Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 38, Number 194, 23 June 1913 — Page 4

PAGE FOUR

THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM AND SUN-TELEGRAM, MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1913

The Richmond Palladium

AND SUN-TELEGRAM.

Published Every Evening Except Sunday, by Palladium Printing Co. Masonic Building. Ninth and North A Streets. R. G. Leeds, Editor. E. H. Harris, Mgr. In Richmond, 10 cents a week. By Mail, in advance one year, $5.00; six months, 12.60; one month, 45 centa Rural Routes, in advance one year, $2.00; six months, $1.25; one month 25 cents. Entered at the Post Office at Richmond, Indiana, as Second Class Mail Matter. Graft in Business, and Remedy Graft in politics is widely and easily recognized. There are the "rake offs" taken by officials for awarding contracts to favored bidders. Road or street builders are permitted to use cheaper materials than are specified, if a portion of the saving is given to the proper responsible officials. A city is to have a new park. The officials, who have charge of the project, decide on the location. Before making it public, however, their agent purchases for them, but in his name, adjoining property that will advance rapidly in price when bordered by the park. Or the agent may even buy the very property that is to be used for the park and sell it for the officials at a handsome advance in price, to the city through the self some officials. These examples, plus a hundred and fifty-seven other varieties, illustrate the workings of the political graft system. Such a system of overpaying falls just as heavily on the man who pays no taxes as on the taxpayer. We must all have shelter. When we own the house in which we live we pay taxes directly. When we rent, the rent money necessarily is enough to cover the taxes the landlord must pay. That the same graft system prevails in the business world is rarely recognized. That it is one of the great underlying causes for high cost of living and the consequent wide spread discontent with and agitation against present business conditions, is not often realized. Many large concerns buy their raw materials through their .purchasing managers. Necessarily, wide discretionary powers rest in these men's hands. If they are faithful to the trust reposed in them, they save every penny possible in purchasing for the firm. If they are recreant to their trust they demand commissions on purchases from the firms they buy of. These commissions naturally are secret. In the one case the concern's selling price is based on a bedrock raw material cost. In the other, the selling price must cover the secret commission paid the purchasing manager. The consumer can readily see how his interests are , served favorably and adversely through these two examples. There have been cases where heads of large corporations have been common grafters. In a corporation capitalized at $25,000,000, a chief executive officer holding $500,000 of the stock does not necessarily permit his dividends plus a large salary, keep him from yielding to the temptation to profit through shady transactions. Such an executive may appoint as the purchasing managers of the corporation, men who will "faithfully" share with him their graft in commissions on purchases. He may allot contracts for new buildings to contractors who cover a commission for him in their bids. He may order new machinery from firms that make their prices high enough to pay him a secret commission. The board of directors may discover this source of graft for their president. If they are "impractical idealists," they will discharge him. If they are "practical business men" and their total stock holdings in the corporation are comparatively small, they will simply force the president to divide with them. Or they may even originally have elected as president one of them to oversee the collection of this form of graft and its distribution. Through this they are able to vastly augment the returns on their stock holdings at the expense of the great bulk of unsophisticated and innocent stock holders, who are widely scattered throughout the nation. In a corporation exercising monopolistic privileges the greater cost of this graft falls on the consumers of its products; the lesser portion falls on the ordinary stock holders. In a competitive industry there is far less chance for such graft. Profits, governed by competition, are smaller. Concerns are smaller and are under the more watchful eyes of a smaller number of stock holders, who generally live in the same city in which the business is located. When. there is a loss due to such graft, the burden of it must be born by the stockholders. The consumers are protected as the competition of all the units of an industry determines prices. If only one unit is honestly managed, it will be able to undersell its competitors that are honeycombed with graft. Therefore they will have to discontinue grafting or see their honest competitor get their business. The remedy? The super-radical will say socialism. Eliminate private ownership in industry, abolish profit, and graft will cease. The editor, being a mere radical, believes that government monopoly will offer greater opportunities to grafters than does private monopoly. Therefore, he advocates the very much simpler method of restoring competition. Only he would regulate competition by certain fundamental rules the lack of which brought on our present

era of private monopolies and business men grafters. By a government guarantee of a job carrying with it a minimum wage for a given minimum output in a specified time, labor as well as industry will be protected in one great fundamental. By a government guarantee or law compelling all products to be sold on an equal or uniform price basis, competitive industry will be protected from the fundamental cause of monopoly, a service or material rebate or discount. If you give me an industrial system under which I can always obtain a lower material price through a secret discount or a lower freight rate through a secret rebate, I'll own the industries of the nation. And then you would all be, from the economic standpoint, my slaves. If you give me an industrial system under which I am guaranteed an equal opportunity on all fundamentals with any competitor, then I am simply your servant. The harder I work to advance my personal interests the more my work counts for you. Regulated competition alone will allot me my share and you your portion equably.

