22 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



September 10, 1919 



^^Our Country First '^ Conference 



Several hundred delegates from all sections of the United States met 

 at the Congress hotel, Chicago, September 8 for a two-day meeting, 

 under the auspices of the Illinois Manufacturers ' Association. Promi- 

 nent business men, representing various industries, took part in the 

 meeting; and a number of able addresses were delivered, bearing on 

 vital questions now before the country. 



One of the leading purposes of the conferences was to devise some 

 method to counteract a tendency to put bad laws on the books, laws 

 which will hamper and harass legitimate business, and make rough the 

 road which business men must follow in leading the country 's affairs 

 back to a solid and sensible basis. It was considered that the best be- 

 ginning with that end in view would consist in the appointment of a 

 committee of strong men to be stationed at the nation's capital to 

 watch proposed new legislation and promptly sound a warning if 

 dangerous laws are proposed for passage. This committee is to be 

 permanent with headquarters at Washington, and its business will be 

 to study proposed legislation, in the interest of the business men of 

 the country. 



The need of such a safeguard was apparent to the delegates attend- 

 ing the Chicago conference. Many matters of vital importance are 

 before the country and legislation along numerous lines is promised 

 or threatened. Some of the proposed legislation appears to be whole- 

 some and necessary, while other is questionable. At any rate, it is a 

 time to be keenly on the alert, and to take nothing for granted. Any 

 man, examining prospects of the immediate future, must feel concerned 

 with many serious matters which are pressing for solution. Should 

 the Plumb plan become a law? Should the government's activity in 

 commerce be limited to regulation? In what way might taxes be re- 

 duced without crippling efficiency? By what method might experi- 

 enced and efficient men be induced to accept government work? Are 

 so many investigations desirable, and if not, how may the number be 

 reduced? Have too many laws been put on the books in recent years, 

 the number annually exceeding 12,000? How shall our war debt of 

 $280 per capita be paid, and when? Have we too much currency, and 

 if so, how should the quantity be reduced? 



Scores of similar questions are before the country and they con- 

 stitute a powerful temptation to legislators to place new laws on the 

 books, some of which are absolutely necessary while others call for 

 the closest scrutiny. The committee that will be stationed in Wash- 

 ington will have its hands full. 



The address of welcome at the opening session of the conference 

 was delivered by Dorr E. Felt, president of the Illinois Manufacturers' 

 Association, Chicago ; which address was followed by a talk by Edward 

 J. Brundage, attorney general of Illinois, who welcomed the delegates 

 on behalf of his state. Following that was an address by S. M. Hast- 

 ings, chairman of the conference and president of the Computing Scale 

 Company of America, Chicago. The session of the first half day was 

 concluded with an address by Harry H. Merrick, president of the 

 Mississippi Valley Association, president of the Chicago Association 

 of Commerce, and president of the Great Lakes Trust Company. Mr. 

 Merrick 's address is given in full below : 



Address bv HAunv H. Merrick 



I want to try anil rtpal with some of the practical things, as we see 

 them, in all lines. W,. are met here with the agriculturist, the retailer, 

 the wholesaler, the manutaeturer. the representatives of the great mass 

 of the people, whether they align themselves under the tlag of labor, or 

 whatever their particular division of industry and effort may be. Suppose 

 one of the men who founded this country, a man like Washington, Jeffer- 

 son, or Adams, could return to earth today and analyze the situation and 

 problems as they are presented at this time, in the light of conditions with 

 which they dealt. The problem of that time was that of bare e.\istence, 

 whether or not the nation might be able to sustain itself, weak as it was' 

 against the worbl : whether or not it could fend off starvation and ulti- 

 mate <lisaster, which presented themselves in different forms year by year • 

 how It could finance itself, and how it could keep it* head above the tur- 

 bulent waters of the world. 1 am wondering whether a man like Jeffer- 

 son, if he were here today, would se.^ our problems quite as we seem them 



anil would think they were iiuitc as serious as the mass of the people be- 

 lieve them to be : and whether he might not balance them against the 

 problems that faced the men of his time, only something more than one 

 hundred years ago, a mighty short time in the passage of the ages. 



Today, what is our downright problem? We start off with a nation 

 the wealthiest of the world, everything that makes for good, happiness. 



