The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 20, 1918, Page 10

o [re R .plenty of other ways, to how much I would eat in the army costs at least $1 a day, maybe a good deal more. Why? One reason, of course, is that the restaurants have to hire their labor, while Uncle Sam gets his help for nothing. But another reason is that THE GOVERNMENT BUYS AT WHOLESALE, CUTTING OUT ALL MIDDLEMEN, and it operates, in serving its own soldiers their meals, FOR SERVICE AND NOT FOR PROFIT. But when I go to a res- taurant to buy my meals I pay one profit to the jobber who handled the food, and another profit to the re- tailer and another profit to the res- taurant proprietor. And because of these profits I dig down into my own pocket extra for 70 cents or more a day for food, instead of getting it for the 30 or 40 cents that it costs the army. : And we get our eyes opened, in OOBK) ‘o.o.o'. . o ! . ROOOH OO \\ cheaper Uncle Sam can get things when he goes after it; how much more efficient he is than private profiteers. For instance, the cost to the govern- ment of a canvas coat such as was issued to me is $3.95; the cost of a wool coat (blouse, they call it in the army) is about $6. But some of the boys wanted to buy an extra blouse over.” 8N&h e e e T T LY E AT i W e A et —Drawn expressly for the Leader by J. M. Baer Mr. N. Western Miller: “Is this war raising Ned with your business? The people can’t be induced to take their eyes off my profits.” Mr. T. Rust Packer: “That’s the way it goes. The war isn’t hurting my business, but the people are finding us out and they will raise Ned after it is SEEN AND HEARD IN THE LOBBIES at some of the local clothiers. How much did they pay? About $10 to $12 for a canvas blouse; about $15 to $26 for a wool one. Shoes that cost the government less than $3, retail for $6 to $8, and so it goes down the line. And we buck privates are not the only ones that know it. We don’t get hit nearly as hard as the officers do, because we don’t have to buy extra clothes if we don’t want to and the army gives us one suit to.start us off and will give us another when it gets around to it. But the officers have to buy all their own clothes. They used to be able to get clothing and supplies from the army at cost prices but now the army has adopted the rule, “pri- vates first.” It has so much business to attend to in equipping its privates that the officers have to go to private dealers for all their supplies and, zowie, the hole that it does cut in their salary checks! . ? I used to have an idea I'd like to be a general or something as soon as possible but: from what I’'ve learn- ed about prices of mili uni- forms from private dealers I've de- cided that I'll keep on being a buck private, in the rear ranks, at least until Uncle Sam gets a better grip on the clothing business again. Day of Selfish Private Interest Passes Marketing of Farm Products Will Be Made Efficient and Profiteering Eliminated, Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of vAgriculture, Says Washington Bureau, Nonpartisan Leader TIL an overwhelming majority of our citizens are willing to subordinate personal ease, pleasure, profit and ambition to the national need, America can never hope to throw into this war a tithe of the weight of her measureless power.” That is the belief upon which Carl Vrooman, assistant secretary of agriculture, bases his statement that in a war to save the very life of the nation every resource of the nation must be mobilized. The time to organize this greater preparedness, this finer effectiveness of America - as the sword-arm of human liberty, is now. Vrooman says that the government is now try- _ ing to mobilize the food distributing and market- ing agencies of the country “on a basis of patri- otic efficiency,” and that if simple and conservative measures fail to take the profiteering out of these agencies, then other measures will surely be applied until the job is done. The government will not stop short of complete reorganization of its dis- tributing and marketing system, if need be, to put the nation on an efficient basis for its task. What Vrooman is driving at is the thing now being advocated by the military men who are run- ning the war—that since armies and navies are helpless without nation-wide industrial and eco- nomic preparedness, the nation’s first duty is to mobilize its business and industry for war. Every national resource must be nationally put to work. EACH FOR ALL AND ALL FOR EACH “In our recent efforts to.mobilize our national resources the things easiest to mobilize have been: First, agricultural resources; second, financial re- sources; third, fighting men; and, last of all, busi- ness and industry, including transportation facili- ties on land and sea. These transportation facili- ties are not on a wa~ basis yet, and in the nature - of things can not be pus on a war basis for another year at least. They constitute the one big limiting factor that for the past year has hamstrung our military