A Working Girl's Advice Missouri is now investigating the conditions of her working girls and women, with the end in view of establishing a minimum wage of $8 per week. The keenest interest is being shown by these workers in the investigation. Many have testified before the committee, some in disguises so they will not be recognized by their employers, and hundreds of letters have been written to the investigators. One of the most interesting of these letters was written by a woman who for eighteen years labored in a St. Louis factory. It is full of common sense and very practical. She says, in part : "The very worst trouble among working women in cities is incompetency. Manufacturers require skilled operators, but they cannot get them. Hence tljey employ unskilled help and pay say $4 a week. This was $3 before the St. Louis Exposition. Unskilled help usually ruins goods worth more than the wage during the term of apprenticeship. Ask any Missouri employer of women if it would not be more profitable to him to employ skilled help at $8 a week than unskilled help at $4 and he will tell you yes. "Cannot the state of Missouri open schools in the big cities for the practical instruction of boys and girls? When the state has prepared these people for real work the state will see them well paid. Employers prefer female help in many lines on account of their superiority to male help. The school teacher, stenographer, bookkeeper and so forth pay for their tuition; the salesgirl, waitress and factory girl pay no tuition while learning, but receive wages while they learn. ' "A minimum wage for women at this time should not be more than $5 a week, and that for girls of more than 18 years of age. "Open city schools to educate the girls, teach them to like work, instead of to hate it; teach them ambition, teach them to demand their rights of employers, instead of begging for a holiday or Christmas present they have not earned. Let the city give them clubrooms outing farms, downtown parks and free baths. A commission to investigate so-called "Neatly furnished rooms" and "Good board at reasonable rates" could be of much assistance. "Factories where women are employed should be inspected by both male and female inspectors, the former to look after dangerous machinery and the like, and the latter the general welfare of women. The city should employ an attorney or attorneys to care for cases of working women. There should be a matron or head of factory inspectors to whom a girl could report any mistreatment by employers or fellow employees, with the assurance that her grievance would be investigated without her position being in danger. You will never improve conditions of working women by trying to make manufacturers pay $8 for work that could be done for $4. "A woman can exist in the city for $5 a week. The incompetent can earn no more. It is up to the city to make them more competent, or provide some of the comforts of life for them without charge. Give her some place for recreation. If 6he spends her leisure hours on the street she will be told to "move on;" in park, ditto; she has not always the nickel for the picture show and these nights her stuffy room is like an oven. She needs $10 a week for a comfortable living, but she won't get it by the state demanding it. She will get it if the state will equip her properly to do her work well."

ICON BY MILDRED OCKERT

Anciently, men pictured saints. And kept the long-flamed candles Burning at the shrines, alway. So memory thy picture paints; And at thy feet the heart-flame. Leaping, ever turns the night to day. Everybody's June.

A SMILE OR TWO

Doesn't Work There. "Say, ma, who said, 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be'? "Some person who'd never lived in the suburbs, Tommie. Life.

Her Ideal. The Inventor "That machine can do the work of ten men." Visitor "Gee whiz! My wife ought to have married it!" Puck.

Crafty Agnes. "Has Agnes achieved popularity in her suburban home?" "Yes; she keeps her doors wide open and her mouth tight shut." Life.

Last Extremity. Clara "May I borrow your beaded belt, dear?" Bess "Certainly. But why all this formality of asking permission?" "I can't find it" Smart Set.

Exactly. "Eggs are getting so expensive that fried eggs will be used next for trimming women's hats." "Why not? I should think the effect would be chic." Washington Herald.

