New County Sligo Jail

Once upon a time the County Sligo passed the County Council of the following set of resolutions:

Resolved, that County Sligo build a new jail.

Resolved further, that the stones from the old jail be used in the construction of the new building.

Resolved also, that during construction the prisoners remain confined in the old jail. Radical Socialists everywhere are following this Irish policy. They propose to imitate the Russian example, tear down the old economic structure that has sheltered, fed and clothed the world for ages and use the stone in the construction of a new and better building. Wherever the procedure has been tried, millions of men, women and children are sitting in the ruins confronted by death from starvation and exposure. In European Russia at this moment thousands are dying every day from hunger and millions will be dead before the next harvest even though the Socialist utopia in which the workers own the land and the tools of production has been reached.

The mere ownership of land or the means of production yields neither food nor clothes. Both have to be worked intelligently and continuously unless mankind is to drop back into tribal barbarism.

LAURA B. ARMER

Even Chinatown noisily joined the peace celebration on the Pacific Coast. In the memory of the present generation there has been no more remarkable spontaneous demonstration than the world-wide outbreak of joy on November 11th

"They are different over there. They who had just returned from a long stay are not like us," said a young soldier with the army in Vladivostok. "Human life has no value with those people. They don't take any prisoners. Prisoners eat. They told me they always tried to shoot

the other fellow in the head so as not to spoil his clothes. You see clothes are mighty scarce and you've got to have 'em in winter or you freeze. They chase around in the country robbing and burning, killing men, women and children because they might as well die by a bullet as from hunger. And the Czecho-Slovaks do just the same way. They had four hundred Bolshevik prisoners they did not know what to do with. Finally one night they left an opening in the barbed

wire and when the Bolsheviks sneaked. out they turned loose on 'em with machine guns. They got 'em all."

This youngster's observations of conditions are confirmed by the reports from the American Red Cross mission which penetrated into Siberia in November.. Everywhere this mission encountered famine, disease and starvation, was confronted with the callous brutality bred by hunger, a brutality shared by both Bolsheviks and their opponents, who sent freight trains loaded with prisoners and refugees clear across Siberia without provisions or sanitation, allowing almost half of the prisoners to die from starvation, exposure and hunger on the way.

Russia has become a completely socialized state. The dream of the reds has come true. The workers own the means flies because they have not enough to eat. of production and they are dying like

Department

of Labor Has

Great Task

The hunger of the Russian people though, is not the only danger to the institutions of the United States. Far more im

portant as a source of social dynamite is hunger right here at home.

By February 1st at least a million and a half able-bodied men, now housed, fed

and clothed at government expense, will be thrown upon their own resources. While they are being mustered out of the army, opportunities for employment are steadily decreasing. For instance, almost immediately upon the signing of the armmistice the immensely expensive task of cutting spruce for airplanes on the Pacific Coast was partially suspended and 12,000 men were thrown out of a job in a day. A short time later contracts for 116 and, after another short interval, for sixty more wooden ships were cancelled. Night

Let U.S. Buy According to cable the Ships of advices from Europe it is proposed Kaiser's Fleet to take the German fleet, now swinging idly at anchor in the Orkney Islands, open the sea cocks of the vessels and drop them to the bottom of the sea in order to avoid a possible dispute among the victors over their distribution.

Before the war ended it was fondly hoped that its horrors would lead to a general reduction of all armaments and to the formation of a League of Nations. with an international high court and an international police force to maintain peace. If such a league, such a court and such a force is to be brought into being, and it is the President's avowed purpose personally to urge the peace conference to accomplish this object, why could not these vessels be used as the nucleus of an international fleet, the naval arm of the proposed supernational police force?

If this project is impractical, the fleet in its entirety should be turned over to the United States in return for the cancellation of say five hundred million dollars loaned by the United States to the allies. It seems a senseless waste to have the United States carry out a naval building program calling for the expenditure of more than a billion dollars in 1919 while a great fleet is being sunk merely because the comrades - in - arms who wrested it from the enemy are unable to agree upon a proper distribution.

