Mr. Adie says, "are the highest on record." Who will deny that the war has turned the depression of 1913 and 1914 into great business activity in 1916 and 1917? And save those so devoted to a fetish that they even now cling to their desire for free trade the world over, who does not now rejoice in the possession of a textile industry strong enough, efficient enough, large enough, not only to furnish clothing for our defenders on land and sea, as well as the civilian population, but also to make supplies for the allied armies, greatly in need of warm and serviceable clothing? Could the country have had a textile industry of the character needed to perform such service, if the policy of the tariff for revenue reformers had been adopted as the country's settled program? And without it, how could the country have accepted the challenge given by Germany and entered upon the great adventure in behalf of justice and humanity? INCREASED TEXTILE WAGES. On March 14 another voluntary ten per cent increase in the wages of textile operatives in the mills of the American Woolen Company was announced to be effective in all its mills on March 25. The Pacific, Arlington, Everett, Kunhardt, Pemberton, and other mills throughout the State also announced increases without specifying exact amounts. In fact, the increase has been granted quite generally in all textile centres in the New England states. This is the third voluntary increase of wages within a year, the total being 27 per cent. In April a graduated scale averaging 7 per cent was given, in October a 10 per cent advance was announced, and in March, 1918, another 10 per cent was added. Between January, 1916, and April 1, 1918, wages in the textile industry have been increased 63 per cent, the various advances being January, 1916, 5 per cent; April, 1916, 10 per cent; November, 1916, 10 per cent; June, 1917, 10 per cent; October, 1917, 10 per cent; March, 1918, IO per cent. As each advance is based on increased wages previously paid the total received by the operatives. is considerably larger than the aggregate of the advances announced, and the difference between that total and the estimated 63 per cent is accounted for in that way. Such facts as these have caused a frequent contributor to free trade organs to say: "Now the public and the consumer take notice that these great increases have occurred under the lowest tariff that we have had for 50 years. Apparently in future, high tariff advocates will find it difficult to maintain that high wages and wage increases only occur under high customs duties." While it is true that wages have gone up during a period when we have had on our statute books "the lowest tariff that we have had for 50 years," all intelligent observers know and honest men freely admit that during 1914, when peace reigned throughout the world and we were ing power of Great Britain, and also living under the Underwood law, domestic industries were staggering under the blow it dealt them, some of the greatest being unable to earn their dividends. In those months no increase of wages was made and none was expected by the operatives, many of them considering themselves fortunate to escape half time, reduced remuneration and loss of employ- slightest degree to the benign influ ment. Intelligent men know also that the advances were only made possible by the breaking out of the world war which convulsed Europe in August, 1914, and which barred this greatest of markets to German and Austrian manufacturers, reduced the compet ences of the Underwood tariff law, or that the prosperity of the textile industry since 1916 has been caused by that law. It is not the prosperity of today, but the depression which was painfully evident all over the land in 1913-1914 that was due to that illfated tariff law. WAR HAS SAVED THE RAILROADS. During the years of regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, when railroads were starving to death under the mistaken policy of keeping rates down to ruinous figures, the various systems were compelled to scrimp on their upkeep and on addition to equipment, to such an extent as to leave them in a deplorable condition for meeting the great emergencies which the war shouldered upon them. The war has been the salvation of the roads, speeding up their earnings, by sheer overwhelming volume of transportation in the year or two before we entered, and when this overwhelming business was heavily multiplied by our own entry, the Government, at the critical time, lifted the burden. Investors in railroad securities may, therefore, view the situation with equanimity, but the unfortunate thing is that every interest in connection with the prosecution of the war, is more or less crippled by the unprepared condition forced upon the roads by twelve years of misregulation. If ever there was a clean-cut indictment, of error in persistent adherence to a fatally narrow course of procedure, it is plainly written in the history of the downfall of American transportation under the last twelve years of Interstate Commerce regulation. Now the Government comes to the rescue, and the hundreds of thousands of miles of rails, of rolling stock, and of terminal facilities, must be restored and brought up, not only to normal modern requirements, but further than that, to the additional requirements imposed by the demands of a mighty war. To have kept railroad properties in prime condition would have required probably $1,000,000,000 a year more than was expended upon them in the last ten or twelve years. In order, now, to bring them up to this condition, a vast sum will have to be laid out, and the burden falls upon the Government, which has taken them over. As to what exact amount may be spent during the coming year in this work, is a matter of surmise. From $1,000,000,000 to $2,000,000,000 has been suggested. This, however, will be only a beginning, if complete restoration is aimed at, but the employment of this sum will create increased activity and profit in those corporations directly employed and those related to them all along the line. The railroad bill gives the President power to increase rates, which the Commerce Commission may review. There is little doubt that substantial increases will have to be granted if the operation is conducted on a business basis. This will not only serve to demonstrate the unwisdom of the Commission's rulings in the last few years, but will accustom the public to pay living rates to roads, so that if the systems ever go back to their owners, there will be little disposition to repeat the dangerous experiments of the Commission in rate restriction. And it will further demonstrate that raising of rates is not such a dreadful bugaboo as shippers endeavored to prove in the past, but that the in crease will be distributed without hardship to anybody. Guarantee of net earnings while the war lasts and for 21 months thereafter, as agreed upon in the bill, gives substantial life to investment returns on railroads for a considerable period which must