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--'S-il EDITORIAL PAGE OF THE WASHINGTONTIMES WASHINGTON SEPTEMBER 17, 1918 fc, THE NATIONAL DAILY B&3fea r$Jjg?r r.ec. U S. Tatent Office. hjjjjv' ARTHUR BRISBANE. Editor and Owner EDGAR D. SHAW. Publisher Entered as second class matter at the Po?tofflce at Washington. D. C Published Every Evening (Including Sundays) by TheWashHirfnri Time Pnmnnnv Miin.v Hldf.. Pennsylvania Ave, llall Subscriptions: 1 year (Inc. Sundays). $7.50: 3 Months, SI.05: 1 Month. C5e TUESDAT. SEPTEMBER 17, 1S18. Big Business Can It Be Too Big? Not If It Is Honest. Without Big Packers "Who "Would Feed the Army? Don't Forget Your Card By T. E. Powers 1 1 A Federal commission recommends that the Govern ment take over the packing business of the United States, which is the business of supplying the people of this coun try, the people of other countries, and the armies of the United States with meat. It is a most important business. For the army it is as important, at least, as furnishing weapons and ammuni tion, for without the food, REGULARLY AND PROMPTLY SUPPLIED, the army could not exist. It is not necessary to point out what would be the dan ger and folly of risking any serious interference, WHILE THE WAR LASTS, with the meat industry of the United States. What the people and Government want is EFFI CIENCY, the ability to produce. , We have had our samples of national failure, in the lack of coal, in the flying machine fiasco, and the absolute railroad incompetency which compelled the Government to add railroading to its other tasks. The meat industry, the work of gigantic packing con cerns, has been, whatever its other defects, ONE HUN DRED PER CENT EFFICIENT. When the Government wanted sixty million pounds of beef delivered on board ship, properly refrigerated, within sixty days, five men gathered in a room in Chicago were able to say, "You shall have it." The beef was delivered. Food for the people here at home, food for the nations that we are helping, and food always prompt for the sol diers in France this has been forthcoming without a hitch. It is unnecessary to assert that so long as this war lasts there should be no destructive interference with the machine that works in this way. The achievement of the packers of the United States is important because it illustrates this truth: r THE BIGGER THE BUSINESS THE BETTER, when it is properly supervised by the Government, and when the economies of great organization are divided upon a fair basis between the people and the organizers. If instead of five or six gigantic packing concerns in the United States there had been ten thousand or more little individual butchering concerns, THIS COUNTRY COULD NOT HAVE FED ITS ARMY. The Government can deal with five or six men, give its orders, get what it wants. It could not deal with ten thousand separate operators, and they could not do the work. A great business, such as the packing industry or the steel industry, is, compared to a little business, what Niagara Falls is, compared to a tiny stream. From Niagara you can get power worth while, and at a nominal cost. A little stream is not worth harnessing. The power to be got from it isn't worth what the machinery would cost to use it. YESYou MtfPftM) Fortunately for this country, and for the American army, there was actually existing a gigantic organization that could deal with the Government on the basis of tens of millions of pounds at a time. Most fortunately, the meat packers of the United States, selfishly, of course, but intelligently and efficiently, had organized under American control the beef and mutton supplies of South America, the Argentine, Brazil, and other countries. In South America, by United States methods, United States organizers and United States money, cattle are slaughtered, the meat frozen and shipped to our army by inexens 01 minions 01 pounos, ana oy uiutjud STATES CITIZENS. In South America, as here, the by-products are saved, more than sufficient to pay all the profits the packers take. In the South, where the animals are slaughtered, the meats are canned, shipped directly to Europe to the army, together with the fresh frozen meat. If the Government of the United States wants for its army in France, or for its friends, the allies, ten or fifty or a nunarea million pounas 01 oouin American beet, it doesn t telegraph southward from Washington, but northward TO CHICAGO. Chicago sends, with the power of organization, huge capital and thorough industrial efficiency, to the soldiers and workers in Europe, beef direct from the South Amer ican fields. Only the biggest kind of BIG BUSINESS could have accomplished this. Lucky for this country that big busi ness, looking ahead, using the power of millions, organized and developed the beef industry of South America as well as that of this country. Big business alone could have done it. You must have a great deal of water in one place to produce the power of Niagara. You must have a great deal of money and a great deal of intelligence in one place to produce the efficiency of the packing industry. One good soul will ask, "What becomes of your the ories of Government ownership?" The answer is, Govern ment ownership will have enough to do for the present de veloping this country, irrigating deserts, draining swamps, developing roads, canals, railroads, telegraphs' telephones, the express business all natural monopolies that the peo ple NOW can and should control and own. Natural monopolies, their value based exclusively upon the increasing birth rate, should be in the hands of the Government. And they will be, for the war has taught the nation tnat much. Enterprises with minute industrial detail, the making of a hundred different kinds of steel, the slaughtering of i. (Continued in Last Column.). 