Surely the United States has demonstrated its peaceful intentions, its lack of imperialism and selfishness sufficiently so that fear and jealousy will not be aroused by the sudden increase in its naval strength brought about by the acquisition of the German fleet. In any event,

Center: American regiment entering Vladivostok. Lower: Chinese soldiers passing American headquarters

tinued and enlarged until American shores are entirely safe from invasion.

Feed the Hun President Wilson and Herbert Hoover know that to Make Him famine is stalking through Pay His Debts Russia. They also know that hunger produces revolutions and that the Bolshevik doctrine, like the Spanish influenza, is highly contagious. Therefore they are willing to send a limited supply of food even into Germany, where starvation and privation is giving rise to the first symptoms of the Bolshevik rabies.

Will they have food to send? The vast majority of Americans is unwilling to save and economize on food that Germany might be fed. "Why should I deny myself wheat bread, sugar, meat, and fat to be sent out of the country to the Huns for big money, raising prices here still higher and filling the pockets of the food profiteers?" argue millions of Americans. There are several answers to this question. In the first place, food conservation is necessary if the United States is to fulfil its pledge and send eighteen million tons of food to our allies during the year. If America deliberately ceases to conserve food and proceeds to waste it to keep it from Germany, prices will go up here and abroad, and rising food prices will most certainly stimulate Bolshevik propa

ganda.

In the second place, it is to the interest of the United States to restore order and productive activity in Germany as soon as possible. Germany will be obliged to pay the allies billions in indemnities. The allies need the money to pay the United States interest on loans totaling ten billion dollars. The interest on this sum is nearly five hundred million dollars. a year. The sooner Germany begins paying the allies, the better will they be able to pay the interest due Uncle

Sam. But Germany cannot pay unless she produces, and production will not begin if hunger throws Germany into red chaos. Hence Hoover's desire and the President's promise to provide food.

tween rival

Bankrupt nations in piling up ever

larger armaments can no longer continue. No nation outside of the United States can afford to increase and enlarge its standing army and add progressively to its navy while it is under the necessity of paying interest on the national debt inflated to huge proportions by war expenses. The resulting taxation would kill business and drive the masses to revolt.

England's dept now exceeds forty billion dollars. The annual interest on this sum reaches almost two billion dollars. Before the war the British budget, comprising expenses of all kinds including those of the army and navy, never reached one billion dollars. Interest on the war debt, therefore, is now twice as large as all governmental

expenses of any kind before the war. To this interest charge must be added the pensions, the care of the widows and orphans and the cost of new government work originating during the war, bringing the minimum peace budget of Great Britain to three billion dollars. If the British navy is to be enlarged, the exBritish navy is to be enlarged, the expenses to be met by taxation will rise above this mark and approach war figures. Handicapped by so heavy a load of taxation, British industry will be unable to compete in the open markets of the world, British industrial plants will shut down and British workmen, following the example of their colleagues in continental Europe, will take over the government. ~ U

All Warring Europe is Dead Broke

On the continent of Europe the situation is far worse. Germany, with a debt equal to Britain's and confronted by the necessity of paying indemnities, is face to face with financial collapse. Austria was almost bankrupt before the war began; it is now hopelessly so. In Italy the government before the war spent almost half the tax receipts for interest on the national debt, and its taxes then were proportionately the heaviest in Europe. How Italy can pay interest on the new debt and still maintain a large army and is a mystery to students of finance. Russia has paid no interest on her bonds for over a year: in France the French government has been paying this interest

navy

to owners of Russian securities. France herself has a staggering load of debt beside which the billion-franc indemnity of 1871 is merely a retail transaction.

Something will have to be done if the leading nations of the world are to avoid the referee-in-bankruptcy. Some of them will probably be compelled to follow the example of Russia and omit interest payments on all bonds. Austria-Hungary falls into this category, especially as most of the new states setting up housekeeping amid the ruins of the dual monarchy decline to assume their share of the war debt.

