There used to be, and probably still is, among children, a game called "hunt the thimble", wherein the thimble, a small thing, was placed in plain sight, but in some obscure place, where it was often more difficult to find it than a larger article actually concealed from view. The larger the room the harder it was to find the thimble.

The game well illustrates a problem which confronts every large manufacturer, jobber or retailer, all of whom must watch, and often cannot find, waste of labor and material in their business. This is the meanest and most irritating difficulty the large business man must meet. What is the matter? Perhaps the cause, small like the thimble, is in plain sight, but he cannot see it. There are too many other and bigger things around. The bigger the man the bigger the things he has to think about; the more likely it is he will not see the little thing that day by day is draining his profit, even though he passes it twenty times a day.

The fiscal year is ended, accounts are cast up, books are balanced and inventory is taken. There ought to have been a profit and there is a loss, or there ought to have been a big profit and there's a smaller profit. What is the matter? The proprietor does not know. What he does know is that the big lines of his work, those he has been watching the entire twelve months, do not account for it.

Perhaps his employes waste their time and his foremen and superintendents do not see it or seeing it, fail to stop it or report it to him. Maybe

there is favoritism on the part of foremen, leading to jealousy and bad feeling among the men. Instances have been known where imperfect work has been concealed in wells and under floors by workmen, who do not want it to count against their pay. Imperfect work, especially in iron works, sometimes passes inspection and defects are discovered in other departments after men who did the work have already been paid. Lights are burned wastefully and habitually. Unused rooms are heated. Petty theft is going on, as, for instance, in the removal of material from the works by stealth and its sale on the outside by employes for personal profit.

Cars of coal are left on sidings outside the yards long enough to allow the theft of coal. A neglected hole in the fence passed hundreds of times a day by officials, superintendents and foremen, a hole that has become a time-honored institution, gives ingress by night to the sneak thief, who steals a little material at a time, goes and comes again next night.

the

An unsanitary condition in works, readily remedied if observed, may make the men run down in health and incapable of their best effort.

Antiquated or unsuitable machinery may be turning out work that could be done at half the cost were better, more up-to-date equipment installed.

These are only a few of the unobserved or neglected things that may be cutting down or perhaps entirely wiping out the profit which a man may actually have earned so far as a proper conduct of the general lines of his business is concerned.

Do his employes know about the wastes? Undoubtedly in many instances they do. Why do they not tell him? In the first place, in too many instances they are told in their labor union associations that his interests and theirs are opposed and they think if he is losing it serves him right. Again they are deterred from telling him about some wrong shop condition or about some improvement that might be made for fear of incurring the displeasure of their foreman and perhaps being discharged on some pretext a little later as a lesson for mixing in what did not concern them. Plain indifference sometimes, no doubt, accounts for failure to tell the employer about something that is wrong.

It is the thing the employer cannot know, or anyway does not know, that often prevents the profit that ought to have been earned and otherwise would have been earned. It is the unknown element that presents to him the hardest problem for unaided solution. He is a busy man of affairs. He climbs the stairs to his office a dozen times a day for twenty years and is too absorbed to notice how many steps there are. He passes through the machine shop fifty times a day, letter or memorandum slip in hand, too intent on the immediate matter to notice the broken plank in the floor that will break an employe's leg next day and cost him heavy damages. He figures on contracts, sees callers, writes letters and answers telephone calls all day. The events of the moment grip him. to look about.

He has not the time

Necessarily, in coping with this, next to organized labor matters, most insidious of all business dangers, the employer necessarily leans heavily on those under him. Unfortunately, too many times, this support crumbles. Those under him have their troubles, too. They are responsible for their respective departments of the work and if they are conscientious, the responsibility is constantly on their minds. They may not feel that their interests are his; they will not if they are union labor men. Then, too, like their employer, they have become so familiar with conditions that familiar

ity has bred contempt. The do not see the danger, or they do not mind it, or they do not recognize it as a danger. When the employer at last does find out about it, the harm has been done and the only thing to do is to, if possible, prevent a recurrence.

