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EDITORIAL RAGE The Atlanta Georgian THE HOME RARER THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except .Sunday Bv THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Kntered as second-class matter at postofflce at Atlanta, under act of March 3,1973 Subscription Price—Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mall, 96.00 a year. Payable in Advance. LifeCostsMore=»=AND LABOR MUST LIVE Business Men Must Make Their Plans Based Upon Necessary, Inevitable, JUST and Steady Increase of Pay. (Copyright, 1913.) 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 me# generally: “1 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 VjsA 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 i 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 in 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 The Landlubber 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. When the Wife’s Away kjREdT ScoTt! now I AH l S<ptJARE MVStLf VtfiTW — i Boss j F/tL5ETTo VOICE l HflloT is “This Mr Jcmes? wal' This is Mg? Smith ! My mu5R4ho IS VIERV iffLl -VK/H4T ? - OH- VAS. rj WAS VERY Suddejj - - MEAI/Ewi Ajo! domV Call! THE DOCfoR Lff him See UoBUDDYH 'YAS - Jt/ST AS SooU AS HE kim (Sett out op bed*f S'AS- ^is time to get away from the days of strikes, of dynamite, i “Stead shootings by paid PinkeVon 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, but 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 oM DR. PARKHURST Writes on Extravagance It Is Both a Form of Lu nacy and Immorality, He Declares. 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 1t 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 lif£ 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 nv>ney 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 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 rooms aboard ship costing above $500, The figure has mounted now to $5,000. One can secure now, for $500, accommodations Just as comfortable, just as well suited to personal and physical require 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, when we consider the wise and necessary -uses to which money can be put, the beneficent institutions that need to be sup ported, the causes of every kind •that languish 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 taken into 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, higl 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 bis 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 MUSCLE 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.