to proclaim the modernist Redeemer “a rebel, like Prometheus.”
According to the new religionists the Father is Creator of both good and evil, and therefore intrinsically incapable of discriminating between his two balancing forces in the law of
nature in favor of one against the other. Cold and unmerciful, he formulates inexorable laws wliich must be disobeyed and broken for the salvation of humanity. He is not, like Jehovah, the everlastingly wise author of His own plan of salvation. So the Redeemer breaks the power of death, not by obedient submission, but by unfilial challenging of the source of all power. It is not Christ, but Lucifer. Such a being we may expect to find tolerant of moral turpitude, and so we are assured that he is. The God of Youth meets both good and evil with kindly sympathy; for his nature comprehends both good and evil. Evidently the author is obtuse to the merit of the ransom and the atonement, since he disdains any allusion to Adam’s fall. If virtue exists in rebellion, disobedience could be no sin. So through the modernists wo achieve a new viewpoint on the curse—a Satanic viewpoint.
Having now arrived at a wholly up-to-date conception of the Redeemer, the perplexed truth-seeker is fain to inquire what office he performs in individual human destiny. We are instructed that the finding of him is salvation; but salvation from what? From personal death? Not at all. Immortality is excluded from the field of religious discussion; it is a “question for the psychologists.” Inferentially, if Spiritism amuses one, the same may be indulged in as a harmless pastime; the foibles of a literary contemporary should not be chided unduly. After all, personal death is a matter of slight consequence; and anxiety concerning the same impresses our author as egregious egotism, exciting his philosophic amazement.
Probably a person enjoying a fair measure of health, worldly goods, fame, education, social advantages- travel, contact with the prominent ones of the world, might, out of the fullness of present comforts, regard the future with indifference. But an altruistic solicitude concerning posterity affords scant compensation for the woes and miseries and heart-breakings of this life to the diseased slum-dweller whose habitat is a filthy back-tenement overlooking a fetid alley, and who subsists on polluted rubbish; or to the blind mendicant who mutely invites your charity. Nevertheless, we are exhorted to confine our aspirations toward a hereafter to the prospect of perpetual life for the species Homo, and to the progress in electrical inventions which will sometime enable mankind to arrest the cooling-off process of our planet, beneath a cooling sun. Evidently this book was written before scientists had decided that there is indium enough in the earth to supply it with heat and power indefinitely. If, then, this new-thought god cannot deliver us from personal death; if our prayers to him do not suffice to avert accident and misfortune; if morality is a question of expediency; in what consists this salvation that the finding of this god insures? We are solemnly answered that it is “salvation from the purposelessness of life.” Bathos! Some already have found the same in a steady job, home ties, business cares, political ambitions, art or sports. Perhaps this god may save the bored roue from ennui, or the author from a dilemma.
It is palpable that this redeemer and his salvation are very different from those of the Scriptures. Our author admits as much, but nevertheless holds out an elusive hope to lukewarm apostates that maybe, after all, the Savior of their faith was really this new-found deity, only never properly presented to them and understood by them before. He explains that “the new religion has but disentangled the idea of him from the absolutes and infinities and mysteries of Christian theologians; from mythological virgin births and the cosmogonies and intellectual pretentiousness of a vanished age”-—in other words, has divorced him from the Bible. Instead of a harmonious divine plan we are offered the contradictory testimony of scientists, a haphazard universe, a scheme of existence devoid of the logical sequence of events. We are forbidden to cherish the hope of a hereafter, or of compensation for present 1 woe. Personal sin is a bugbear. There is to be no righting of individual wrongs. Instead of this we are admonished to look for an Ultimate Good for remote posterity, accomplished by a personified human hope, who learns through the progress of human knowledge. There is substituted a temporal god preaching the gospel of Satan, teaching mankind to rely on itself to work out its own destiny, including the eventual elimination of disease and death, presumably through the progressive development of psychic powers. The author declares that the god of modernity stands alone, conceding nothing to Caesar. This is mere empty bombast; for Cfnsar typifies the powers-that-be, vb■ Uht regal, bourgeois, or bolshevik. He envisions a Socialist theocracy with all humanity consecrated to the service of his god, and, by inference, all .-non-conformists rated as criminals against society, amenable to prosecution and punishment, whereby the new government automatically becomes C’lesar; it is the Dragon masquerading in the Lamb’s skin.