Compulsion of Duty Causes President to Read Message

Necessity for Improved Banking and Cu rrency System Imperative, He Says

Difficult Advice. Lady (to tourists' agency official) "I have nothing to declare. What shall I say?" Official "Say, Madam, that you have nothing to declare." Lady "Yes; but suppose they find something?" Punch.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Congress: It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear and imperative duty that I have a second time this session sought the privilege of addressing you in person. I know, of course, that the heated season of the year is upon us, that work in these chambers and in the committee rooms is likely to become a burden as the season lengthens, and that every consideration of personal convenience and personal comfort, perhaps, in the cases of some of us, considerations of personal health even, dictate an early conclusion of the deliberations of the session; but there are occasions of public duty when these things which touch us privately seem very small; when the work to be done is so pressing and so fraught with big consequence that we know that we are not at liberty to weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in the presence of such an occasion. It is absolutely imperative that we should give the business men of this country a banking and currency system by means of which they can make use of the freedom of enterprise and of individual initiative which we are about to bestow upon them. Are About to Release Them. We are about to set them free; we must not leave them without the tools of action when they are free. We are about to set them free by removing the trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities it will bring with It. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the slothful security of their dependence upon the Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the tonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. There will be some readjustments of purpose and point of view. There will follow a period of expansion and new enterprise, freshly conceived. It is for us to determine now whether it shall be rapid and facile and of easy accomplishment. This it can not be unless the resourceful business men who are to deal with the new circumstances are to have at hand and ready for use the instrumentalities and conveniences of free enterprise which independent men need when acting on their own initiative. Must Improve Credit. It is not enough to strike the shackles from business. The duty of statesmanship is not negative merely. It is constructive also. We must show that we understand what business needs and that we know how to supply it. No man, however casual and superficial his observation of the conditions now prevailing in the country, can fail to see that one of the chief things business needs now, and will need increasingly as it gains in scope and vigor in the years immediately ahead of us, i3 the proper means by which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate and individual, and its originative grains. What will it profit us to be free if we are not to have the best and most accessible instrumentalities o! commerce

and enterprise? What will it profit u ! to be quit of one kind of monopoly if j we are to remain in the grip of anothj er and more effective kind? How are I we to gain and keep the confidence of the business community unless we ! show that we know how both to aid jand protect it? What shall we say if j we make fresh enterprise necessary and also make it very difficult by leaving all else except the tariff just as we i found it? The tyrannies of business, big and little, lie within the field of

credit. We know that. Shall we not act upon the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If a man can not make his assets available at pleasure, hia assets of capacity and character

i and resource, what satisfaction is it to

him to see opportunity beckoning to

him on every hand, when others have the keys of credit in their pockets and trtat them as all but their own private possession? It is perfectly clear that it is our duty to supply the new banking and currency system the country needs, and that it will immediately need it more than ever. Is Only One Question. The only question is, When 6hall we supply it now or later, after the demands shall have become reproaches that we were so dull and so slow? Shall we hasten to change the tariff laws and then be laggard about making it possible and easy for the country to take advantage of the change? There can be only one answer to that question. We must act now, &i whatever sacrifice to ourselves. It is a duty which the circumstances forbid us to postpone. I should be recreant to my deepest convictions of public obligation did I not press it upon you with solemn and urgent insistence. The principles upon which we should act are also clear. The country has sought and seen its path in this matter within the last few years sees it more clearly now than It ever Baw it before much more clearly thai; when the last legislative proposals on the subject were made. We must have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be the instruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterprise and initiative. Ready To Suggest Action. The committees of the Congress to which legislation of this character is referred have devoted careful and dispassionate study to the means of accomplishing these objects. They have

fhonored me by consulting me. They

are ready to suggest action. I have come to you, as the head of the Government and the responsible leader of the party in power, to urge action now, while there Is time to serve the country deliberately and as we should, in a clear air of common counsel. I appeal to you with a deep conviction of duty. I believe that you share this conviction. I therefore appeal to you with confidence. I am at your service without reserve to play my part in any way you may call upon me to play it in tltis great enterprise of exigent reform which it will dignify and distinguish us to preform and discredit us to neglect.

A R(inn RFPflRT IN ! i masonic calendar i

WWWW llbl Will VIM I I

CONDITIONS GIVEN

I Restaurants and Grocery

Stores in County Have Been Inspected. A report as to the sanitary condition of markets, grocery stores, confectionaries and restaurants in Wayne county, outside of Richmond, has ben sent to the 6tate board of health by rr. J. E. King, county health officer.

According to Dr. King, the condition

of the establishments in this county is bt'tter than it has brnn in the past. "The report, which is now in the hands of members of the state board of health, is the best that has boen presented on conditions in Wayne county for several years." said Vr. King. "However, as usual, there is room for improvement." Dr. King's report will be tied with the secretary of the Commercial club soon.