NOTES OF DANGER

Kirby, Emery and Bryce Sound Them

at Manufacturers' Convention

The keynote of warning was sounded several times to the National Association of Manufacturers at its last convention. Danger from criminal labor unionism, from politics in the legislative bodies of the land and from. the Industrial Workers of the World were boldly forecast by President John Kirby Jr., in his address on "Politico-Industrial Conditions"; James A. Emery, general counsel for the National Council for Industrial Defense in his speech on "Legislation. and Business", and Joseph W. Bryce in his address on "The Establishment of Industrial Peace". Striking extracts from these speeches are here given:

BY JOHN KIRBY, JR.

"Criminal unionism had proceeded so long unchecked; had become so emboldened by failure of prosecution; had so hoodwinked a part of our citizenship by emphasizing the benefits of trades-unionism, and at the same time concealing its criminal acts that they believed that a part of public opinion justified their murderous methods. And when the confession, with all its tragic details (the McNamara, Los Angeles, affair) was made public, we witnessed, among other things, the protesting solicitude of that scamp Gompers in behalf of the boys', we witnessed his assumed surprise at their confession and his passionate fervid cries that his credulity was imposed upon. Were it not tragic, it would be comic. Gentlemen, let me restate the problem. We have it from Abraham Lincoln that our country cannot exist half free and half slave. With all due reverence, I would paraphrase

this inspired utterance. No country can exist half free and half throttled by criminal unionism; half happy in the sunlight of liberty and half darkened by vicious forces; half peaceloving and law abiding and half crimeloving and lawless."

"One has only to listen to the arguments and protests against some of the iniquitous legislation that has been pending before committees in the national capital; legislation that strikes. at the very heart of personal liberty and property rights and which with no sound reason to support it and in the face of the strongest reasons why it should not be favorably considered is reported favorably, first, because it has been made the subject matter of party pledges, and second, because men who know it is wrong and wicked, that it is in violation of their oath of office to vote for it, are too weak and cowardly to oppose it lest such action may displease a few labor leaders who may possibly reflect their displeasure amongst a small number of their own constituents. One of the most dangerous tendencies of the times lies. in the making of agreements by political parties, to enact legislation which spells the undermining of the foundation upon which liberty and law must rest if we are to remain a free and prosperous nation."

"I assert now that the time has come when the sober-minded people of this country should unite in one political party. These (former) issues have passed away, but others as dangerous have appeared upon the horizon and are being surreptitiously nursed and encouraged by the unstable elements in both the Republican and Democratic parties to such an extent that dangerous compromises are the result."

"Labor leaders who are continually crying about the wrongs of labor have the lesson to learn that society also has some grievances and that the wrongs of which they complain will never be righted by war upon it, nor by assaulting and murdering innocent workmen, who do not agree with them, nor by destroying property and creating industrial chaos."

BY JAMES A. EMERY.

"The whole time of our great government in two branches of congress is given up largely to the discussion. of questions of policy, and when great issues of fundamental principles come up, as they came up the other day in the House on the Clayton injunction. bill, the president of the American. Federation of Labor occupies by invitation the private gallery of the Speaker of the House. The floor is crowded, the argument is all on one side and the votes are all on the other. Gentlemen slip down into the well of the House and whisper 'aye' in a faint voice, who in a roar that will be heard clear across their election districts will be announcing a few months from now what friends of labor they are; and a candidate for the presidency turns his face toward the gallery, and as a gladiator of old lifted his hand to the Caesar, whom he saluted, can almost be heard to say, 'I, who am about to be nominated, salute you,' and votes aye.'"

BY JOSEPH W. BRYCE.

"One of the organizations which is now forging to the front, the Industrial Workers of tht World, is one of the most menacing of the evils with which civilization now has to contend. They are not working among intelligent or skilled workmen, but only among the uneducated foreigners who understand very little about the character of our government. The whole theory of this organization is to demand an increase of 15 per cent in wages, fight till they get it, and then, when they have obtained it, immediately start agitating for another 15 per cent, their idea being that they will eventually force the owners of industries to turn their plants over to their management. I am not an alarmist in any sense of the word, and do not believe in needlessly emphasizing any of these evils, but you must wake up, not solely for your own preservation, but for the preservation of your country's rights as well, because industry in the hands of the unscrupulous men would become chaos in a very short time."

A disposition in certain cities to run municipal governments along socialistic lines will become dangerous if it goes far enough. Fortunately, there are good reasons to believe that it is probably spasmodic and will not go far.

This sort of thing is evidenced by the efforts of Mayor Shank, of Indianapolis, along the line of cheap potatoes for the people of his city and the more recent endeavor by the Baker city administration in Cleveland to furnish the consumer with fish at 5 cents a pound.