It is obvious to all Bible Students that the god of the “religion of the new thought” is the god of this world, Satan. Aware of the disruptive tendencies of today, pointing toward the imminent collapse of present governments, he is preparing to desert his erstwhile proteges, and ally himself with the “beastly” revolutionary powers soon to be established, hoping to so organize and consolidate the same as to insure their perpetuity, thus prolonging his own dominion. In the example of Russia we are wit
ness to what unbridled intolerance, fanaticism, and ruthlessness Communism is responsible for. Extend the same throughout the world as a universal Socialist Theocracy, and the power of Satan would be measurably enhanced. It is written that in the last days he will have “all power”; and with the vast majority of mankind abnegating their wills in consecration to his service, perhaps this is what Satan plans to bring about. Then would that Wicked be indeed revealed. '
But his triumph will be evanescent, and a prelude merely to his complete overthrow; for the true Lord of lords is soon to set up His dominion in the earth, and nothing can withstand His might, hacked as it is by the whole power of the universe. Satan’s kingdom will crumble into dust, disappearing forever, and with it every Utopian dream of a Socialist Theocracy.
Establishing Prices on Cost and Relative Value By a. h. Kent
IN ALMOST every farm, labor, and livestock paper there are suggestions and plans for correcting our present social difficulties. These ideas differ so materially that it is evident that some have looked only at one feature of the trouble, and that few have gone to the root of the matter. Under our form of government, to correct an evil that is nation-wide it is necessary first to locate the cause, then to devise a remedy that is at once plain and practical and, like all truth, easy to understand. Then the plan must be submitted to the people; and at least a majority must favor it, in order to get results.
The voice of the people, however, is scarcely audible. Their representatives seldom know what their wishes are because most of the questions come up after election. On the other hand, the opposing interests of big business are carefully looked after from day to day by the shrewdest lawyers. This is why a very small minority get what they want, and why a very large majority turn it all over to them. Few (a small minority) will deny that our trouble is due to the ease with which large fortunes are acquired, to their wrong use in controlling living prices, speculation, profiteering, and the displacement of labor by machinery.
Price fluctuation alone is responsible for speculation. Unequal prices, though permanent, would admit of profiteering. It is evident that if prices were stable and equal, it would be impossible to speculate or to profiteer. So to correct these evils it is necessary to establish prices on a just basis. But before we can establish prices, we must determine our profit; for if we believe in the right to unlimited profit, then with fairness to all we should repeal the interest-rate laws and stop trying to regulate profits.
If we recognize the right to limited profit, then it becomes our duty to define and establish that limit and to make it possible for all to get their profit. But if we recognize the fact that all profit above a wage or labor cost must necessarily come out of the wage of some one else, then we have found the underlying principle of social equality. “If any would not work, neither should he eat.”
Let a man receive according to the service which he renders in production and distribution, and not according to his ability to bargain. Price-making through bargaining has always been disgusting. It breeds lying, deceit, and intrigue.
Bargaining implies one of two things; either the inability to name a right price, or a desire to
take advantage of another. The best end of a bargain generally goes to the one in the strongest position. It has been used because we have never installed a system for fixing prices permanently, and not because it is popular. Our standards have always been established either by long use or by law. We can never have a standard wage until we establish it by law: and Aye can never have a standard price for a prod-net that will be fair until we have established labor, which is the basic element of our social intercourse.
i WAGES FOR SERVICE
■V The first duty of organized society in estah-lishing the earth is to install a system by which -.... each individual will receive of the products of st-' living according to the services rendered in their production and distribution. ri here is no way by which this can be done so simply and equitably as by the wage and labor cost for ?- 'product, a standard wage for each occupation according to skill, etc., to he made the sole earn
* ing power of all. Thon we have laid the fonn-? dation on which to build the superstructure of stabilized living.
Product should be priced on what it costs in b labor to produce, plus distribution cost, except where there are two or more articles of a class C that vary in labor contents. A class, would con-►* tain all articles that would substitute for one another. Below is a hint of how products could be.priced on their labor contents and value $ units. Articles of food contain varying amounts of nutrition units, or food valur. Coals and oils :■ contain varying amounts of heat and power b units. Textures contain varying amounts of 5 wearing service and heat-insulating value; and . so with all classes of product.