1 ' t I ...''' .'"' '1EL" I ' ' ' f 5X1 LI5.TEN. WIPE , DOWtt HERrTk IWNHUUI AVI UASOJf-MUON.Ky I I fTs JUPnilV.U Lam -iTiiec; niii i I s l itv n wuuniii I riiini!. , l uu ii J flHD IT INTHriNSIDEftJCKETOFiy 0 pa j) jl BROWN'CQAT.? HURRW DOWNaWTHJT. gg aiS? ifF talPJNCHED;' . fvs. Sfe) lTM ftPff Wrr v S ) us isr ft i u7J3j jh irry-77 i JrKj 0 T JL YJJ-"yZ'3A'3 111 in T"? I jiti In Jrl cL I 7T v V y l"S T' is rtf i ZZr JtLSA Mil L r y V '" ' f ll&t1 I Ml rrty V wi, L , 3HHL -S xjny -m VrSlLsV Ifel & ao KsPyQx- :gi3m' ': Mfii rslte3-:MjWVi? .illj I -; ( m rPT feu oixJL SXS9. m Uiziw l s s sw i p 'J'WWWMMWWWWPWsWMMWWMmiimm,J Beatrice Fairfax Writes of the Problems and Pitfalls of the War Workers Especially for Washington Women I HAVE a letter from a -woman who says: "Why can I never get decent service in a lunch room where there arc woman waitresses? I make it a rule to tip, even if my lunch costs no more than 40 cents yet there I sit, 'like patience on a monument,' while any man can get prompt and excellent service." "Sometimes while I am waiting three male creatures next me, are successively fed, and ro their way rejoicing, while I must wait for a sulky: "what's yours?" "These men do not tip, as a rule, beyond saying something like this: "What's your first name, anyhow, Peach or Pip pin?" and the waitress goes on her way rejoicing. "And there I sit 'till I lose my patience and leave the place, or apply to the head waiter for a little attention. Perhaps vou can explain this, which is be yond my comprehension. I am a business woman, myself, and I try to have patience with my sex." Began With the Apple. The explanation for this, goes back a good many yeare to the Garden of Eden, to be exact. Where Adam ate the apple not because he cared for apples, par ticularly, but because a lady tempted him and it is only human to succumb to temptation, at the hands of a lady. And they have been keeping it up ever since these children of Adam and Eve doing something outside the line or regular duty, for a smile, a compliment, or just because some one of the opnoslto sex expects it. And while my sympathy goes out to the poor lady, sitting In the lunch room, wrapped in savage stoicism; with a dime, or maybe 15 cents, conspicuously displayed as a reward to one who pays no attention, and who rn the mean time neglects the tip and rushes breathless to the kitchen for the sake of a compliment Is this the question: "What's your first name. Peach or Pippin?" that does the trick with the wait ress whose name may be Mary Jane, and look It, too. For a sec ond she flashes Into something that may very properly warrant either name. And through a rose-color-cd haze she floats to the kitchen and battles with the cook for the best thing on the rarvlng table What's in a Tip! What's a tip compared to the deliciously heady feeling a compll- TODAY'S TOPIC DON'T BLAME THE WAITRESS. ment can give? Perhaps it Isn't true. Even Mary Jane, alias Pippin, battling with the cook over the question of white meat may realize its pinchbeck quality, but for the moment it enables her to hold up her head like a beauty. And the business woman sits flashing her dime, meantime, and not getting even a nibble for it. Waitresses come and waitresses go, hut tbo woman patron sits on forever, to once more take liber ties with Tennyson's Brook. A Pippin is not especially inter ested in a detached dime, she does not get enough of them to change the map for her. A few represent something she has heard vaguely described as "unearned increment," pcalod to her as a patron saint. She is more interested in Mary Pickford, Elsie Ferguson and Billie Burke. And so finally, with an air of resignation, the waitress inquires: "What's yours?" And the business woman, with the acid patience that benefits .an expert stenographer shamefully treated, repeats the order she has been champing like a bit for the past twenty minutes. She confers the dime on Pippin, as one who is angelic enough to reward a crime, and departs. Attraction on a Higher Plane. Very probably the business woman fails to grasp that things are con ducted in the office where she is employed on much the same prin cipal as they are with' Pippin in the lunch room; only on a higher plane. And not only in that office, but pretty much all over the world AFTER THE WAR SALVAGE September 13, 1318. To the Editor of THE TIMES: It has been a matter of resret to mo that I have not been so eiiuated aa to Join the ranks of the "dollar-a-year men,"' and kivo to my country what I haie to impart from a sturo of experience accumulated in the courj-e of forty yearn In one department of the bulldine material line. I have been very much Impressed tt.lth Henry Ford's Idea of supplying farms to our crippled soldiers, and with the attitude of The Times In Mr. Brisbane's column of