The high cost of living, concerning which there is no manner of doubt, not only furnishes an economic problem for the very best minds to work out, but also presents to politicians the groundwork for vote-getting by attempting to reduce to the people the cost of certain articles of consumption, or in any event to try to do so or to seem to try to do so.

Any public officials who enter this field of endeavor are either willing to embark on what they know is absolutely opposed the American

social system and aware that they must either overturn that social system, an unlikely outcome, or fail; or else they are not posted on governmental science, It is only fair to such officials to credit them with lack of information on the subject rather than with insincerity or bad faith.

The government of the United States is founded on individualism. Every man is supposed to look out for himself. The government is in existence to keep the peace and see to it that every man has the chance to look out for himself unhampered by

interference with his rights by anybody else.

In primitive days a man had what he could hold; no more. The stranger who passed his cabin could take anything in it, if the stranger were the stronger. If he wanted the cabin owner's wife, he could carry her away, provided he were able. Government, later, stepped in to prevent this sort of thing in a larger and more civilized field.

Opposed to, this system of government, keeping in mind always that this is the system of government of this country, is the socialistic idea, which is not the idea adopted by the United States. The socialist would take care of the individual by government. The government would feed the individual, clothe him, house him, care for him when he is sick, run him in every way. This is socialism, car

ried out to the extreme.

Under a socialist system, if we had it, which we have not, the government could logically run a private business. Under the individualist system, which we have, the government cannot.

It is, therefore, illogical, idle and foolish for an American municipality to embark in the business of a farmer, a commission merchant, a fisherman or a fish dealer. It is especially idle, foolish and illogical to do it in the case of an isolated industry, while everything else in business in the community is being run along the oldestablished line of no governmental interference with purely private industry. Why potatoes? Why fish? Why not also app'es, carrots and beans; pork and beef? Let the government be one thing or another;

purely individualistic or wholly socialistic.

It is not to be conceived that the free men of this country will ever substitute socialism for individualism in government. It is impossible to separate socialism from slavery. If one man supports another, he has the right to direct what that man shall do. If the government supports a man, it has the right to say what he shall do. It may decree that one man may be a blacksmith, another a machinist, another a merchant, another a manufacturer; all without the consent of the men designated and placed. Such a thing would be intolerable to Americans accustomed to freedom of action and choice. It will never come in this country as long as enterprise and ambition last; as long as the spirit of American independence endures.

But to return to the potatoes and the fish and to what these no doubt well intentioned but misguided mayors and their associates in city government have been trying to do.

In the first place, it is futile to undertake to evade state laws by operating municipally through a privately organized mercantile corporation. The enterprise is none the less municipal or it is useless. To illustrate, soon after the Municipal Fish & Produce. Co. in Cleveland began operating, Mayor Baker decreed that his market superintendent must not be allowed to have a cent's worth of profit out of the enterprise; not even 6 per cent interest on $1,000 the gentleman had invested to help along the venture. The public officials eliminated from the company, the company becomes. private, in fact as well as in name. By the way, the Cleveland papers have been strangely silent on the fish question for some weeks.

Again, the enterprise is not only foolish, but harmful. Citizens and taxpayers of the municipality engaged in lines of business attacked by the city; men who form a part of the city and who rightly thought they could invest their money in a private enterprise in the city without governmental competition; are subjected to financial injury. The further along The further along

the thing is carried the more harm is done.

But after all, the big objection to it is that it is opposed to the accepted system of government. It is socialism. It offers a regime of slavery as opposed to one of freedom. Nor does it make the issue clear by attempting the change as an entirety in any one city. It is insidious. inserts a potato wedge here and a fish wedge there, and by and by, at some point in its harmful career, it might create a demand for a complete change, on the part of people who have obtained some cheap things and

NORTON T. HORR, ATTORNEY, CLEVELAND, O.

It

do not realize the cost of those cheap things to other people and the enormous cost that would be entailed to the people at large by a radical and demolishing change in the entire system of government.

The high cost of living is no new thing. It has been with the American people before; it will be again. Now and in the future, when it arrives, it will be corrected in normal ways. Meantime the compensation of labor rises with it, in some measure palliating it.

The socialistic danger manifested. by these trial flights of politicians and