All these units of value are, or should be, '■ ■ properly defined and classed. Labor accounting . per value unit would show the relative cost at - which each article of a class could be produced. ■ ■■ Then by taking the low-grade article of a class - . as a labor-cost or base-price article, and divid- ing its labor contents by its value units, would - give a base price for value unit for all articles • of that class. The price of each article would .. then represent its true value as compared to ' any other article of the same class. Where the : selling-price thus established exceeded the labor cost, the product would show an excess value, v This value should be used in lowering distribm f tion cost, so that all would receive their share of flic excess. Wherever practical, the labor contents and value units should be stamped on the product. This would be a government guarantee of their value, and would forever do away with the sale of worthless goods at a high price. T!ie food analysis on each package would be invaluable to the housewife in serving a balanced
But the exact method of fixing prices is not so important as that they be so established that the price of products represents their relative values and be high enough to meet the standard wage of their producers, and that any surplus be used to lower general expense. The same act of establishing the price of labor and product gives money a standard buying-value and fixes the relativity of labor, money, and product beyond controversy. This system gives every one the same chance to earn, whether he has or has not money or property to start with; and when his service stops, his income stops. It takes price-fixing out of the hands of a few whose interest it is to price initial product as low as possible and finished product the opposite, appropriating the difference to themselves for the service thus rendered. Fixing prices permanently on the start, as against six months or a year at a time, has the advantage of settling the whole business at one time and of taking it out of politics, not leaving it with a commission to unsettle affairs by changing prices when there is no need.
USURY AND INCREASE
It is evident that not all can live on usury and increase; for if each had sufficient, money or property would have no earning power, and to produce a living would require the same labor as now. So, we see, usury and increase are made possible by the unequal division of wealth; and the more unequal wealth becomes, the larger increase it commands until finally, if left to takes its course, all wealth centers in the hands of a few. The earnings of money and property are paid by the producer out of his earnings or arc passed on with the product to be paid by the ultimate consumer, and detract that much from the buying power of all. It requires only a certain amount of product to feed and clothe the people properly. The earnings of labor in its production and distribution should be sufficient to buy the total product. But if usury and in
crease draw from ten to fifty percent of these earnings, the balance is insufficient to buy the whole product, causing not only under-consumption- but under-employment, until the balance is used.
fering has resulted from the people’s efforts to free themselves from such forced servility, when a little forethought and regulation on the part of the ruling ones would have averted it and would have been of value to all. Under our
The owners of wealth acquire these earnings; but not being able to consume the product it represents, they leave it on the market with no corresponding wage to buy it. Had the money gained by usury and increase not been invested from time to time in buildings and improve-' ments, giving labor a second chance to buy the product which the workers produced in earning the first wage, they would have starved under this system long ago.
So usury and increase without any labor expended takes enough from the wage of the producer and laborer to build all improvements and to lay by large fortunes of money besides in the right of those who practise it. We see that the principle is wrong. Labor does the producing, distributing, building, and improving, and in the end has nothing, but must pay a further tribute for the use of any of these improvements. Labor does all this work to get less than three-fourths of what they produce in living. This is done by working more than twice the hours it would take to produce and distribute their living. Such is the curse of usury and increase. A contract to pay usury or increase should be made as illegal as a contract to give or sell oneself or family into slavery of any other kind.
FORTUNES ARE PUBLIC LIABILITIES
Each fortune built up is a claim against society in general for its amount, and under our present system also for what it will earn. Someone must produce the goods and render the service it will buy before it is reclaimed. The people should know how these fortunes are being acquired—whether we are getting something of lasting value for this money, and whether this value is in the right of the people or still in private hands; whether the responsibility of these fortunes is being intelligently and willingly assumed by the people or being forced on them by the owners’ getting their money without service rendered.
The time to regulate these things is before the responsibility gets too heavy. One revolution after another with untold misery and sufform of government revolution or mob violence can be of no value in correcting evils; for there -i is no right to equality but that is already vested
in our franchise to citizenship and may be ex- 33 ercised by suffrage. But this right is of no value unless it is used collectively. Definite, concurrent action is necessary to get results.