yesterday. With the result that it has borne in upon me that we have one great factor, constituting fully one-half the in vestment required for Improvements, bought and paid for. All over the country. In the build ing of cantonments for the training of different sections of the array and navy, as well as temporary office buildings so numorous in Washing ton, we have accumulated i vast amount of building material, con sisting of lumber, tile, wall board. planter board, doors and windows and the frames surrounding them, hard- warp, plumbing. et Not onlv iloes this material exist at the proem time, but ih-i tcni- Ipcrary ! tn which it is being put should make it as available as new. if carefully taken down Instead of being "wrecked" by the bold profiteer, whose function might thereby be per petuated after the war. Tho location of tho cantonments is a feature that should bo cu-efully considered. The camps in and about New Vork and Nw England arc avail able for the abandoned farm.-; about Washington and Hampton Roads, the large, unimproved bectlons of Vir ginia. In Ohio and at Louisville, the same conditions exist in Tennessee and Kentucky; Camp Grant at Rock ford, 111., would be available for Wis consin cut-off timber lands. Battle Creek could supply Michigan rut-off timber lands; Camp Lewis for tho Northwestern country; vicinity of San Francisco and southern Cali fornia, the Taclflc coast country: Texas for the Southwest; the camps all through the South, east of the Mississippi river, available for the improvement of much land only awaiting the settler to "bloom like a rose." Add to this the fact that vc have two great public-spirited men like Senator Henry Ford, for the legisla tion, and Jullm Rnxenwald. Inr ad-! ministration may I not hope tat m I idea is a good one and te It put ' "over the top?" It. R TARSO.N. I 1333 G street northwest. I Give Watchmen More Than Tea But At Present Wages and Prices Thifa About All There Is For a Watchman to Buy. By EAEL GODWIN. ! 0n Saturday a watchman employed by the Department of Agriculture called at my office to present the text of a !::., n a.i x. xi i.t. i. ijcuuuu iu vuujjress mai ine pay oi me wjucu iwrce oa increased It is now two dollars a day. On Sunday this newspaper published a statement fcam ;a responsible officer of the army showing that food prices had increased in 'Washingon as much as 356 per cent. Can there be any further argument as to the need of ! more than two dollars a day for a Government watchman or any omer Kind ot watcnmanT The statement from Major J. 0. Skinner, the officer men tioned, contains the bitter consolation that tea alone has remained at its ante-bellum level, the average price of forty cents having remained stable during these years of soaring prices. Perhaps the Congress of the United States believes that men hired to guard the valuable papers land treasures of a Government office can live on tea all day long and year in and year out. Tea is a great drink, but what the Government watch man wants is a little bulk to his nourishment and a few j dollars left over for a rainy day. There is every reason on ; earth for the immediate passage of legislation raising these pitiful salaries, and NO reason why the NOLAN THREE-DOLLAR-A-DAY bill should not be enacted. ! The watchman at the Department of Agriculture ivonld do well to studv the aims and neeomnltRrimpnfQ nf fhn VoJ. 'Aoftrtv, P TV7,1 TPmiA,.nn rni.,.j- ,. ! ..i """" " i'tucini ojuipiujco. jluui, UbSUUIUllon, WHQ more than 12,000 members in "Washington alone, has already accomplished many fine things in tho way of bettering condi tions and getting better wages. Meantime, let me plead with Congress to put itself in the place of mature men called upon to stand guard over Govern ment property. Is there any man in Congress who thinks two dollars a day is enough for a Government employe now, or any other time? a afmiiTMiii.Ti!.; HEARD AND SEEN we find the fatal quality of attrac tion as the great motive force. Ever since Eve pointed out the apple that took her fancy, and Adam picked it against his better judgment that mysterious force called attraction has been doing things, not according to Hoyle, but by strange and devious wavs that are past understanding. No one in THAT office would, of course, inquire if the Expert'3 first name was Pippin? But the president of the concern, a terribly important old gentleman, inti mates that he doesn't know how he could accomplish everything ho has to do in one day, if Providence had not sent him so expert a ste nographer. And the Expert, who is some what pa&t the age of foolishnes.s, doesn't mind the extra hour or so she spends after closing time, to get things "cleaned up." It's that kind of compliment that docs the trick with her. And Charlie Brown, though he is years younger than the Kxpert, likes her enormously. She im presses him as the rlsht sort for her Job and she is quite amusing, too. So despite the fifteen years' difference in their ages tliny have some very pleasant little chata that help to brighten the dally grind. Now the Expert would not bo human if sho were not flattered by young Brown's interest: of course she knows he is engaged to tho Smith girl, but she likes to talk to him, nevertheless. And she has two or three times called the presi dent's attention to bis