Another group of states, including Germany, the Balkans and perhaps Italy, may suspend interest payments on bonds owned by their own people while continuing to remit on bonds placed in foreign countries. All of them, however, including the United States, will seek to convert their war bonds, now bearing from four to six per cent interest, into securities ranging from 22 to 3 per cent, thus reducing the interest burden by forty per cent.

But this reduction will not be enough. Additional savings must be made, and the logical place to apply the pruning shears lies in the expenditures for the military and naval establishments. These expenditures can be reduced only if the peace conference creates some effective organization to preserve and maintain peace. Therefore it is of supreme and overwhelming importance that the peace conference first and foremost fashion and establish such an organization. Without such an organization the competition in armaments will continue, Europe will be thrown into financial bankruptcy and industrial chaos and the peaceful progress of the entire world will be delayed for centuries.

The President clearly sees the importance of safeguarding peace before settling the territorial claims of the belligerents. That's why he has gone to Europe. If he carries his ideas through successfully, he will have won a greater victory than the most renowned of generals.

wheat crop on record and good harvests

in Europe, with the Germans defeated and complete victory accomplished, it may seem superfluous to many people to continue saving food, fuel, paper and other essentials, yet the need for the continuance of strict economy in the consumption of essentials is just as great now as it was six months ago and will continue to be imperative at least until late next summer. There is only so much wheat, meat, sugar and fat to go around among our own people and our allies in Europe until next fall. Even complete victory cannot increase this supply unless by this victory there is released immediately

sufficient tonnage to transport the wheat of Australia and the Argentine, the sugar of Java and the coffee of Brazil to Europe. Such wholesale release of tonnage cannot take place at once. The vessels now in war service can return only gradually to their old routes. Even with peace in sight no food relief is possible until late next year. In the meantime we must all continue to limit our menu that Europe may be fed and prices prevented from leaping over

the moon.

President Wilson's Big Task

ט

Indications are multiplying that the negotiations concerning the final terms of the general peace are not proceeding as smoothly as the world hoped. The cables bring stories of dissensions among the representatives of various nations, and they report quite freely that Britain will decline to submit to any definition of the "freedom of the seas" clause except its very own. The cables also speak of an attempt to belittle America's share in the final victory to the end that the delegates of the United States might not have the dominant voice in the conference.

Under the circumstances a review of the last two years' events may not be

amiss.

In December, 1916, it became clear that the British had sacrificed a million men in the Somme battle and had failed to break through. Failure also had been the lot of the French in their effort to pierce the southern line of the German triangle. The submarines were sinking more than 200,000 tons a month. Russia was rapidly going to pieces, the Italians were creeping forward by inches and crops everywhere had been poor. A black pall of depression was lying over the Allied countries and the specter of a hunger peace stalked through their capitals.

Into this atmosphere of almost hopeless resignation came the United States' de

the strong and with excessive armaments that bear within themselves the seeds of future wars.

Now is the time to stand behind the President. He has gone to Europe not as the representative of the United States, but as the champion of the masses the world over, as the spokesman of the plain people of all races who demand that there shall be no more war, that peace shall be based on stern but impartial justice, that the diplomats and politicians who would continue to play the old imperial game of chess with the lives of millions as pawns be suppressed and real good will among the nations of the earth be obtained.

He has had before him the complete rec ord of the case, amplified by voluminous briefs submitted by both sides. He has had time to investigate the charges made against numerous witnesses outside of the courtroom and he has had before him a mountain of petitions, communications, threats and pleas on behalf of Mooney. He knew that a large part of the machinery of the Federal Government was at the disposal of the Mooney defense organization. He was subjected to pressure on Mooney's behalf by the President of the United States, yet he declined to give the convicted man a full pardon tantamount to liberation and exoneration.

Governor Stephens had far more time, opportunity and inclination to study the Mooney case exhaustively than the Federal Mediation Commission, which gave a few hours to the case while engaged on other matters. Governor Stephens came to the conclusion that Mooney was guilty and that his conviction should stand. He commuted the sentence because the President requested it, basing his request upon reasons of international policy.