Some factors that have to some extent counteracted the effect of the earning power of money, property, and privately-owned machinery by giving to labor further opportunity to earn the necessities of life, by increasing their hours of toil, and have produced what in the past we called prosperity, were cheap land; a good foreign market for surplus product; the vast deposit of mineral wealth requiring labor for its development; the great demand for machinery of every kind, replacing the old with new and later improved; the steady rise in the value of land and other property, producing a large unearned increment that could be either cashed or used as collateral. In fact, the exceeding development of the country has made it possible for people to live without lowering the standard to the same extent that would have been necessary in an older and more developed country, as ours has become.
LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY
Much injustice and suffering have been caused by our law-makers failing to notice the tendency of labor-saving machinery and to legislate.to meet the changed conditions. It requires a certain amount of labor to produce the required amount of product. If one-third of this labor is done with machinery, then it follows that the hours of all must be correspondingly shortened and the wage remain the same, or one-third of the laborers will be crowded out of employment onto the bargain counter, under our practice of bargaining for wage. '
For every dollar’s worth of product produced and distributed, a corresponding dollar should be earned in wage to consume it. If the factoryman does one hundred men’s work with the machinery he owns, and consumes but one man’s share of the product it leaves ninety-nine men’s
share on the market and ninety-nine men without means to buy. This is the condition we have today, under-consumption. If the machinery were owned collectively, the hours could be shortened, the wages remain the same, and consumption become normal.
We have never received much benefit from machinery in the shortening of the hours of labor or in the cheapening of production. One reason is that our patent laws have made it possible for private interests to get pay for about all it saved on labor. In place of a patent, a small noyalty or the purchase of the invention outright by the government for the people would have been a great advantage over our present patent monopoly. The custom of one man with .machinery earning the wage of thousands is just as bad as the speculator beating them out of their wage in the high cost of living, or as the gambler with his cards on pay-day. Each operation has the same effect on the man and his family.
. As the yields of grains and fruits increased, and as labor and machinery became more efficient, the hours could be still further shortened, always leaving the wage and the product-price the same, because they represent living; and once established, the relativity of labor, money, and product should never be disturbed. We have been trying for one hundred and forty-five years to make the supply of both labor and product equal the demand closely enough to stablize prices. This should prove that it just cannot be done. But with standard prices we can regulate the supply of product to from one to two years ahead of the consumption, so that if we, like Russia, should miss a crop there would still be plenty. Then our prices could no longer be compared to a pendulum, first butted by a Bull and then slapped back by a Bear.
ESTABLISHING A WAGE
Living is all-important. We have seen that labor is the basic factor in all its requirement. Man’s province is to assist nature in its production and to gather, combine, store, and distribute its various products. In cooperative living the first principle is that each individual has equal opportunity to participate in its making and benefits. Equal work and equal pay for all will increase consumption to the limit, and production to ample needs; and this principle is not difficult to put into operation.
When six thousand and forty-nine years ago Jehovah said to Adam: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” He established labor as a base for living. So to this day man’s labor is the basic element or controlling factor on which to build our social structure, and should have first consideration.
A few generations ago the home was selfproviding, or product could be traded for product. Money was of small consequence, except in traveling. But with the advent of labor-saving machinery capitalized industry started in the production of living. The owner of each enterprise assumed responsibility of the product as it passed from one to the other in the process of manufacture, paying a wage to those who labored in its production. As the selling-price was uncertain, the wage was kept as low as possible in order to meet competition. As long as product sold close to labor cost, it made little difference at what figure labor was priced. If a dollar wage bought nearly 100 percent of the product produced in a day, it was of the same value as a four-dollar wage that bought the same percent of product. But when the industries began to combine and control prices of both labor and product, widening the gap between labor cost and the price of finished goods, labor organized to demand a wage that represented a larger percent of the goods which the workers produced. Some particularly well-trained bodies of men have received better wages and conditions for a time; but when the rank and file succeeded in raising their wage, it was quickly met by the higher cost of living. So the farmer and the laborer are learning that money is worth only what it will buy.
In deciding on a standard wage there are two factors to be considered: the level on which our debts and savings were contracted and earned, and the wage basis of the nations with whom we trade most. Otherwise it would make no difference. The plan is, first to establish the wage to protect us as producers and laborers, and then to establish the price of finished product to protect our interests as consumers. What could be more simple, more just, more practical and easy to put into operation? It leaves no place for the speculator, profiteer, usurer, ami taker of increase. Under this plan private enterprise, normally, would show no profit to its owner. He should be insured against risk, and his property against depreciation. Compensa-
tion for his service should be so arranged that his interest would be to shorten by efficiency still further the hours of labor. This might be accomplished by his receiving, in addition to his standard wage, a percent of the employes’ wages for a stipulated time, for any improvement that would further lighten or shorten their hours of labor.