Out of this world war, the greatest ilisaster of all times, our inherent 

 pro.sperity and our power for good have been increased. For we are the 

 storehouse ; we have the power of finance, and the productive power ; we 

 have everything that the world wants. We have gone through but two 

 years of war, whereas the rest of the world went through four .years ; 

 and we have come out with these tremendous powers, as a further demon- 

 stration of our ability as a nation and as individuals. 

 What We Face 



Today, in the face of all that, men babble among themselves, and the 

 newspapers repeat their words. The high cost of living is the problem. 

 There is talk of more wages and less hours, less production and less effort. 

 Those are the things that men say they want today, in the face of this 

 wftnderful strength of ours, if we properly apply it. They say, at a time 

 when the world needs everything, that that is the time for them to stop, 

 turn themselves into a debating society on every street corner, from every 

 soap bo-v. This is the time, men say today, to reduce the working day 

 from ten hours to eight hours, and from eight hours to six hours, and 

 from six hours to four hours. This is the time, men say, to take the most 

 marvelous business machine ever built up in all the ages, and tear It apart, 

 and resolve it into its constituent parts, in the hope that some time some 

 soap box orator, some political quack,- some ward politician promoted be- 

 yond his worth, may be able to assemble it in some form of order ulti- 

 mately. 



That is about the most supremely ridiculous proposition with which our 

 country has ever been faced. It is mighty tine that you men have been 

 drawn together from thirty-six states to consider the problem — which is 

 the only problem — of "Our Country First," and what we may do to main- 

 tain our country first in this time of mental disorder, for it is not really 

 physical disorder. 



On November 11, 191S, the machine that we built up was halted, pre- 

 cisely as it would be if a bar of iron was thrown into the most delicate 

 machinery. There was created no other machinery to take its place. We 

 did not use the reverse lever, and throw business back into the proper 

 channel gradually. We merely trusted to the wonderful power of the 

 TTnited States, and that power assi-rted itself. 

 Remedy is Sought 



What is the remedy? The gentlemen of the colleges, the sociologists, 

 the* dreamers, the idealists, the men who dream of 2,000 years from now. 

 and of a condition that does not exist, dream of socialism, of the taking of 

 great factories, and drawing thousands of men into a conference with a 

 few employers, and out of that they expect a new order to come. We just 

 had a demonstration wherein we drew together four million men under 

 arms. Our difficulty lay in training sufficient leaders as officers to lead 

 those men forward ; and in the proper organization of industry so that 

 they might be armed, fed and transported. All of that is leadership, 

 liut these dreams and theories do not deal with that at all. They deal 

 with some hope far be.vond Moore's Htopia. They deal with the applica- 

 tion of strange theories to unknown conditions by men who never worked, 

 and who never will work. And there is the attempt to array class against 

 class, and to say that labor must have more pay. 



The man who last .year raved and frothed at the mouth of the Russian 

 system of soviet government, in the meanwhile has had a touch of that 

 live, or six, or eight, or ten dollars a day. and he has become somewhat 

 of a conservative. Tliat is the peculiarity of our race. We are talkers 

 and dreamers. We are enthusiasts. We like to draw new methods and 

 new plans, but today the world does not require those plans at our hands, 

 nor those experiments, and this is not the time to apply them. This is a 

 time for cool, hard thought. 



We must of necessity, through public sentiment, impress upon so-called 

 labor, that this idle talk of destruction of industry, of t.ving up the rail- 

 roads so that the.v will never move again, as one of the brotherhood said : 

 that this practice of shutting down industr.v, as is the case in Chicago, 

 where for seven weeks we have not been able to build a little dwelling 

 place for a laboring man, or a mansion for a wealthier man, or a building 

 for a factory, because the carpenters in this particular case, in violation 

 of their national union rules, in Chicago say they will not work, and when 

 they do not work, no other man shall work. 



That is beyond socialism. That is disaster. That sort of stuff must 

 stop. The threat of the railroad brotherhoods, blazoned forth throughout 

 the United States, that no wheel should turn in commerce until they had 

 their demands, and that their demands should be granted absolutely with- 

 out argument or discussion — that sort of thing must stop. 

 Some of the Issues 



I know many of the labor leaders. I believe that there is a great deal 