Will the pro-Mooney agitation cease now? The McNamara confession automatically put an end to the gigantic propaganda started in their behalf, but the Mooney campaign will continue. Its outcome will help to decide the question whether revolutionary or evolutionary tactics shall prevail in American social progress.

What Will Peace Do to the West?

The approach of peace finds business in the Far West in condition to meet whatsoever may happen. The Far West has paid its war taxes cheerfully and will not object to a continuation of heavy taxation if in turn the Federal Government will handle the problem of preventing mass unemployment with both hands and find an adequate solution. Provided there is peace

lion, came men by the million, came a tightening of the blockade. Without the active participation of the United States none of these things could have been done, nor could the country have been asked to save wheat, meat and sugar at a time when a sufficient supply of these commodities was a life-and-death matter to the Allies. In the fall of 1917 the Italian front broke at Capporetto and disaster resulted. Without the promise of funds, food and men held out by the United States, negotiations for an inconclusive peace leaving Germany in possession of all she had conquered in the East would have begun right then.

At the critical moment the full weight of the United States was thrown upon the scales. Liberty and democracy won. Without the food, the money and the men of the United States complete victory was impossible.

Never did a nation draw its sword with purer, finer motives than the United States. Materially America had nothing to gain. America then coveted nothing, does not now covet anything owned by any other nation. This idealism, this unselfishness of the United States has been demonstrated in Mexico, in Cuba, in the Philippines. All that the United States asks now is a settlement which will do away with the oppression of the weak by

several days ahead of the army of occupation

For these things the United States fought. In the moment of victory we must not forget to secure them. It is Woodrow Wilson's job to obtain for mankind the ideals for which America fought. It is for America to support Woodrow Wilson solidly, unanimously in the greatest and most important task of his career. The fate of the world for hundreds of years depends upon the kind of peace that will be made. Let us fight for an American peace, for a world peace, against a narrow materialistic peace based upon revenge and spoils, a peace that is not peace at all.

Europe, the Far West will be able to pay the biggest wages in the world and still continue to expand its output and its markets.

Agriculture still is the basis of the Far Western prosperity. Except in the drought belt extending from western Texas north to the Canadian line, the farmers are exceedingly prosperous. They have had fair crops and very high prices for three years. This fall the principal ingredient of bumper crops, rain, began to fall early and continued at intervals to the present day, thereby assuring recordbreaking crops for 1919 if the precipitation continues. And in 1919, prices for farm products will continue to be high. One has only to glance at European needs and European disorganization to realize that the farmer need not worry even though the famine prices of 1918 will not be duplicated.

Of course the mining industry will see the price of metals decline gradually, but there will be no sudden drop. It must be remembered that a tremendous quantity of the metal mined in the last four years has completely disappeared on the battlefields. Unlike metals produced in peace, it is not now doing work in factory, on the railroads or telegraph lines. It was produced, worked up into ammunition and vanished when the lanyard was pulled.

In the meantime, while this destruction was going on, the metal needs of peace industry had to go unfilled. At the present time these accumulated shortages in the United States and the Allied countries, not counting German and Austrian demands, are sufficient to keep the copper, lead and zinc mines of the Far West going at their present gait for two years.

The price of silver shows no symptoms of coming down. With hundreds of billions in new paper currency floating around the financial world, both silver and gold will be in extreme demand for years to come. In fact, the pressing need for a larger domestic production of gold should lead to Government measures to stimulate gold mining and prospecting for gold in the Far West.

Next to agriculture and mining, lumbering is the most important industry from the Rockies west, more especially the Pacific Northwest. Until 1917 the lumber men had had seven lean years.

The Future of the Coast Shipyards

The growth of the shipPacific Coast has been one building industry on the

of the marvels of the war. Alongside of the shipyards there took place an expansion of the metal-working industries fully as important, if not as spectacular. What will become of these yards, of the enlarged factories and machine shops now that peace is at hand?