KAILROADS EUN FOR SERVICE
An enterprise like our railroads, that effects the well-being of every citizen, should not be run for profit, much less be made the stake in a great gamble. The least the Government should do with this unruly white elephant is to deflate it. A new valuation based on labor cost of construction less depreciation, represented by a new stock uniform for all roads to be used in paying the debts and redeeming the old stock pro rata, completely submerging them under one head, would put the roads where they could be dealt with intelligently. There are scores of other big speculative valuations that should be dealt with in the same way.
There is no question but that deflation is the best possible remedy; but not the kind that inflates money value (which should be only the representative of true value) and thus lowers the price of all true values. Apply the measuring scale of labor cost to all values, and establish them there. All unearned increment represents inflation (except, as seen above, where the value units exceeded the labor contents, and then the profit should go to all, by lowering the taxes). There is nothing back of it but air— hot air, mostly; and when these fictitious values earn, or are exchanged for, legal tender, a moral crime is committed against all consumers, who pay the earnings in higher living cost, and against the bubble-holders, when the bubbles burst; '
It should be evident that any method which would stablize prices would have the same effect as fixing them by law. It would establish the buying power of money.
Possibly a minimum wage for common labor, and a maximum wage for skilled labor, would give labor a better chance to adjust itself at all times to the work in hand. But we would say, A standard wage for each class of work that gives an unchanging base for product prices. The producer and the distributor cooperate in
the matter of living. They should not expect, t their combined earnings to be more than the value placed on their gross product at destination, or be satisfied with less. Labor cost of pro-duction plus distributive cost measures the delivered product by the wage. If the wage was . three dollars, it would buy the product which a three-dollar man could produce and distribute in a day. If it was six dollars for the same class of labor, if would buy no more. But the wage once established should never be changed; for it would disturb the relation between product and stored wealth, and also between product and debt.
FACTS AND ARGUMENT
As a medium of exchange, money should represent the same value at all times. In order that it may do so, the relative exchange value of products must first be defined in terms of money and then established. Money has no relation to either labor or product until that relation is in some way defined. Labor has a relation to product ; i.e., each article has a certain labor requirement. Price labor and the earned increment, labor cost, can be determined. Value is what a thing is worth for use or service, regardless of price or labor cost.
We find these values from nature’s storehouse in different stages of development and with different labor requirements. To make some ready for use the labor cost equals or ex> ceeds their value, because other articles with lower labor cost will substitute; while others are almost or quite ready for use. with little or no labor required. Their value units are largely in excess of their labor cost—unearned increment. We select the article of a class highest in labor cost as a base-price article; otherwise some products would show a loss. The costprice article would be given the same price as the labor that produced and distributed it. Divide the cost price by the number of its value units, and we have a price per value unit for all units contained in that class of articles.
So the wage, or labor cost, becomes the measure of money value. The labor cost is the earned increment for which the laborer receives his wages. The selling-price represents both the earned and the unearned increment, or its true money value as compared to other articles of the same class. The excess-value units, or unearned increment, should still belong to the peo-
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pie collectively, and the proceeds be used in distribution cost or general expense. This virtually divides the excess value among all consumers by cheapening distribution cost, or tax.
Establish the relation between money and labor as we have other standards, and we can - measure the money value of any class of articles whose value units have been defined. Establishing the yard measured nothing; it must be applied. So with the wage—each article of / a class must be separately measured by its la-< .bor expense, and priced at its relative value, f Value should be determined by analysis, inspec* tion, and actual tests, and not by supply, de-r. mand, or labor cost.
END OF SUPPL Y-AND-DEMAND PRICE
Supply has no relation to value, but to volume; and it should not function in price-making, but should be regulated by the labor hours per day, so that all who choose may earn. Demand will always to an extent govern the kind, appearance, quality, and amount of goods to be produced. But why their value?
Price is the connecting-link in the exchange of products. Correctly define the money value of each product, and their exchange is equitable.