work and how conscientious he i about things. And so it goes, the Kxpert rail ing at Mary .lane, alias Pippin, for neglecting her duty In not waiting on another woman, fails to recog nize the same thing on her own plane. j " Also the Cook. The cook may seldom sec tho master of the house, but it Is the way ho likes his toast, his coffee, his steak that Is the unwritten law of the presiding genius of tlu kitchen. Unless the cook happens to be a chef, and then what Madame likes will be remembered. It is for this reason, though they fail to grasp it, that the most ar dent feminist will balk at engag ing a woman doctor, dentist, or lawyer. As one of them once said to me in explanation. "It's so hard to obey a fellov. woman, there's nothing prinutiw .I'mni l .nil i I'm so a'Jautfil ' " soi to t ' point whio 1 cujV ufiUb' piinn- tive again." j There is a mean person who runs a cigar stand. An army sergeant went up to the newsstand and asked if the New York papers had arrived, and upon being answered in the af firmative, requested permission to look at the New York Sun. The man replied, "What the hell do you think I am running? A reading room for dirty soldiers? If yon want a paper, you'll buy it." The ser geant paid his nickel and then told the dealer what he thought of htm. The incident is so unusual, because of tho almost uniform courteous treatment of tho boys in khaki by Washingtonians, that I am printing ib wun ine none tnai even a nerson of the cigar man's caliber may profit by Uie telling, though certainly he has gained nothing pecuniarily by his gratuitous insult. LIEUTENANT HAVTLAND. late of the Semmes Motor Company, ex pects to go to France soon. CHARLES M. KICKETTS favors me with an old program of a' gala day In August, 1300, at River Springs, Md, BOB BLACKISTONE'S place. A feature of the performance was PUNCH REH, king of Punch and Judy performeVs, about whom so many people have spoken lately. Mr. Rickctts v.as on the. program for "A solo on the lawn." When ED SCHJI1D, Washington's cnampion "joiner," reached Atlanta, Ga., on his whirl around the circle as Grand Supreme Monarch of the Mystic Order of tho Veiled Prophets of the Enchanted Realm, the Atlanta prophets had a pair of fake detec tives at the station to arrest our well-known townsman. They hand cuffed Ed, rode him to the police station, and all of that Called it a Practical Joke. Grand ideas they have in Atlanta, I say. Get this in your mind: Buy a Liberty Bond total, Bex your money on tin XT. S. X. Yesterday The siren on the Evans Buildinr failed to signal for prayer at noon. Also the time ball on the State, War and Navv Buildinir failed ta fall. John Early escaped again. Gas-less Sunday did not seem to impress two Ford bus drivers, who were soliciting business at a quarter a head for rides through Arlington. High School Cadets. Please start a fond to purchase two brown derbies for H. F. B. and J. L., for the most foolish idea that has yet appeared In print Putting khail leggings on the high school cadets would make them look less military than they do now. What is the idea of adding perhaps another dollar to the cost of the cadet uni form, to prevent strangers in town from thinking ie cadets are ushers or bell boys? The cadet regiment is in the neighborhood of thirty years old. and the cadet uniform needs no embellishment to please even the eye of these two critics. Do these Individuals sell khaki leggings, I wonder? I hope that Sir. Kramer will read their suggestion and pro nounce it piffle. OLD CADET NOW IN THE SERV ICE. SQ.VGS OF A DAT I.OXG DEAD. Sicim out O'Grady, you hare no time to farr. you're itranded on a billots. Tventu mile from anywhere. If you don't mind your ciufaeM, There will be a vacant chair, Bo tidm out, O'Grady, rwim out. BIG BUSINESS (Continued from First Column.) animals and saving certain glands for medical purposes, the utilization of everything in the animal such work for the present should be left to the intense, concentrated and SELFISH attention of the individual. Another question, of course, follows: "Would you put the farmers and the consumers at the mercy of a gigantic organization?" NO! The Government of this country should protect the farmer producing the meat and the consumer eating it. And the governments of the South American republics should do the same and they may be trusted to do it. Strict supervision and control of the people's food sup ply, insuring its sale at a reasonable profit, is Government business. For the gigantic meat business of the United States it has been said, and so far as we know, without contra diction, that the packers' profit does not exceed 3 cents on the dollar of business. What is infinitely more important to the nation's, prosperity, the by-products saved in the packing industry on a gigantic scale, that could not be and ARE NOT saved in the little butcher shop, actually produce a larger sum than the total profit of the big packers. In other words, they actually save what they get. Big business, properly supervised for the producer's and consumer's protection, giving to the public a fair part of the profits of co-operation, cannot be TOO BIG. The bigger the country s business tne netier, 11 nonest. And Government ownership o the natural monopolies of the country cannot be too complete or come too soon, i