Of course everybody knows that the yards building wooden ships are doomed. The Shipping Board, realizing the inability of wooden steamers to compete with steel vessels, is cancelling wooden contracts with the utmost speed, knowing that the fleet of wooden steamers is a dead investment. But the case of the steel shipyards is different.

It seems incredible that the United States, having wrested the shipbuilding supremacy from Britain in eighteen months, should be content to go back to

Since then the steel jaws of Mars have been chewing up lumber faster than it could be produced. The construction of wooden ships and of airplanes consumed enormous quantities and kept the industry going full blast even though private building operations dropped almost to

zero.

Now building, suspended for more than a year, is starting again and, in spite of the cancellation of war orders, enough peace business is in sight to keep the Western logging camps and mills operating at full normal capacity for nearly a year. In the immediate future, therefore, the lumber business will continue on a profitable basis, but sooner or later the excess mill capacity will bring back the old trouble. Fortunately the Far West has been blessed with raw materials which all the world needs in peace as well as in war. Its three basic industries need practically no adjustment to go from the war to a peace basis. Hence the business of the Far West will feel the readjustment period less than any other part of the country.

the old days when British firms got the bulk of the world's contracts. And it is incredible that the Pacific Coast in particular should let slip this opportunity to retain a flourishing industry.

It can be done. On the Pacific Coast conditions for outdoor work such as shipbuilding are ideal. Owing to the complete absence of extremes both of heat and cold, the individual worker can stay at his task comfortably and efficiently every day in the year. The extreme value of this factor is demonstrated by the output per man in British and Pacific Coast yards. Harlan & Wolf, perhaps the best of the British yards, in the year before the war averaged an output of twenty-six tons per man per annum. This was in peace times with an old established, thoroughly trained organization. On the Pacific Coast one of the new yards in its third year, with a hastily trained organization of new men, averaged thirty-two tons per man per annum.

All of which goes to prove that the shipyards and shops of the Pacific Coast can

pay the highest wages in the world, work an eight-hour day under the best conditions and still compete successfully with all comers provided employers and workers coöperate wholeheartedly to the end that the highest efficiency and the largest output are maintained continuously.

The industrial future of the Pacific Coast lies in the hands of those most directly interested. If they can pull together, their numbers will grow and they will prosper. If they begin to scrap, if one or the other side gains complete control and abuses it, there will be a distinct retrogression when the war impetus has spent itself.

Bond Fakers Fatten on Ignorance

If the agents of the Department of Justice can now spare a few hours from their onerous duties, they might with profit arm themselves with a Liberty bond of a small denomination, assume a guileless, unsophisticated appearance and make the rounds of the numerous "stock and bond exchanges" that have sprung up like toadstools in all Far Western cities. These bond dealers usually advertise that they will pay cash for Liberty bonds wholly or partially paid for and that their rates are "based on market quotations." They do pay cash for the bonds, but the "market quotation" is an outrageous fake bordering on fraud. For a $100 bond quoted on the New York Exchange at $97 the average Liberty bond faker will offer $93 and usually the offer is accepted even though the bond owner could go two blocks farther to a reputable, established bond house and sell his bond for the full market price less a tiny commission not exceeding fifty cents per hundred-dollar bond.

The Liberty bond faker knows that millions of men and women totally unacquainted with the simplest financial machinery outside of the savings bank have bought the war securities and that many of them, having bought beyond their means, nevertheless are ashamed to sell openly or to ask advice as to the best method of realizing on their securities. Basing their tactics on this ignorance and fear, the faker rents an office or desk room and advertises that he pays cash for Liberty bonds. All he needs is a cash capital of a few hundred dollars. He buys four or five hundred dollars' worth of bonds at $4 or $5 per bond below the market, takes them to a real bond house, sells them on a small commission and pockets the difference of $12 or $14. On partially paid bonds his profits are proportionately higher.

If you must sell a Liberty bond, avoid the fakers. Go to your bank or to an old established bond house and save money.

In the meantime the Treasury Department might with profit plant its heel on the bond fakers who are making millions weekly out of the new bond buyers' ignorance.