The hours of labor per day should be so limited that all who need may have a share in production. If public improvements require a certainpercent of labor, the hours should be lengthened to that extent, in order that all may bear their share, in labor, of the expense and not diminish the output of product. Private improvement is an individual matter that each should regulate according to his savings and his needs.
’ Money value, or price, is given for the purpose of exchange. It is neither necessary nor desirable that price follow the extremes of scarcity and abundance or represent the value that things might have uniter varying conditions. But it is imperative to just dealing that -the price of all things represent their expense plus excess value. If a day’s labor always produced or made ready the same product value, the labor expense would equal the selling-price; or again, if the. expense of each article was in the same proportion to the value, price could represent both cost and value.
Our system of cooperative living should exclude all products in which we specialize or produce collectively. All articles that are exchanged, or where money functions, are of collective interest, and should be governed by cooperative law until they reach the hand of the ultimate consumer. Then they become private property. The money received for labor in their production, manufacture, and distribution represents the share of expense each has borne of the delivered product. Any change in the amount of that share by changing prices is an injustice to some one, generally to all interests save one.
Our money bears the Government stamp, and should be under its control. So should be the price of the product which it represents. If any prefer to grow his own product, and to manufacture his own living supplies, he lias that right. But those who join in cooperative living shonld come in on equal terms and under just regulations. Things of public interest should not be governed by private interests, called capitalism; nor should private interests be governed collectively, called communism. Public interests should be governed collectively, and private interests individually. We cooperate in production, manufacture, sale, and di v ibution of surplus only.
MONEY OF STABLE VALUE
A medium of exchange should be coined of a product of stable value or secured by one to be delivered on demand. It is a certificate of value to be held while (lie value is temporarily in other hands. It should be so plentiful that whoever chose could hoard his part until he wished to use it, without interfering with general business. It should not be overworked by being made a medium, a base for a medium, and an earning power at the same time, but should be limited to its own function. It is of general use and should be under the control of the Government at all times, except when passed out temporarily in exchange for product or other values. A base for < currency should be so regulated that no private interest could hoard it oi- put it into their pocket and walk off with it.
Coin having intrinsic value is more suitable for international trade where cooperative relations have never been established. Gold and silver have long been used as money; and if they were more plentiful and their buying value established, they would serve all needs. But they are in no way necessary to prosperity in national affairs.
For a national medium a currency with stabilized product as a base would be ideal. As we have seen, to be safe, however, we should have at least one to two years’ supply of product in store. It must be held until needed. Our present method of leaving it in the hands of speculators has proven expensive and uncertain of results. This product is for general use. What would be more fitting than for the general Government to hold this surplus at general expense, passing out correct certificates in receipt, to be used as legal tender in payment of all bills and retired when the product was sold1? This base could not be hoarded or exported without Government sanction.
Real estate and other permanent values should be so stabilized in price, provision being made for their upkeep, that if necessary any part of their value could be sold as stock at par, holding it for a stipulated time when either it could be redeemed or the balance purchased and disposed of, closing the transaction. No one need be to any expense except the actual labor; and no one need take any risk if the value is properly fixed. The ability to put values in liquid form temporarily, and without expense, would be a boon in times of misfortune, and depends largely on the stability of prices. A circulating medium is secured by the nation’s wealth. Why should the owners of this wealth, its real estate and other fixed values, furnish the security and pay for the use of the paper they secure? It is simply private interests using public credit for their gain at others’ expense.
Why should we try to represent all true values with one or two very limited products, as gold and silver, and these owned and controlled to a very large extent by private interests? An impossibility. We supplement bonds, notes, and every conceivable kind of interest-bearing paper that only increase the cost of living. Interest is always an expense. It increases the hours of labor, which is a waste of energy, and on the other side builds up large fortunes which, unless regulated, are a menace to society. They are seldom productive of good to the extent that they are of evil. They work hardship while in the making, which ends only when they are spent. Inheritance taxes, disinheritance and other retroactive laws would correct only one-half of the evil. Their prevention is economy.
