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THE HOME RARER
EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian
THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday
By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY
At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta. Ga
Kntered as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlant under act of March 3,1873
Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $j.00 a year.
Payable in Advance.
Life Costs More--=AND LABOR
MUST LIVE
Business Men Must Make Their Plans Based Upon Necessary,
Inevitable, JUST and Steady Increase of Pay.
(Copyright, 191S.)
Following is an extract from a telegram sent from San Fran
cisco by W. R. Hearst to the manager of his editorial depart
ment. The message is recommended to business men generally:
“I believe that the railroad men, and all laboring men,
must positively get repeated increases in wages in order
to enable them to maintain even their present, standard of
living, and that they should properly, in the development
of our civilization, obtain an even higher standard of liv
ing. Business men must count upon increasing wages as
one of the inevitable conditions of modern life, and must
make their plans and form their enterprises accordingly.
“HEARST.”
The opinion expressed in the above dispatch is tla* OF A
MAN WHO PAYS OUT MILLIONS A YEAR IN WAGES, AND
THE HIGHEST WAGES.
A man who pays millions annually in wages, and has con
stantly increased wages throughout his business career, has a
right to be heard by employers as well as by workers.
In Congress, when Mr. Hearst appeared to argue in favor of
the Eight-Hour law against manufacturers who opposed it, Mr.
Hearst pointed out the fact that his opinion concerning the eight-
hour day was not theory, but positive knowledge, inasmuch as he
himself employed men on the eight-hour-day basis, had done so
for years, intended to do so permanently, AND HAD MADE
HIS BUSINESS PAY IN SPITE OF THAT HANDICAP, if it
were a handicap.
Successful business men fn the United States should give care
ful and open-minded attention to Mr. Hearst's telegram, which is
a message from one business man to others, from one considerable
employer of labor to other employers of labor.
It is not a hardship for the intelligent business man to pay
good wages and work his men fair hours, IF OTHER BUSINESS
MEN DO THE SAME.
The great thing is that business men shall have an under
standing, that they shall realize that they and the workers are ac
tually partners in national welfare, AND THAT THEY SHALL
FIGHT AGAINST THE MEAN, NARROW AND HARMFUL
MAN WHO REFUSES TO DO THE JUST AND HONORABLE
THING.
If a thousand men employ a million workers in a certain line
of effort, and if they all pay their men well and give them reason
able hours, THAT IS FAIR FOR EVERY EMPLOYER.
The trouble with our system is that the hard-hearted, nar
row-minded, close-fisted man, who goes off by himself, shunning
organization, refusing co-operation, and competing upon a basis
of the lowest wages and the longest hours, has been allowed to
enjoy his prosperity and his thrift through meanness without
question.
Let the employers work on an even, just basis as to wages
and hours, and then THE BEST MAN WILL WIN—the business
man will win who has the best ideas, the highest intelligence and
is able to render the greatest public service.
All that the good business man asks, all that the fair em
ployer wants, is justice and the opportunity to compete for bus
iness success and prosperity on an even basis with other men of
his own class.
The salvation and prosperity of this country, menaced now
by half-baked ideas of half-baked Democrats at Washington,
have been based very largely upon the fact that the United States
through the tariff has been protected from the unfair competition
of the unfair foreign employer and ill-treated foreign labor.
American business men, thanks to the tariff, have had to
compete ONLY WITH AMERICAN BUSINESS MEN
The man who has made iron in this country, and who paid
his puddlers as much as $8 a day and more, has not had to worry
about the man in Belgium who was paying for the same labor less
than one-quarter.
The man manufacturing goods in this country has manu
factured in competition with AMERICAN employers, and need
not keep his mind upon the problem of meeting the competi
tion of some Chinese manufacturer able to get labor for five
cents a day.
American industry has grown, American prosperity has
grown, American wages have grown—AND THE COST OF
LIVING, INCLUDING FARMERS' PROFITS, ALSO HAS
GROWN, because over here we have kept our markets to our
selves, and competition has been among men living, working,
manufacturing and competing on the same terms.
What will happen if Democrats who believe that they know
all about business, manufactures and industry, BECAUSE
THEY HAVE NEVER HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH
THOSE THINGS, are to have their way, if the tariff wall is to
be torn down suddenly and the competition of the meanest
foreign employers and the lowest paid foreign labor is to be met,
is another story.
Fortunately, one election is followed by another election.
It will not be difficult for workers and employers combined to
have their way AT ANOTHER ELECTION and correct the
threatening follies of this Administration.
The main thing is that those now working in this country,
whether they work with their hands, as laborers and mechanics,
or with their brains, as employers, should co-operate on a friend
ly basis, through the making of laws, for the establishment of
minimum wage rates, especially as regards women, and in other
sane, friendly and legal ways for the bettering of conditions.
The Landlubber
When the Wife’s Away
It is time to get away from the days of strikes, of dynamite,
I of Homestead shootings by paid Pinkerton thugs, or Los An
geles explosions by degraded, depraved misrepresentatives of
labor.
It is important that those who employ labor should recog
nize the truth of Mr. Hearst’s statement in the above telegram,
“that railroad men and all laboring men must positively get re
peated increases in wages in order to enable them to maintain
even their present standard of living, and that they should prop
erly, in the development of our civilization, obtain an even high
er Standard of living. ’ ’
The workingman to day gets not twice, Lat three times, four
times and five times what he got when this country was young.
McMaster, the historian, writes of a day when there was
JUST ONE MECHANIC IN THE UNITED STATES ABLE TO
MAKE A DOLLAR A DAY ALL THE YEAR ROUND.
One President of the United States, a well meaning man,
was filled with gloom and thought the country was going to the
dogs because when he spoke you could no longer hire a first-
class man in this country for less than fifty cents a day.
