January 25, 1916 



SAMPLES CUT FROM MOVING PICTURE FILM OF LAMB-FISH LUMBER COMPANY. EXHIBITED AT CINCINNATI 



did in October, 1913. So these normal marliets fell below normal, while 

 the abnormal markets have not only centered our attention, but they are 

 bringing about a condition that is not an unmixed evil in our manufacturing 

 industries, because with the high prices offered on shipments for instan- 

 taneous delivery, we find conditions coming into being in our labor market 

 that it will be impossible to live with under the normal conditions of peace. 



Indeed, what will be the situation if the war suddenly ceases and we find 

 ourselves confronted, not only in the foreign markets Into which we have 

 penetrated, but even our domestic market itself, with the competition of 

 desperate nations who with their backs to the wall will be compelled to 

 furnish employment to their people who have been trained in the strictest 

 discipline in the sternest of all schools, that of war, and will be faced 

 with the necessity of regaining the position which they formerly had in 

 our own market as well as ii those foreign markets which we now tem- 

 porarily possess? 



What We Mcjst Meet 



Now, if this great struggle ended tomorrow, we would find Germany, 

 having lost many of her greatest customers, forced into new markets to 

 find employment for her people. Why should she not naturally turn her 

 atti'ntion to us and enter this great American market? and under what 

 conditions will she enter it? If she entered it under the conditions that 

 exist in our industries today, she would find us with short hours, with 

 high wages, with low efliciency, confronting a competition which in Ger- 

 many's case would represent long hours, low wages, and high efficiency. 

 In the long run, gentlemen, we must face the fact that economic laws are 

 as certain in their operation as any other laws of nature. The nation that 

 is economically superior to another wins in competition with it. 



If we are to hold our markets we must have cheap raw material, the 

 basic metals, the treasures of forest, field and mine ; and these we have 

 in great quantities. But we must have more than that. We must have 

 low labor cost, and not low wages, for the highest possible wages are quite 

 compatible with low labor cost. That is the ambition our manufacturers 

 have. It is to be hoped that they will realize it. 

 SouKCES OF Efficiency 



There are only two ways by which efficiency comes about — increased 

 skill and intelligence upon the part of the worker, and an equal increase 

 of intelligence, skill and ability on the part of capital. 



Capital is the directing force in industry that is continually seeking 

 new processes by which to cheapen or improve production, new materials, 

 new machinery. On the other hand, we find ourselves faced with a con- 

 dition in the United States today in which labor is not becoming more 

 efficient, but on the contrary, there are many evidences that forces are in 

 operation that are undertaking to substitute for the efficiency of thq indi- 

 vidual the efficiency of some organization to which he belongs, upon the 

 theory that it possesses power to exact a wage which it is not essential 

 that the worker should have the efficiency to command. This is an 

 economic condition that in the long run is as injurious to the worker as it 

 possibly can be to the employer. 



Tendency of Legislation 



We have passed through a period in which there has been a legislative 

 attack on all forms of business ; in which there has been a determined 

 effort to excite suspicion directed toward business combinations and busi- 

 ness corporations, and in the making of law to create one set of rights for 

 them, and another set of rights for the employees who work under their 

 supervision and direction. This has found its expression in such legisla- 

 tion as we have had, where the Sherman Anti-Trust Act has been rigidly 

 enforced against combinations of employers, and prosecution after prose- 

 cution has been directed against business enterprises, while the same con- 

 gress that did it and urged it attached an amendment to the Sundry Civil 

 Act which provided that no portion of the funds appropriated for enforce- 

 ment of the Sherman .\nti-Trust Act should be used to prosecute labor 

 organizations or farmers' organizations which violated that law. This 

 made it lawful and right for one body of our citizens to do that which it 

 made unlawful and wrong for another body of citizens to do. Nay, it did 

 worse than that, for without changing the law they suspended it and said, 

 "We will enforce this act with the funds of the public treasury against one 

 portion of our citizenship, but we will not enforce it against another." 