operations.” That was the beginning of his statement to the correspondent. He continued: “Old-fashioned preparedness advocates hence- forth must take their places with the little boy at the foot of the class. An adequate army and navy, . by all means. But back of these two branches of the service an equally adequate and an equally self- sacrificing civilian army must be mobilized—of business men, farmers, factory workers and house- wives. The foundation stone of a real program of national preparedness is the complete subordination . of selfish private interest to national purpose in ] THE HOPE OF THE PEOPLE In a recent number of the New Re- public, a progressive weekly magazine, Wilmer T. Stone of New York writes: The publication of the inspiring pro- gram of the British Labor party, deal- ing with reconstruction plans after the _war, has caused much comment among American radicals, and should: result in eventual action. Many people feel that while we are trying to crush Ger- man military autocracy, we might as well make a job of it by crushing American industrial autocracy also. It is of interest to consider how it may be done. * * * Lately there has appeared a new force, the National Nonpartisan league. —the organization of embattled farm- ers who are out to better their con- dition, not at the expense of the con- sumer, but of the middleman, miller ° and banker, by political action in ad- dition to co-operative buying and sell- ing.. This is a most hopeful portent— an indigenous American movement among a class usually considered con- servative and individualistic. What. are the chances of a real American labor party—both in city and country—being organized to carry out some such democratic program as that outlined - so inspiringly by our British fellow workers? I think they are.so good as-to make the ‘question merely one of time. * * * The Survey, the New Republic, the Public and other journals edited by liberal intellectuals, are veering close to a common view, which foreshadows indorsement of a party of ' workers with ‘hand and brain. Is it too much to hope that five years hence a radical coalition will be an accomplished fact, and that the masses, pressed between ~ the upper and nether millstones of high - cost of living and low wages, will flock ~by thousands and hundreds of thou- sands to follow a real American labor party in the campaign to crush indus- trial autocraqy? - e . e R T P SN B e A 2 :MW?MWMW%@WMW@ every branch of human activity. Without such a national ideal and the spirit which it will engender, no national efficiency is possible or thinkable, “A railroad transportation system run primarily for ‘what the traffic will bear,’ rather than for pub- lic service, is as inconceivable from the standpoint of military efficiency as would be an aviation serv- ice run on a speculative basis. This is true also with the merchant marine, the fuel, steel, food and other essential national resources. The government price-fixing policy is based upon a recognition of this fundamental fact. . : . “A nation whose production of war supplies is limited by the perfidy of profiteers or the skulking timidity of business slackers is a nation that has not yet learned the first principle of war pre- paredness. MARKETING MUST BE MADE EFFICIENT “The federal department of agriculture and the state agricultural colleges have achieved a notable success in mobilizing the agricultural resources of the nation. We are now at work, together with the federal food administration and the federal trade commission, trying to mobilize the food dis- tributing and marketing agencies of the nation on a basis of patriotic efficiency. This is a much more complicated and difficult task. 3 ‘_‘T!xe government is exhausting every resource to elm}irgate profiteering from warehousing, pack- ing, milling, jobbing, wholesaling, retailing, trans- portation, ete. “The government favors the simplest and most - conservative measures that will do the work, but I have no .hesitation in saying that the government is determined to eliminate profiteering and ineffi- * ciency from the marketing of food products in this country in one way or another.- It stands ‘prepared to take any measures that are found necessary to the accomplishment of this end. - “It is now trying to regulate existing agencies. “If this does not work, there will be nothing left for it to do but to reorganize the whole system, “NO ENEMIES OF THIS NATION, WITHOUT OR WITHIN THE COUNTRY, ARE GOING .TO BE ALLOWED TO STAND ATHWART THE PATH OF THE NATIONAL PURPOSE.” ; WHAT PREPAREDNESS i ADVOCATES NEGLECT 'I';he assistant secretary of agriculture is not a pacifist. He does not discount the need for mili- tary preparedness, so long as the spirit of conquest . 8urvives among militaristic nations.. He made @ : tho.ro'ug}; study of the Swiss system of military’’ = ; - training 16, years ago—long before Roosevelt ever Z - heard of it—and he advocated its adaptation to =, o Jpwe pegeBERAE etls a0 e TPy A L P 7 U PRI @ o i i