The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 14, 1919, Page 14

The Standard Oil Company (Indiana) and the Automobile Industry PROBABLY o - exishing” indistiy: serves such a useful purpose in so many ways as the automobile in- dustry, and certainly no industry has had such a meteoric increase in proportions. Such an increase would have been im- possible of accomplishment if ‘a market for moderate priced cars had not been found, and without the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) it would have been impossible to find this market. : When only the rich could afford an automobile the Standard Oil Company (Indiana) had the vision of most every- one driving his own machine. The Company set out, not to find a way to make gasoline prices higher, but to keep them low in the face of theenormous demands made by the automobilists, which in the average industry would have caused abnormal increases in price. The efficiency of the Standard Oil Company in making a constantly in- creasing number of by-products has kept down the price of gasoline and enabled the man of modest means to run an automobile after he got it. The Standard Oil Company not only makes gasoline to sell at a low price, but to fit the requirements of the modern automobile engine in such a manner as to enable the owner to get out of his car all that the manufacturer designed it to produce. S s This is a salient examplé of the usefulness “of the Standard Oil Company not only in contributing to the success of other in- dustries, butin discharging its obligation as a public servant so that all may benefit from its efficiency and by its operations. 1564 The Cure for Bo.IShevism A Proposal to Curb Private Fortunes and Extend Control of Monopolies to Government ' BY HENRY H. KLEIN Deputy Commissioner of Accounts, New York City; Author of “Standard Oil 7 or the People” and “Bankrupting a Great City.” 2%] OLSHEVISM is intended #| as a revolution for the control of capitalism throughout the world. It is a political and social- istic program. In Russia bolshevism is a political term for ma- jority. In this country it means an- archy through the overthrow of the ~ government. In all countries of Europe, and, in fact, all nations, the extreme wealth concentration existed before the war. In Russia the ruling class owned vir- tually all the land, the mass of people . being enslaved peasants. In Hungary and Austria the same condition ex- isted. In England the problem is one of land control as well as of industry, the large estates owning most of the property. England also has the ques- tion of absentee landlordism and the ‘problem of controlling suppressed na- tions. There is no doubt that extreme wealth concentration in this country must be corrected. It is only a ques- tion of whether those in control of monopoly will accept the: wisdom of experience or whether they will re- fuse to listen to a program that re- stores society to an even keel by re- stricting their own fortunes. This _country has passed the day when ex- cessive private fortunes are necessary or desirable. GREED OF PROFITEERS DANGER TO AMERICA The result of excessive wealth con- centration in other countries should be a warning to the United States. The people of any nation, no matter how intelligent, can be provoked into violence through the greed of those in commercial control. The president has said that America is the hope of the world, and it is in fulfillment of this mission to save humanity from chaos that America must point the way to economic reform. The problem in America is to trans- fer control of monopoly from the few to the many, so that the cost of living may be reduced and so that the cost of government may be provided, not from taxation but by income from pri- vate. property. So long as Europe needs our foodstuffs and other com- modities and will pay exorbitantly for them, so long will the cost of living in the United States be exeessive, be- cause those in commercial control want it so. If the nation controlled the monopolies, there could be no, ex- cessive prices charged, The interstate commerce commis- -sion, in a recent report, showed that of 647,000 stockholders in all the rail- roads in the United States, owning about $10,000,000,000 ‘of stock, more than half -was owned by but 8,301 :| - shareholders, or by only 1.3 per: cent of all the stockholders. Zas principal industrial monopolies. Stand- ary corporations, whose total market value exceeds $3,000,000,000, is con- trolled by about a dozen men and fam- ilies headed by John D. Rockefeller, whose individual holdings are about one-third of all the stock. Mr. Rocke- '$150,000,000 annually. It is obvious that ' such - excessive wealth in the | hands of Mr. Rockefeller is of no A similar and more intensé state of concentration exists in some of the- ard Oil and its affiliated and subsidi- come being between $100,000,000 and benefit to the people of this or any other country. His excessive wealth has been accumulated out of excess profits obtained from the people. If the government obtains control of Standard Oil through limiting pri- vate fortunes, it can reduce the cost of all products sold by Standard Oil’ and still obtain normal income for governmental purposes. The govern- ment is paying about $1,000,000,000 a year interest on bonds held by the public. The cost of administration next year will be at least $2,000,000,- 000 additional. Where will the money come from if not from the people in the form of -taxation and consequent higher prices, or from government- owned securities? The cure for bol- shevism is not argument or denuncia- tion, but real economic reform. “EGG DAY” IN OREGON The farm bureau of Jackson county, Ore., is operating in three districts of the county an egg marketing plan that is meeting with success and win- ning the co-operation of the business interests of the county.’ A certain day each week is known as ‘“egg day,” when farmers deliver their eggs to a central place, where they are candled and cased, the actual cost of the can- dling and crates being charged against the farmer according to the number of eggs he brings to market. The eggs are then sold to the highest bid- der, and have brought an advance of from 6 to 8 cents a dozen over the prices received before this plan was used. ; PAYING COSTS NOW “England industry made a red-ink overdraft on the future by underpay- ing labor so that it did not receive enough to live efficiently, and you know that in the mill towns of Eng- land there grew up a secondary race there of small, underfed, uneducated, undeveloped people. Well, England ‘has got to pay the overdraft now. She found a third of her men.of military age were unfit for military service. One of Lloyd George’s most famous utterances was that ‘You could not make an A-1 nation out of a C-3 popu- lation.” They all see it, and that dif- ferential that England has had in in- ternational trade is gone. But that is not all of it.”—FRANK A. VANDER- LIP, NEW YORK BANKER. BOOSTS TOWNER BILL : No bill among the thousands that were introduced during the first week of congress is more deserving of atten- tion -than the - one known #s the Towner educational “bill, ‘éreating a = department of education; with a secre- tary in the president’scabinet,- and appropriating :$100,000,000 to aid:the . - states in the promotion of education. > The principle underlying this bill is - .at' the:very foundation of democracy. An illiterate voter suffers ffom an un- pardonable handicap. When an Amer- ican soldier of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, whose parents and grandparents were born in this country, can say in answer to the inquiry as to why he had never learned to read and write, “Captain, I never had no chance,” it is time. for the people of the country to - give the matter serious attention. get an education., The Towner bill ‘starts with the support of the National = : Education’ agsociation ‘and American ' Federation of Labor.—~THE PUBLIC. ,l ; feller owns abfi:n;‘ $lll.,000,000,000 in 8i1 The objection that - federal aid ] : ¢ alone, from which' his income is $50,- means taxes paid in one part of the - Sl § : Standard Ol Company 000,000 a year. Mr. Rockefeller’s ag- ~ country for education in another g e (Indiana) : e gregate wealth is more than twice ~ should have no weight. Every child . 910 S. Michigan Avenue, = Chicago, Il | his Standard Oil holdings, his total in- must have the fullest opportunity to 9 . Mention the Leader When Writing Advertisers