22 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



September 25, 1919 



'^Our Country First'' Conference 



The following are the resolutions adopted at the ' ' Our Country 

 First Conference" held in Chicago, September 8 and 9, 1919, in 

 which business interests throughout the United States largely par- 

 ticipated. These resolutions accurately reflect the purpose and 

 accomplishments of the congress and demand the moral and active 

 support of all Americans not in sympathy with the radical and 

 dangerous tendency of thought now prevalent: 



1. "Our Country First" conference unanimously demands that these 

 United States should forthwith return to the letter and the spirit of the 

 constitution. 



That great charter of human rights provides that: "No person shall 

 be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law ; nor 

 shall private property be talieu for public use without just compensation." 



Our sires were foreigners lured to this country by the inspiration and 

 hope that this was a land where the poor man and his children could 

 acquire, own and control a home or business. The right of private prop- 

 erty has made Americji the greatest among nations ; has given to her peo- 

 ple a greater number of privately owned and occupied homes, a greater 

 and more equitable distribution of wealth and business enterprises ; more 

 happiness and comfort and less of poverty and suffering than any other 

 nation in the world. ' 



Today, at the end of the most awful war the world has ever known, we 

 find our net national wealth larger than that of all Europe combined ; the 

 increase in the cost of living less, and wages and opportunities greater 

 than in any other of the leading nations of the world. 



It is under such conditions that we condemn the frenzied efforts being 

 made by certain radical elements of society to spread the seeds of bolshev- 

 Ism, of ultra-socialism and other like doctrines among the people, all of 

 which are destructive of the right to own and possess property, a right 

 which has existed since the beginning of civilization, and upon which all 

 of our institutions have had their basis and development. 



We earnestly implead our people to consider well this fundamental right, 

 and what its loss would mean to the nation and to its hopeful youth. 



2. The United States has become the leading nation of the world by 

 permitting its citizens in their occupations the largest liberty of action 

 consistent with the rights of others. 



Our future prosperity depends upon the maintenance of that policy. 

 Whatever their necessity in time of war, government activities affecting 

 business should be reduced to the smallest scope at the earliest moment. 

 This conference views with disapproval a governmental policy of licensing 

 Interstate commerce business which may subject the existence of business 

 to the whims of political boards. The government should refrain from 

 engaging in any business which can be as well or better operated by pri- 

 vate enterprise. Experience hjus demonstrated that the employment of 

 labor and the furnishing of labor to different localities where it is needed 

 can be best handled through private or state agencies and we oppose any 

 further appropriation on the part of Congress for maintaining the United 

 States Employment Service. 



3. We commend the zeal with which committees of Congress are seek- 

 ing a solution of the transportation problem. The increasing demand for 

 food supplies necessitates the opening of new areas of agricultural pro- 

 duction by the extension of transportation systems. Discontinuance of 

 terminal and other railway development has had an Important effect upon 

 the general cost of living. Resumption of railway development will tend 

 to stabilize employment of labor especially if the country should be af- 

 flicted with depression, for experience demonstrates that railway buying 

 always stimulates and sustains employment and general prosperity. We 

 hail with satisfaction the evident purpose of Congress to reject govern- 

 ment ownership of railroads or their management under domination by 

 employes and to enact instead a law for the prompt reestablishment of 

 private operation. We favor transportation development as a govern- 

 ment policy and urge a law prescribing that rates shall be such as to yield 

 income sufficient to encourage such development. 



4. Every attempt at price fixing by governments in this or other coun- 

 tries, has failed. If experience of the past is any guide, the field is a 

 dangerous one. 



While we were at war our people willingly submitted to rules and regu- 

 lations in the conduct of their private business that were recognized as 

 autocratic and foreign to our institutions in the days of peace. 



With the war ended, we record ourselves as opposed to any attempt of 

 the government to fix prices in trade between its citizens. 



The great agricultural interests producing the food supplv of the na- 

 tion, and represented at this conference, not only protest agkinst govern- 

 ment price fixing generally, but insist that any price fixing to the con- 

 sumer that does not first give to the farmer his cost of production and a 

 reasonable profit, is wickedly unjust and violative of his -eonstitutional 

 rights. 



The farmer also insists that if price fixing by the government upon 

 food products is engaged in, the price of machinery, clothing, automobiles 



and all other farm necessaries should he correspondingly fixed by the 

 government. 