 Danger Is Recognized 



When the day comes that in this republic it shall be lawful and right for 

 one body of men to do that which it is unlawful and wrong for another 



body of men to do, we will have created classes and castes in our citizen- 

 ship that will eat into the very fundamentals of the government under 

 which we live. 



We need every tncouragement to an increase in the efficiency not only 

 of our workmen but of our employers, our business men, our manufacturers, 

 and yet we are confronted now with legislation the very purpose of which 

 is to penalize efficiency. 



Last year the appropriation for the support of the army and navy had 

 attached to it a prohibition that no portion of such moneys should be used 

 to pay the salary of any officer of the United States who used any time 

 measuring device for the purpose of ascertaining how long it took to 

 perform a given task, or who used the information thus obtained in fixing 

 the task of any workmen under his employ ; or who paid or recommended 

 payment of any bonus or premium. 



We have at the opening of the present congress not only a similar propo- 

 sition, but the frank propo-sition that any officer of the government who does 

 these things shall be punished by fine and imprisonment. If an endeavor 

 is made to penalize efficiency in the government employment, the American 

 public will naturally think that the methods which congress undertakes 

 to condemn must be so bad to introduce that they ought not to be permitted 

 in any private establishment hereafter. We find ourselves in a position in 

 which we are about to face the most efficient, highly trained and desperate 

 competition that the American people were ever called upon to face, and we 

 are to have efficiency in many American employments penalized by public 

 example. 



The keeping in motion of production and distribution processes is essen- 

 tial to the preservation of American life. There is nothing that you or I 

 can get by ourselves ; even our food supply is brought to our door. The 

 supply of raw materials is brought to our factories by the continuous 

 operation of transportation agencies and the continuous employment of 

 men. The Government must protect us against every artificial and selfish 

 effort to restrict the free flow of distribution agencies past our door. To 

 insure that we must be continually adding to the instrumentalities of com- 

 merce ; we must be continually encouraging the conditions that will stimu- 

 late lnv,estment in transportation facilities. We must be taking care of 

 our railroads and allowing them reasonable returns upon capital invested. 

 We must encourage all those conditions under which their operation can be 

 maintained uninterrupted by employer or by employee. 

 Merchant Marine 



Suppose that we do successfully keep ourselves free from unintelligent 

 and uneconomic legislation, what still have we to do? Why, if we still 

 hold our domestic market, it is testimony that we have gained the essential 

 things that are necessary for efficient production and distribution within 

 the state ; but how are we ever to go into foreign markets, or have access 

 to them, as long as somebody else owns all the delivery wagons in which 

 our goods are carried? 



We shall never seek foreign markets, either in our own ships or In the 

 ships of others, unless when we get there we can securely remain there ; 

 unless wherever American interests invest American capital and carry on 

 American commerce the American flag shall follow and float over us in the 

 land to which we go and protect us there, .lust as the flag of France, of 

 England or of Germany protect their subjects in whatever land their 

 commerce penetrates. 



What are we doing now to prepare ourselves? We have got to stand 

 together upon sound principles in dealing with our labor ; we have got to 

 be willing to do justice in order to get it. But in dealing with it we have 

 got to make up our minds in relation to it as in relation to every other 

 thing, that we must stick to sound principles ; we must be firm yet we must 

 be fair ; we must be willing to be just in order that we may be determined 

 to exact justice. 



This concluded the business session, the remainder of the afternoon 

 meeting being given over to the exhibition of the moving pielaire films 

 of the Lamb-Fish Lumber Company's operations at Charleston, Miss. 

 These are the films that were shown in the Mississippi building at the 

 Sau Francisco fair. They give a beautiful and eomprehensi\'e picture 

 of all of the features of a thoroughly modern hardwood lumber opera- 

 tion. On this page are shown two cuttings from the films, which 

 arc typical of the whole. 



SAMPLES CUT FROM MOVING PICTURE FILM OF LAMB FISH LUMBER COMPANY, EXHIBITED AT CINCINNATI 



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