RECITAL FOR MOOSE Violinist to Appear at Lodge Hall Tonight.

Wesley Howard will give a violin recital in the Moose Hall immediately following the business meeting of the lodge this evening. Many visiting lodge brethren are in the city and will attend. The members, their wives and friends are invited to be present. Xo admission will be charged.

TIME. Time is an estate that will produce nothing without culture, but will always abundantly repay the labors of industry.

DICKINSON APPOINTED Head of Law Department of University.

Edmund C. Dickinson, who for the last two years has been head of the law department of the University of Florida at Gainesville, has been appointed head of the law department of the University of Alabama, at Tuscaloosa. Mr. Dickinson is a graduate of the Richmond high school, Earlham College and the University of Michigan.

A Welcome Delusion. Doctor (to 6ick man's wife) Does your husband suffer from delusions, Mrs. Jones? Mrs. Jones I hope so, doctor. He's been worrying for a week over what he thinks your bill will be. Boston Transcript

Earlham iomeeomers One of the interesting land marks still left that will be of special interest to the Earlham Home Comers is the old Yearly Meeting House and grounds on North F Street. The one day in the year when Earlham students with their best girls were given a day off and permitted to promenade the Yearly Meeting Grounds was on Saturday during the sessions of the meeting. This house and grounds are now the property of the Mather Brothers Co., the house being used for storage purposes and the yards are stacked full of lumber and coal. The company will be glad to have any of the Home Comers vist the grounds and view again the old meeting house, which to many will bring sacred memories. lather Brothers Co.

Tuesday, Juns 14 Richmond lodga No. 196, F. and A. M. Called meeting; work in Master Mason degree. Refreshments. Wednesday, June 23 Webb lodgd No. 4, F. and A. M. Called meeting; work in Entered Apprentice decree, commencing at 1 o'clock prompt Friday, June 27 Richmond lodge No. 196. F. and A. M I -. uieeu... work in Fejw craft degree.

"The Busiest Biggest Little Store in Town" Kennedy's Jewelry in all prices, styles and sizes. 1 Quality Only the Best.

For the Sake of Other. "Have you ever done anything for the sake of promoting the happiness of others without selfish reward?" asked ! the idealist

"I should say so." replied Mr. Growcher. "I have bought any quantity of stock that never paid dividends." Washington Star.

Plenty ef Room. She A woman has a greater capacity for learning than a man. He Yes; a woman is never so full of gnaaip that she can't hold more. Philadelphia Kecord.

Good Reason. "Hello, 8praddlesr "Hello, Borom. I haven't een you for a week." "No; I've been seeing you first Birmingham Age-Herald. If I am building a mountain and stop before the last basketful of earth Is placed on the summit I have failed. Confucius.

For the Juno Bride Sterling and plated silverware, Percolators, Chafing Dishes, Baking Dishes, Knives and Forks of quality at the right price. Hand painted China at bargain prices. Cut Glass, an elegant line. Visit Our Salesroom See our complete line of goods and compare our prices. Fred Kennedy JEWELER 526 Main.

The Undersigned Will Sell at PoMic Aocffltomi Saturday, June 28th, 1913. Commencing at 2 O'clock P. M. The following Four Pieces of Property and in thtf Order Listed Below :j NO. 905 NORTH G STREET Consisting of a good two-story 7 room frame house with' water and gas. Good barn. NO. 907 NORTH G STREET Consisting of a good frame house of six rooms with eleotric lights, water and gas. Lot 29V& ft. front. NO. 813 NORTH G STREET Consisting of a good frame house, seven rooms, supplied with water, gas, and electric lights. Large lot 46 ft. front. NO. 818 NORTH F STREgT Consisting of a two-story, 6 room brick house, supplied with water, gas and electric lights. Lot 50 ft. front.

These properties are all well located, in a very desirable neighborhood, and will make excellent Investment propositions. TERMS OF SALE: One-third cash in hand ; balance in two equal installments in 18 months and 36 months ; notes to bear 6 per cent interest, secured by mortgage on real estate sold or purchaser may pay all cash. CHARLES GEGAN. JOHN F. DAVENPORT. Auctioneer.

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In Your Kitchen With That Coal Stovo Going, Isn't It?

That a GAS RANGE is the Only Practical thingto use for cooking this Hot Weather. Why Not Get One Now? Come In and See Our Display of Ranges Richmond Light, Heat & Power Company

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