18 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



July 10, 1919 



wliicli Hoods employes live are not as they should be. The labor 

 jirobleni today is a very serious one, not only because of the ques- 

 tion of labor, but because of greater difficulty in keeping employes 

 satisfied and in fact in many cases to keep them at all. 



The tendency in all industries is certainly toward betterment of 

 these conditions and a return to the employe conimeusurate with 

 the work performed. Aggressive employers have long since 

 abandoned the attitude that provision for the comfort and the real 

 social as well as monetary welfare of employes was Eutopian theory 

 having no place ill modern business and industry. The betterment 

 of the employes' conditions is now recognized as most essential to 

 successful ojieratiou and the most progressive industrial units 

 spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars merely in investiga- 

 tion and carrying out plans for the real betterment of the condi- 

 tions under which employes work and live. 



There is vast room for improvement in the conditions surround- 

 ing those laboring in the production of lumber. Lumbermen as a 

 whole have a great deal of work ahead of them in accomplishing 

 such reforms. 



The business men who listened to Mayor Olson's analysis of the 

 northwestern situation immediately proceeded to organize for the 

 betterment of conditions in and around Chicago, the purpose being 

 to ward off such developments as came to the northwest. 



There is no doubt in the mind of any man who will franklv look 

 the situation in the face that the tendency in laboring circles today 

 is to take every advantage of present conditions to influence not 

 only wages but living conditions. These betterments will come 

 about in direct and indirect ways, that is, through strikes and 

 other means of forcing the situation and also through legislation. 



It can not be denied that the menace of the tendency for labor 

 to influence national legislation in favor of labor and against em- 

 ployers is a real thing that must be recognized aud faced. The only 

 way of preventing labor from forcing conditions that will be all in 

 their favor and strictly against employers is for employers to take 

 the matter in hand themselves and meet the issue in a way which 

 will check such tendencies. 



In a Deep Hole 



FROM WHATEVER ANGLE the railroad question is viewed, gov- 

 ernment ownership is given a black eye. The increase in the 

 number of employes, following the taking over of the roads by the 

 government, presents a lesson well worth the learning. The number 

 of employes in January, 1919, was 139,846 more than in December, 

 1917. It might be assumed that the roads were doing more work at 

 the latter date than at the former, and that more men were needed 

 to take care of the increased volume of business, but that was not the 

 case. The railroads were handling a smaller volume of business in 

 January, 1919, than in December, 1917, yet the working force had been 

 largely increased. This appears to uphold the contention that the 

 government must always have more men in doing a given amount of 

 work than are found necessary when the same work is privately done. 



The employment of more men naturally increased the expense of 

 operation. The railroad labor cost was $1,260,000,000 dollars per 

 year greater at the close of the war than at the . beginning. The 

 labor cost of operating the railroads now piles up at the rate of $3, 

 000,000,000 a year. It is not fair to charge all of that increase to 

 government niismanagenient. for increases in wages have taken 

 jilace outside of government employmeut as well as in. 



In spite of advances in freight and passenger charges, the railroad 

 administration is running behind at the rate of $2,000,000 a day. 

 It is not easy to say how much of this is due to mismanagement and 

 how much to unavoidable circumstances, but it is safe to say that had 

 the roads remained in private hands, they would have performed as 

 good service as they have performed under government management, 

 and would nrft now be running in the hole two million dollars every 

 day. 



The public must make good the shortage which continues to pile 

 up. It must be met by taxes, bonds, or higher rates, and in the long 



run it matters little in what way the money to pay the shortage is 

 squeezed out of the people, since they are bound to make the loss 

 good. 



The government is trying to let go of the railroads and turn them 

 liack to their owners. There is danger of increasing the damage 

 tliat has already been done, for, to return them to the owners, with 

 an enormously augmented expense bill and diminished business, is to 

 invite a financial crash of the first magnitude. The government can 

 go into the peojile 's pockets to make good deficits, but private owners 

 of the roads cannot do that, at least not quickly and directly enough 

 to stave off receivership. 



Kellogg's View of It 



SOME TIME AGO Henry S. Graves, United States forester, started 

 a ball rolling which continues to roll, but the motion is not 

 always in the same direction. In an address, which has been widely 

 published and commented on, he advocated a radical change in forestry 

 laws, by which most private forests would be put under federal con- 

 trol, and timber cutting, fire fighting, and other constructive and de- 

 fensive measures would pass, to a certain extent, out of private hands 

 and would be placed under government management. The state and 

 the individual would give up certain powers and rights, and federal 

 authority would be extended in a corresponding degree. 



The suggested plan has attracted much attention, has met with 

 some approval and some adverse criticism. Forester Graves sent an 

 outline of the plan to R. S. Kellogg, who was formerly chief of wood 

 utilization in the United States Forest Service, later secretary of the 

 National Lumber Manufacturers ' Association, and now connected with 

 the News Priut Service Bureau, New York. Mr. Kellogg was asked 

 for his opinion of the plan, and the following quotation is from his 

 reply : 



"In uiy judgment it is not practicable to line up all the timber 

 states in the multitude of details that a program of 'mandatory 

 forestry ' loquires. Even in the one single matter of forest taxation, 

 concerning which foresters and timber land owners have been in sub- 

 stantial agreement, little jirogress has been made after years of agi- 

 tation. How much longer will it take to make progress in matters 

 in which foresters aud timber land owners are in opposition f As a 

 matter of fact, we are now coming to see that the states are very loath 

 to make tax concessions to any one enterprise or form of industry, 

 and while I am in entire sympathy witli the suggested changes in 

 forest taxation, I still carry in the back of my head the idea that 

 after all, if forestry is a business proposition, it must pay dividends 

 under business conditions. 



''Politics always plays havoc with forestry. There would be no 

 limit to the trouble that would result, were forestry made compulsory 

 upon the private owner through enactment and regulation by congress 

 and forty legislatures. 



"It seems to me that the time has come when the professional 

 foresters of the United States should be frank enough to acknowledge 

 what those who have had practical experience saw long ago, namely, 

 that the growing of large sized timber of ordinary conunercial species 

 is an operation too long in time, too hazardous in risk, aud too low 

 in rate of return to attract private capital, and that an attempt, na- 

 tional or state, to force jirivate capital by legal enactment to engage 

 in undertakings that are not profitable is doomed to failure. Forestry 

 must be economically sound or it will not succeed. ' ' 



Mr. Kellogg thus summarizes the principal obstacles which must 

 be surmounted before forestry methods can be forced upon holders 

 of private lands. The crux of the whole problem lies in the fact that it 

 will be hard to force an individual to dispose of his own property 

 in a way that promises no profit. The argument that he should be 

 willing to do that much for the general good of the country, sounds 

 well as a theory, but will it work in practice? Suppose he is not willing 

 to sacrifice his property on the altar of his country 's good, what then- 

 will he be forced? If it is the public good that is sought, the con- 

 stitution gives the answer when it provides that private property shall 

 not be taken for public use without just eompensarion. 



