Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1919 — AN EARLY PROBE OF FOOD GRAFT [ARTICLE]

AN EARLY PROBE OF FOOD GRAFT

Official Inquiry Into Soaring. k Pricesof Necessities May * ' Soon Be Started. PRESIDENT TOLD OF UNREST Advisory Board of Brotherhood of Ixtcomotive Knglncers Sound* Warning of Hangers Confronting the American People. Washington, Aug. I.—Attorney General Palmer lummoned the heads of Important government department* ta confer with him Immediately on the high coat of living and to conalder ap. propriate measures to reduce prices tc the average citizen. Those requested to meet In the attorney general’s office were Secretaries Glass, Houston, Redfield and Wilson, Director General Hines, Assistsnt Secretary of the Treasury Lefflngwell and Chairman Murdock and W. B. Colver of the federal trade commission. Washington, Aug. I.—“ Reduce the dally increasing high cost of living os face bread riots.” That in effect, is the chief slogan now being Impressed on President Wilson and his chief aids-by national labor and sociological • leaders. It is expected here that President Wilson will, 4ft. the very near future, ask congress to take drastic measures to end a situation that dally is becoming more and more Intolerable. The president was studying the report presented to him by Warren G. Stone and the advisory board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. Thelr flat declaration that “a widerad spirit of unrest exists among classes, especially among wage earners whose wages will no longer provide adequate food, shelter and raiment for themselves end families," has stirred the chief executive very deeply, his friends declare. This concrete, warning by the chiefs of the engineers of the dangers confronting the American people furnished a complete summing up of many similar statements which have been pouring in on the White House and the various government departments ever since the president came back from Europe. Living Down or Wages Up.

On top of this statement caffiß an announcement by William G. Lee, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, that unless the railroad administration had taken action by October 1 on the demands of the brotherhood, either that wages of the trainmen be increased or the cost of living reduced, steps looking to the enforcement of the demands would be taken. Mr. Lee said a resolution containing this adopted last night by the special committee of sixteen appointed at the recent convention of the trainmen at Columbus, O„ would be sent to the railroad administration. The resolution provided that in the absence of action by the date named the committee would reconvene to consider “the necessity for using the protective features of the brotherhood.” Mr. Lee made public an abstract of the report of hearings recently held by the board of railroad wages on the trainmen’s demands, at which he declared an “upheaval" was nearer in. this country today than ever before, due to the unrest arising from mounting living costs. The., railroad and government departments had better be assisting "to crush profiteering" by the packers and other industries, he said, than "shouting across the table at each other” at hearings to consider further increases. “All of us are to blame,” he said, “because we are exerting every effort to get more money for ourselves and better conditions. Every day we must realize that the profiteers are taking double from the working men what is given them, and the trouble with the people on Capitoi hill, with us and with every corporation and with everybody, is that we are exerting ouK selves to get the dollar, while the working man is merely existing and while the profiteer Is piling up millions. » “I will admit to you, gentlemen, that we are going the wrong way. I admit to you that it is time to call a halt; and I admit to you that until we get together, until we commence together to stop this, there will be hell in this country—and it Is nearer today than I ever knew it in my years of experience. Just let somebody drop a match in this country of ours and’lt wIH be a sorry day for all of us. “Unless my vision is most terribly obscured, there is something coming to us pretty soon In this country that we bad better take notice of. Worse Than Peril of 1914. J "We are nearer wgr. in this world

today, I believe, than when the kaiser threw out the gauntlet. Our lawmakers are to blame, in my opinion, because the masses of the people would be~ behind them if they would attempt to correct it; and surely there is power to correct it; but instead they are playing politics, as some of these labor organizations are playing politics, and it is the same all down the line.”