Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume], October 21, 1916, Image 1

About Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1902-1919

Image provided by: University of Utah, Marriott Library

                
Iff'- 'BH
BWflf H
HE AH H V Bl T H V H E jft v H kkVHi AHl bm AbH Aw sBrBM aflrvBa. r T nlP
j ' vl- 27 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, OCTOBER 21, 1916 No. 16;
The Very Chiefest Issue
ft C1 LECTION day is drawing very near. The
V -J presidential election is of momentous iuter-
est this year. The man who will he at the helm
H this year will meet stormier and more confused
I seas than any president has met for half a cen
jf tury. There will he troubles from both without
I and within, which, will try the brain and the
1 nerye of the president so fiercely that unless he is
I of iron fibre he will fail. And the troubles from
,1 ' within are liable to be the more severe.
w Our labor troubles are acute and if our land
P.: I is left open for the inflow without restriction of
p foreign goods and the hordes from southern and
J" eastern Europe, we shall have a state of affairs
f almost or quite as trying as would be a civil or
U foreign war.
h Indeed a war calls up the patriotism of a peo-
I pie. A mighty trade and labor depression, accom-
t panied with a vast inflow of cheap foreign
r goods and cheap laborers to enter at once into
if competition with our own laboring forces, would
I f engender more ill feelings and a greater desire
i for vengeance than could a war.
j A little war submarine the other day appeared
i off the New England coast and sunk two or three
' foreign ships.
I The incident was enough to smash stocks and
I make a half panic in the east lest trade be in-
1' terrupted. What then will happen when some
, morning the news comes that a truce has been
called between the nations at war beyond the sea?
j. It will come to this country as the hurried
order to an engineer down in the engine room of
a ship to "stop and back at full speed" does. And
as then the ship will tremble through all its
I length and breadth.
Well, it might happen that the electoral vote
) of Utah may be the deciding one in the election of
president this year.
i Republicans should keep this in mind. There
are many important questions under consideration
this year, but the election of president is the
. ' overmastering one, and every vote should count,
' for this is the most important year, and more
f momentous questions are bearing upon the result
at the polls than the people ' have been tried
I with before for quite half a century.
Disquieting Apprehension
A GIFTED local merchant was asked yesterday
i how business was and what the outlook for
! future business looked. He replied, in sub-
' stance, as follows:
& I "Artflcial conditions are giving business a fe-
I I verish, artificial, intermittent pace now, the un-
i f certainty of the immediate future, makes anything
, f like steadiness of thought impossible.
"It is like riding over a bridge that is half un
1 dermined by a flood and the passenger is won-
U, dering whether the bridge will stand until the
train gets over or not.
"There is a double uncertainty. One is, how
long will the war last? The other, what will we
have to face when it closes?
("It is understood that England has "a three
years' copper supply already on hand. She has
forbidden her colonies to export grain and doubt-
L
LlAiL-te ftL:-. .. . .. ,
less has issued the same order to India and Egypt
to store all their cotton. She has about all the
merchant ships that are engaged; with the clos
ing of the war she will rely upon her trade to
keep her interest paid and for credit to borrow
more money.
"She will borrow all the surplus money that has
come to us through the sale of war material and
her struggle will be to absolutely dominate ocean
commerce, and to deliver her products in outside
countries on such terms as those countries can
not compete against. And the chiefest- of all
those countries is our own.
"She knows the labor conditions in our country,
she knows that when the war closes her own la
borers will work for what they can get, that
they will be obliged to in order to live.
"She counts on those facts to enable her to
borrow money here, believing that men and com
panies with a surplus of money will prefer loan
ing it to starting new enterprises under present
labor revision ideas. It will be all the more
trying if thousands of those stranded by the
war come here to enter into direct competition
with our union labor.
"Then while it is the idea of the Allies to crush
Germany utterly and eliminate her from Irade
calculations for twenty-five years at least, they
will not succeed. Her territory is all intact, and
to conquer her utterly is a bigger contract than
all concerned can carry out.
"The war will hardly cease before German mer
chant ships will resume their old routes and
German factories will again supply those ships
with every manufactured product that the out
side world needs.
"France will quickly be ready to send away her
products, for there is no way that any of those
countries can begin to recuperate, except through
foreign trade! No country from which they ex
pect to realize or have as much through trade as
from our own.
"We have no merchant marine, and no protec
tion against the flood of goods of all kinds that
will pour in upon us.
"It is generally understood that were the war
to close tomorrow, business would fall as flat
in our country as did stocks the morning after it
was known that a German submarine had sunk
two or three English merchant ships off the New
England coast.
"How would it be with us six months or a year
after the close of that war?
"Our country is not unlike a farmer who has
a great Held of wheat just ripening, but no fence
of any description around it, while just over a
low hill a mighty herd of cattle are lowing with
hunger, and the' question is, will that farmer ever
be able to harvest and save his crop?"
There Is No Hope From Them
THE other day when the news came that the
( .rman war submarine had sunk three or four
fort i,. ships off the New .England coast, next
morning the New York market went to pieces,
and has not yet fully recovered. When asked the
reason, the answer came back that it was through
fear that our ocean commerce was liable to be
blockaded. M
The German submarine was no menace to M
American ships. Why the anxiety? H
Then came back the humiliating answer: jH
"Why, the United States has no ships, we have H
to depend upon English ships to carry away jH
what we have to send, and to bring to us what H
we buy abroad." M
It is more than two years since the war burst M
in its fury upon Europe. It came so suddenly H
that our eastern ports have many interned Ger-
man merchant ships. The need of an American H
merchant marine was by the war made most viv-
idly apparent. M
President Wilson admitted recently our help- H
lessness in that respect. jH
In full evidence was the fact that England H
and Germany have both grown rich through flieir H
shipping during the past thirty years. And the H
further fact has been just as apparent that the H
chiefest factor in. the .case of both those coun-
tries has been the carrying trade to and from H
the United States. One would have thought that H
the president and every member of congress H
would at once have asked: "How has this been H
possible?" and would at once have moved to H
abate the wrong that our country had so long suf- H
fered. H
But when the president and his party friends H
were informed that England had depended upon H
subsidies and Germany upon bounties, to keep H
their ships on the sea, that was enough. Neither H
bounties nor subsidies were approved of in the H
confederate constitution. H
The president evolved a plan to purchase or H
builcJ a few ships and run them to a few foreign H
ports and to make up the deficit they would sure- H
ly entail by drawing it from the treasury which H
the people through taxes have to keep filled. Fi- H
nally just before congress adjourned this year, H
such a bill was pushed through. This is a presi- H
dential year, except for that there would have H
been no bill to re-establish an American merchant H
marine. H
We are justified in that assertion, because of H
the thoughts and words of that party in the past H
and because of the nature of the bill itself. H
It carries no inducement to try for a closer H
walk with foreign powers, no promise that the H
ships will be run for a single month after Eng- H
land and Germany shall be able to resume their H
carrying of foreign commerce. H
There is no hint in it that the framers had '
the least conception of what a great nation's for- M
eign commerce should include. The bill is but an H
afterbirth of a thought that first took form on a H
cotton field, and which, reduced to words, was: H
"Ships are like camels, mere beasts of burden. H
Let them bring in what they please, and take M
away our cotton. H
"We have a monopoly in our CQtton, which can- M
not be broken. Why should we care for other H
industries?" H
"We care for no intimate, close business rela- M
tions with any foreign power; we are not inter- H
ested in the affairs of outside nations and care H
not for the opportunities which those countries J