follow in industry all along the line after peace has been declared. It is impossible also to believe that the roads will be turned over to their owners under the conditions of conflicting regulations between Federal and State Governments, or that they will be completely unscrambled from the conditons of one control which will exist with all the roads operating as if they belonged to one corporation. Many advantages, both in economy of efficiency and economy of expense will have been demonstrated by Director McAdoo, and it is unreasonable to conceive that all these advantages must be disrupted and thrown away. The Boston News Bureau quotes a railroad authority as follows: "I have no doubt Congress could continue to control the railroads beyond date now fixed, but it would have to be a fresh taking, involving a fresh negotiation and agreement. The Government might offer to take over operation for, say 999 years, on consideration of paying certain fixed rates of interest and dividends. "Any attempt to look into position of railroads after the war is like looking into a fog. I saw no evidences in Washington of any well defined movement towards Government ownership or control for the longer future. Everyone is saying the railroads will never be returned to their owners as they were. I hope and believe that means they will never be returned to the overlapping and conflicting regulations of Federal and State Governments. State regulation is a survival of a period the country has utterly outgrown. The situation in which a trunk line, operations of which are practically nation-wide, must obtain consent of half a dozen States, some of them in the Middle West, if it wishes to make terminal improvements at New York harbor, is utterly wrong." CO-ORDINATION, EFFICIENCY, VICTORY. There has been a deliberate attempt on the part of many politicians to make it appear that any criticism by members of Congress or others of the inefficiency which was so manifest a few weeks ago in the management of the Government's business, was unpatriotic and disloyal. On the contrary, men whose patriotism is unquestioned and whose adherence to the Democratic party has been constant were the most pronounced in their criticisms and the most determined in their efforts to correct the glaring faults. As a result of much camouflage there has been great confusion in the public mind over the things complained of and the merits of the criticisms made. Because it is written by the secretary of a Democratic Senator and because it succinctly sets forth some of the objects of the Chamberlain bill, we reprint a letter to the New York Times from Mr. Earl B. Gaddis, secretary to Senator Hitchcock of Nebraska, who wrote: Assailants of the Chamberlain war cabinet bill ignorantly or designedly-and I think it is the former-seek to mislead the public into believing that this measure deprives the President of his powers. The measure, in fact, corrects the very obvious difficuties of present legislation in this respect. If there is any deprivation it exists in the present system and not under the proposed. For it is a perfectly apparent fact here that most of the President's powers are now delegated to other officials and sub-officials. A hundred major executive functions which I think of at the moment are exercised by other officials, great and small, in twenty-eight different departments. The President reserves for himself, individually, the exercise of only a few very important powers, such as addressing messages to Congress and to other nations, presiding at Cabinet meetings, and making the highest appointments from among the thousands of offices within his gift. He couldn't do otherwise than this under our present system. And he doesn't. The object of the Chamberlain bill is to put into the hands of three men, named by the President himself, the hundred or more vital powers now delegated to officials and sub-officials in these twenty-eight departments. So instead of passing upon matters submitted to him hurriedly and with confusion by a hundred or more officials and sub-officials-several of whom see the President only infrequently, and many who never see him at all-the President, under the Chamberlain bill, could either have matters acted upon by himself or three of his closest officials, all of whom would be in daily touch with him and with each other. Simple, isn't it? And businesslike. And much more apt to make us really efficient for battling the Kaiser, don't you think? Tersely it is only a question of delegating to three men, close to the President, powers now delegated to a hundred or more officials, most of whom never see the President, most of whom rarely see each other, none of whom can or does submit all of the facts, good and bad, about his department, and all of whom operate their presidentially delegated powers in uncoordinated multi-track, and, therefore, inefficient fashion. Which method would an up-todate business house adopt? Which method will count quickest against the Kaiser? SOCIALISM IN GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS. No one has ever been able to define socialism, so that two or three socialists gathered together would agree that the definition is correct. The most divergent views as to what socialism is is found among socialists themselves, and therefore the layman who is not a member of this elusive body must be pardoned for not quite understanding what is meant when socialism is preached. There is, however, a fundamental idea involved in all kinds of socialism, and in the various other isms which are offshoots or outgrowths of these plans to revolutionize the world socially, morally, physically and every other way. The main development of socialism and the principal characteristic of it is a spirit of unrest, a desire to change things, an inability to suggest practicable alternatives or workable substitutes and a constant and ever-increasing fever towards destructiveness without any possibility of constructiveness. It is not the long-haired individual on the soap box on the corner, spout ing vague theories, who is dangerous to the United States. He is taken good-humoredly by the crowd, who listen or feign to listen. It is the professor in the university, the student who imbibes his theories, the writer who uses his gift of letters to promulgate opinions under the guise of fiction, the clergymen who preach one sermon based on a Bible text and five sermons based on the texts of Karl Marx, disguised possibly in one way or another. These are the dangerous elements in the situation, because the sugar-coated pellet containing deadly poison is more likely to be swallowed than the nauseating draft which appears with a label on it. INDIFFERENCE OF PUBLIC. The people of the United States are frankly indifferent to socialism. They think they understand the temper of the American people, and perhaps they are right, but the American people do not make the laws, nor do they administer them. Of course, this will be contradicted, and it will be pointed |