Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1918 — “NON-ESSENTIAL INDUSTRIES” [ARTICLE]

“NON-ESSENTIAL INDUSTRIES”

A great deal is said and written these days on the subject of “nonessential industries,’’ and many people are vociferous in their assertions that all such will have to be cut out if. we are to avoid running on the rocks. Ninety )>er cent of this talk is the sheerest bosh, for the reason that those indulging in it have not the faintest conception of what the' results would be were their advice taken. American business interests are so inextricably interwoven that it is a practical impossibility to arbitrarily declare this one essential and that one non-essential. Our government has encountered just this difficulty. Some time ago, when it became apparent that we must conserve.on the coal supply, government officials cast about for these “non-essentials,” but right there their troubles began. It was not difficult to locate a number of lines, the finished products of which could safely be classed as non-essential. But in every case it was found that the uselessness of the article produced or manufactured was the smallest consideration in weighing the importance of the business. In every case it was found that the, industry itself had become so Vitally a part of the great American business fabric that its elimination or even its crippling work irreparable injury to numbers of other lines and thoroughly unsettle business conditions generally. , As a case in point, the officials first of all were up against the automobile industry. The auto could in no sense be deemed an essential. Up to a decade ago the country had managed to scrape along very comfortably without it. American life could still go on without it. But its elimination would do more to paralyze business than perhaps any other one industry, unless that of railroad transportation.

And thus it went, in varying degrees, through almost the entire list of American industries. The general prosperity of the country would not admit of the suppression of scarcely a single one. In this emergency the government has adopted the only logical course. While it was impractical to eliminate any one line or number of lines entirely, it was found that many lines could be curtailed. The tremendous expansion of all to •meet the demands of a luxury loving people, could, when luxury was forced into the background, be easily contracted to meet only the sternest necessities. Plants in various lines that had been using stated amounts of fuel, raw material and labor, could with .perfect safety be put on a shorter allowance of each, i this in the aggregate would work the required conservation. This the government has done, and will continue to do as occasion requires.