Our system of placing money in circulation is expensive, and leaves it in the control of private institutions with full power to inflate, deflate, or discriminate at will. As security the Government accepts its own interest-bearing bonds, giving in return bank notes to be loaned. By the time the money goes into circulation, it and the bonds are drawing from ten to twelve percent per annum from the public earnings. Think of the vast expense that could be saved by paying our money into circulation direct for expenses, and in the purchase of surplus product, saying nothing of the other benefits. Of course, this cannot be successfully done until the relation between money and product is rightly defined, and established.
The ignoring of the above principles has landed us in debt to the (estimated) amount of fifty billions of dollars on one side, and placed a large amount of these securities, together with hoards of money, real estate, and other values in the hands of comparatively few. When shall we correct our policies?
FOREIGN TRADE
Under proper conditions more foreign trade than an equal exchange of values would be no help to prosperity, either at home or abroad, but a hindrance. True prosperity lies in our ability to live well with the least possible effort.
Producing product for export requires labor that could well be used in improvements. It is an extra burden on ourselves, and deprives the foreign laborer of his opportunity to earn. It is only our lack of economy in the management and control of things of collective interest that makes it necessary to produce twice in order that we may consume once.
The Great Creator of all values has filled His storehouse, and given it to the children of men. With thanks we should accept these as we find them. The chief concern of each should be to bear in labor his share of the expense of modern living and to receive but his share of bounties. In their social relations mankind will always be guided by laws as principles of righteousness; and as they become perfected, the more clearly will these rules of conduct and dealing he understood, until when the final consummation is readied at the end of the Golden Age God’s laws shall have been recorded in the hearts and minds of alb who will accept life on the only terms (perfect obedience to those laws)
that would make it a blessing. This is guaranteed by the unconditional promise of a new covenant to that effect, soon to be made with the house of Israel.
Surely the Judge of all the earth is gradually revealing the truth on all subjects. Each truth, as it is properly connected, becomes a link in the “great chain” of truth that when complete will bind “the dragon, that old serpent, which ’ is the devil and Satan.” No error, however strong, will stand; and no truth, however slight, will give way to him. With this in view we desire all honest criticism of the foregoing to the intent that truth may prevail; for the ignorance most fraught with evil is that of deception, to know awrong. While we believe the foregoing truths to be the very essence of economic law, we would claim no originalitv of ideas, save possibly in their combination. For the most part they have been voiced from time to time, no record of which we have at hand. We repeat them only in the interest of truth.
Striking at the Roots A Dictionary Probe by Joseph Greig
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THE story goes that after Henry Ward „ Beecher had delivered himself of an eloquent address one Sunday, Mark Twain approached Mr. Beecher congratulatorily, and exclaimed:
“I have a book home, Doctor, that contains every word of that sermon in it!”
“It can’t be,” returned tho pulpiteer. “It took me weeks to get that up!”
“I can’t help that, Mr. Beecher; but I still have a book home that has every word of it in,” reiterated the famous American author.
“Pray, Mr. Clemens, what is the name of that book?” inquired the Brooklynite.
“Why, it’s the dictionary,” laughed the Yankee wit.
Indeed, we might add that this first book of language is a veritable storehouse of information that will astonish every student who scrutinizes its pages to the roots. For instance, customs and usages that are hoary with age and long accepted by a credulous public as bonafide axioms of truth, when opened to the scrutiny of exact research, reveal nothing but idols of superstition set up in an excited past.
Particularizing, we might mention the rise of the popular “Punch and Judy” show, so vivid to the minds of the young. In very fact, this simple doll-dialogue was used in Latin Italy under the patronage of Catholicism to picture the devil and Judas in deadly argument.
Again, note the origin of the mystic college term: “Alma mater,” meaning “benign mother.” The word “holy” comes from a root “hale,” and means health.
“Barber” finds its source from “bara” the beard; hence the shops pertaining to that trade.
Follow the common list of everyday names, and see the cords of the family affection, viz:
Alice (German) noble, Edith (Saxon) happiness, Esther (Hebrew) secret, Mabel (Latin} lovely, Magdalene (Syriac) magnificent, Maud, (Greek) a lady of honor, Margaret (German) a pearl, Patrick (Latin) a nobleman, Harold (Saxon) a champion, Henry (German) a rich lord, Hugh (Butch) high, lofty, Job (Hebrew) sorrowing, Robert (German) famous in counsel, Walter (German) a wood-master.
When naming some of the tribes of Africa, one people jabbered: “Hut — en — tut.” So they named it “Hottentot.”
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