If you had told an employer of those old days, even a George
Washington, a Thomas Jefferson, or any other first-class old
DR. PARKHURST
Writes on
Extravagance
It Is Both a Form of Lu-
|^jg
nacy and Immorality,
He Declares.
SB
Written For The Georgian
By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst
T HERE Is such a thing as ex
travagance. The word
stands for the wild use of
money. It is barbarism express
ing itself in the unreasoning
scattering of dollars.
It Is both a form of lunacy and
a form of Immorality—lunacy,
because there is no sense In It;
Immorality, because It Is a con
temptuous waste of values.
Poor as Well as Rich.
No man has so much money as
to warrant his expending it with
out a calculation of rational re
turns, returns accruing either to
the enrichment of his own life or
the life of someone else.
That Is a principle which is be
ing grossly disregarded, and the
habits of people are tending more
and more strongly in that direc
tion.
This holds of the poor as well
as of the rich, although in the
case of the former It comes to
less conspicuous expression and is
therefore less thought of or com
mented upon.
The money that hundreds of
thousands of poor people expend
in whisky, beer and tobacco is
both idiotic and wicked.
It is idiotic because It helps to
keep them poor; It is wicked be
cause it devotes to sheer animal
ism treasure that ought to go to
higher ends, and which might be
so utilized as to raise them to a
higher level of human value.
“Stage of Vulgarity.”
The poor man In Scripture who
put his money where It would
bring back to him no sensible re
turn was cast Into the outer dark
ness. That Is the Bible’s way of
characterizing a senseless and
vicious treatment of assets.
This silly extravagance of the
poor Is encouraged by the same
habit practiced on a more stupen
dous scale by the rich.
The uncalculating and therefore
Iniquitous scattering of money by
men with large fortunes is one of 1
the features of the times.
As the late D. Willis James once
remarked to me, “It has reached
the stage of vulgarity."
Passion for luxury has been one
of the causes assigned for the
sinking of the Titanic; and now »
we have got the Imperator, and
there are more coming.
A quarter of a century ago no
one thought of a suite of room*
aboard ship costing above $500.
The figure has mounted now te
$6,000. One can secure now, for
$600, accommodations Just as
comfortable, JuBt as well sotted
to personal and physical nequlro-
ments, as were obtainable at that
figure 25 years ago, and that
would leave a margin of $4,500
expended without any rational or
righteous return.
‘Barbaric and Sinful.”
Now, vrtien wo consider the wi«s
and necessary uses to which
money can be put, the beneficent
institutions that need to be sup
ported, the causes of every kind
that langrulsh for want of funds,
the destitute women and children
that go poorly clad and miserably
fed and unfed, I say that, when
such considerations are takenjinto
account, for a man to lay out
$5,000 or any considerable part of
that for the sake of luxuries of
six days’ steamer travel is both
barbaric and sinful.
And any man, no matter how
much money he has, who has*
risen above the level of barbarism
and sin ought to be ashamed to
be publicly advertised as having
sacrificed a sum so egregious on
the altar of his own personal and
animal comfort.
American, that one day in this country unskilled labor would
demand and get two dollars a day and skilled mechanics three
dollars, four dollars, five dollars a day and more, those old Amer
icans would have said, “Well, the country must go to the dogs;
the thing is impossible.”
When you say to-day that wages, high as they seem to some,
must be increased, and ought to be increased, the man of to-day,
if he be shortsighted, will tell you that it is impossible, and that
the country must go to the dogs.
BUT IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE, AND THE COUNTRY
NEED NOT GO TO THE DOGS.
The American employer of to-day is better off, being richer,
bigger in his enterprise, safer in his undertakings, than his pred
ecessor who used to be able to hire a first-class man for fifty
cents a day.
The men that own the street railways and pay $2.50 per day
are better off than they were in the days when they got their la
bor for $1.00 or $1.10.
After all, what is the chief asset of the employer? Is it not
the competent well-fed worker?
And far above the interest of the individual employer, what
is the chief asset of the nation? Is it not a population of well-
fed men, well paid, with time to rest, time for mental improve-'
ment, money enough to keep their children out of the mills and
mines, and in school?
Not with hatred, bitterness and regret, but with pleasure
as good citizens, the competent American business men, united,
with laws to protect them, fighting the unfair competition of
low wages and long hours, should gladly recognize that the pur-,
pose of a republic is not merely to make a few rich and protect
them in their wealth, but to make the entire population happy,
contented and prosperous.
Very gladly the employers of intelligence and power must,
as Mr. Hearst says, “count upon increasing wages as one of the
inevitable conditions of modern life, and make their plans and
form their enterprises accordingly.”
The employer should be reasonable and just.
And the workers should be reasonable, honest and fair.
We ought to be able to get away from an industrial system
of fighting, hatred, battle and strikes.
The worker should be content to give a fair and full day’s
work for a fair day’s wages and fair hours of work.
We should get away from these days when the employer
does his best to get the most that he can out of the workman,
and give him the least possible; and when the worker’s thought
and that of his leader is to get the most he can out of the em
ployer and give the least possible.
Workers and employers should treat each other justly, com
bining as associates, friends and brothers, and GIVE TO THIS
NATION AND TO THE FUTURE THE BEST POSSIBLE
PRODUCT OF THEIR COMBINED BRAINS AND MUSOLE,
ORGANIZED AND APPLIED IN SUCH A WAY AS NOT TO,
INTERFERE WITH THE HEALTH, THE HAPPINESS, THE
MENTAL GROWTH OF THE PRESENT GENERATION, OR
THE WELFARE OF THE GENERATIONS TO COME.
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