.5. .\griculture is our most important industry. Our national exist- 

 ence depends on surrounding the business of food production with such 

 conditions that capable men and ample capital shall be attracted to that 

 business in order that the production and economical distribution of an 

 adequate supply of food may be assured for all time to come. 



All laws and regulations relating to food production should be based 

 on the fundamental proposition that returns to capital invested in agri- 

 culture should be equal to the returns to capital invested in other in- 

 dustry and business, and that prices of farm products should be sufficient 

 to assure production and to pay w-ages essential to that end. 



6. The business of the nation has grown from the individual through 

 the partnership into the corporation. A corporation is hut a form of co- 

 operative enterprise and co-operation in industry, therefore, is much more 

 marked than it is in agriculture. To destroy this element of industry — 

 these factors of growth — would weaken the nation itself. We believe the 

 time has come when the millions of farmers not only in their own interest, 

 but in the interest of consumers, should have the clearly expressed right 

 by both state and federal laws, to l)uy, sell and bargain collectively con- 

 cerning their own products, and we ask for such clarifications of existing 

 statutes that this co-operation will be permitted without fear of prosecu- 

 tion. Where the only offenses charged have been technical and the pur- 

 pose intimidation or political effect we deprecate criminal prosecutions 

 directed against farmers and farm organizations over the country. 



7. Section 1. — Adequate and eflicient production is the basis of so- 

 cial wellbeiug and progress for the individual and the community. It is 

 the duty of wage payer, wage earner and the community to exert every 

 reasonable effort for improving and increasing the quantity and quality 

 of production. It is in the public and individual interest to secure produc- 

 tive efficiency through the stimulus of adequate personal reward. It is 

 essential to recognize that mental effort of management as well as physical 

 labor must be encouraged and properly rewarded and that capital, with- 

 out which industrial enterprise would be impossible, is equally entitled to 

 receive its adequate compensation, each in accordance with its contributory 

 value. 



Section 2. — Both employers and employes must be free as a matter 

 of right to associate themselves, separately or jointly, in a lawful man- 

 ner, for lawf\il purposes. Any employer or employe who does not desire so 

 to associate must equally be protected in his fundamental individual right 

 to enter a contractual employment relation mutually acceptable and sub- 

 ject to restrictions of law. 



Section 3. — No voluntary combination of employers, employes or both, 

 organized for common purposes and action in respect to the employment 

 relation should be in the public interest permitted unless it accept legal 

 responsibility for its action and those of its officers and agents. 



Section 4. — The individual worker and his employer should each be 

 free to cease the individual employment relation, provided no contractual 

 nhligation is thereby violated. Nevertheless employe and employer in 

 government and public utility service, where the public interest is para- 

 mount, should be restrained liy law from instituting by concerted action a 

 strike or lock-out and instead effective machinery should be established 

 in such sei"vice for prompt and fair hearing of any requests, differences 

 or disputes touching upon the employment relation and for adequate re- 

 dress of any grievances proven to be justified. These provisions should 

 be made a part of the written or implied employment contract in such 

 service. 



Section 5. — The prevailing high cost of living is the inevitable con- 

 sequence of such causes as lessened production of necessaries of life and 

 decreased productive efficiency, inflation of money, abnormally high wage 

 rates and unduly high prices, continued exercise of war powers by the 

 government and governmental wastefulness of expenditures. Employers 

 and employes individually and by their duly instituted organizations, 

 should pledge themselves to exert every reasonable effort for tlie elimina- 

 tion of disturbances tending to interrupt or retard production, and for a 

 speedy return of all industry to a normal basis. 



Section 0, — While efficiency in production is thus required by the na^ 

 tion's needs this conference demands that Congress shall repeal all pro- 

 visions in its appropriation bills such as the so-called Tavener amendment 

 providing that the appropriations shall not be available for any arsenal 

 or public work wherein efficiency methods are adopted and it demands 

 that all such provisions be eliminated from subsequent legislation. 



S. The conference recognizes that for many years to come expenses of 

 government must be larger than they were prior to the war; that larger 

 appropriations will lie required for the support of the military and naval 

 establishments, the merchant marine, the air service, and other necessary 

 governmental activities. We recognize that the higher cost of conducting 

 every kind of private business applies in even larger degree to the public 

 business. Taxation is an essential element in the cost of commodities 

 and therefore adds in considerable degree to the cost of living. Money 

 collected by taxation, whether from private incomes or from business 



