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It would really be a splendid thing if the Home Market Club would send over to Britain a few of its brightest speakers on economic science. sometimes appals me when I come up against the abysmal ignorance of the average British operative on industrial and economic matters; an ignorance too often shared by the ordinary middle class merchant, manufacturer, and business man generally.

Here are we-co-victors with our

allies over the greatest military Power of the age, standing on the doorstep of the Promised Land of peace, progress, and happiness, and yet wrangling among ourselves over such tin pot questions as to whether men shall have half an hour out of eight hours for refreshment. Important cities in the United Kingdom

have actually been held up and trade disorganized by such matters. Really, is it physically possible for men to do eight hours' honest work without food? It is just the pigheadedness among the employers and men that prevents us from reaping in industry the full benefits of our victory.

We have really done splendidly as a nation during the war. We increased our steel production from seven million tons in 1914-15 to nearly fourteen million tons at the end of 1918. Our shipbuilding for 1918 has passed all previous records. With half the railroad wagons we had in use in 1913, we have been carrying double the weight of goods. We have greatly increased our textile production and developed the organization of the industry on lines of greater efficiency. We have added

four million acres to our arable area, chiefly through the use of more and better farm machinery. We have done all this and a great deal more, and mark this, too, it has been done under war conditions, with half our working population withdrawn from industry, and under all the handicaps of the time. Employers and employes all bent their united energies to the job. Now there are some cranks who would like to go back to our old stick-in-the-mud style which has been the curse of British industry for a generation or more. Our working people, principally the men, and some also of the old type of employers, simply cannot, or will not, see that big production means cheap production, good wages, plenty of trade, and general satisfaction. Many English mechanics have but one idea at work, and that is to make a job last as long as possible, with the covert idea to find a job for some one else. All that sort of thing makes things dear. What we want now are things cheap. Many artisans here simply will not use certain machines because they do the work too quickly. That's just what we want; that's what the machine is for. But the man grins and says, "Oh, no, the result will be no work left for me!"

Big production has become a matter of life and death. Our industrial success in the future depends on getting the utmost possible production out of our industrial equipment, out of the plant we have so enormously increased during the war and which we must continue to develop and keep up to date. Big production, big

wages, big profits, low prices, all these go together and are not mutually antagonistic.

Yarrow's Shipbuilding Company is gradually removing its works from Glasgow to the Pacific Coast, and the company is doing this they say because industrial prospects are better in America than on the Clyde. Mr. Harold Yarrow says: "American workmen in any given time handle twice as much material as a corresponding number of men on this side do. We find that the transport facilities are satisfactory, and that the costs are quite low. For instance, we can get even over here on the Clyde steel plates and angles made in America at a price which compares favorably with our plates. and angles made on the Clyde."

The labor troubles in Britain are influencing all employers. I mean the spirit of the workers generally throughout the country. In America all wish to do as much work as they can, and they are allowed to do it.. The feeling in this country is to do as little as you can, and to prevent everybody else from doing more than that. Even the man who wants to work his best is not allowed to do it. He is prevented by his fellows. It is. a hopeless kind of doctrine, the doctrine of restriction of output; but unfortunately it is regarded by workmen of this country as if it were an article of religion. They believe honestly in the doctrine. If we could maintain wages of ten million workers at $5 a week over pre-war levels, that would mean the addition to our home market of consuming power to

this country in France in a manner that was lauded by all the allied nations.

Above all, it gives confidence to the people who have the business acumen, to grasp the proffered opportunity and start new business ventures themselves.

To continue this national capacity to overcome obstacles, to succeed wages must be kept up. In a majority of cases wages are the principal source, and in millions of cases. the only source of money received. The more money the American people receive the more they will buy American products, under an adequate productive tariff law.

The American market in all its phases and conditions belongs to the American people, and no Congress that is really patriotic will attempt to deport American capital, destroy American industry, curtail American production, and reduce American wages just to foster some delusive idea of cheapness which will never come until unemployment impairs the ability of the people to buy.

Contrary to the ranting statements of demagogues, the overshadowing profits of American industry are derived not from the increased prices to the consumers, but from the increased volume of their sales. There are no exceptions. The men who accumulate great fortunes through American production, either industrial or agricultural, are not the men who charge excessive prices, but the men who sell the cheapest and best serve the public.

Looking backwards from years to come, the present prosperity of the

United States will appear insignificant in comparison with the coming Brobdingnagian prosperity of this country and all its inhabitants, provided the present rate of wages is continued.

Except in a few cases where they are abnormally high, the present wages can be continued. There is no alternative, they must be continued. They are the true source of the latent power of the United States.

There is no occasion to reduce wages, provided we practically eliminate competition from other nations that pay less wages; restore perfect confidence and create the largest possible amount of work for every American wage earner, by restricting all foreign competition. The buying capacity of the American people is much greater now than it was at the close of the Civil War, consequently home production that guarantees American work and wages will be increased in corresponding manner.

The tariff is the gate that controls our national progress, our productive prosperity, and the volume of our work and wages. We lowered that gate after the War of 1812 and nearly bankrupted the country. For proof of this statement I refer you to Woodrow Wilson's History of the American people.

The question now arises, shall we follow his true teachings promulgated before they were distorted by political ambitions, or shall we follow his false leadership prejudiced by his ambition to become become the modern George Washington of the world's League of Nations?

If we take the latter course we

surrender both our economic and political independence; and the unconquered spirit of the American people would soon compel them to fight another war of independence, an inevitable war, now camouflaged as the world's peace.

America's great boom dates from the enactment of the Morrill tariff at the opening of the Civil War. At the close of that war, in spite of the worst shortage of industrial products ever known, the United States practically eliminated foreign competition by continuing the high war tariff duties, increased by the premium on gold demanded for their payment. Industrial business furnished the lion's share of work for the discharged soldiers and military attaches of all kinds. Wages advanced by the demands of the war, the increased cost of living and the shortage of workmen, were not as a rule reduced. The surplus wages of industry built our vast system of railroads and developed the country.

The rapid increase in the buying capacity of the American people, expended almost exclusively for American products, developed the great American market and continued to increase work and wages for the people. The effect of these conditions created the unparalleled prosperity of this great nation. That broad highway to success is still an open thoroughfare for the United the United States? Why abandon it now?

But very few patriotic American people really wish to abandon an adequate tariff law. For more than fifty years the Democratic party has

dodged the words "free trade.” During all that time they have demanded a competitive tariff, a tariff to control trusts, a tariff for revenue only, but never a tariff to increase American production and furnish work for American labor.

All that time they have made frantic efforts to make the American wage earners believe that they were being robbed by the tariff; but the fact that millions of immigrants month after month deposited in the savings banks more money than they ever earned in the old country, counteracted the effect of their false teachings.

Even the large importers, who with scarcely an exception, advocate the lowest possible tariff duties, are far more prosperous under adequate tariff laws. The failure of large importing firms like H. B. Claflin Co., Siegel-Cooper Co., Greenhut & Co., and numerous other firms, under the present tariff law, before it was superseded by the imperative demands of the war, is evidence of this statement.

The advanced position of American labor, their assured pecuniary success, the advantages they enjoy over all other wage earners, is not a question of argument,-no intelligent person doubts their financial supremacy over all the world.

It is the imperative duty of every wage earner to eliminate partisan prejudice, class hatred, and thoroughly investigate and see if they can find any way in which foreign competition can increase American production and maintain American

wages.