SHE KNEW BETTER.

Micky Flanigan came home one day sniffing. "Ye got licked," cried his mother with conviction.

"Naw, I didn't neither, Maw," Micky retorted, "but the doctor was at our school to-day trying to find out if there was anything the matter with any of us and he says I got ad'noids."

"Ad'noids! What's them?" Mrs. Flanigan demanded.

"They're things in your head, Maw, what has to be took out," said Micky in a doleful tone.

"He's a liar," Mrs. Flanigan cried hotly. "I fine-comb your head iv'ry Saturday night, and it's never a ad'noid have I seen yet."

The male sex is never represented among the angels.

Go ahead when you think you're right, but don't expect the crowd to follow you.

The woman who doesn't fight against being kissed usually isn't worth kissing.

There's this much to be said for universal military training: After a man has been trained to obedience in the army he has learned the prime requisite for success as a married man.

Pushing the clock ahead an hour is a grand idea. It makes pay-day come just that much sooner.

METHOD IN HIS MADNESS.

A man out West bet $2 he could put a billiard ball in his mouth.

He won and his friend, a doctor, paid the bet.

Then he couldn't get the ball out. The doctor removed it.

And charged him $4.

AN INDIGNANT POSTMASTER.

"Have you got any letters for Mike Howe?" asked the farmer.

"To whom?" snapped the perspiring official.

"Mike Howe, I said!" bawled the farmer louder than ever. "Don't you know your job, or can't you talk English? Have you any letters for Mike howe? Now do you understand?"

The postmaster took off his glasses. "No, I have not," he snorted. "Neither for your cow or any one else's."

EASILY EXPLAINED.

He was one of those officious foremen, one who tried to make those under his charge realize that he was somebody of importance. But one day he met his match.

Stepping up to the shop humorist, he said:

"You're a minute last this morning." "I know, but there's a reason for it." "Explain."

"When I was comin' along to work I heard a man in the river yellin' for help. I ran to him, was pullin' him out, but let him drop in again."

"But why didn't you save him?" "Not likely," was the dry answer. "Why?"

"'Cos he was a foreman!"

HER OLD HABIT.

Medium-Ah, I hear the knocking of your late wife!

Patron-That so? Who's she knocking now? Puck.

Tardiness is guilty of half the hell on earth.

A Milwaukee man insists that he heard the voice of his dead wife talking to him over the telephone.

You simply can't stop 'em.

[

NEW YORK.

To the Editor:

"Let's all be Americans now." "Though love repine and reason chafe, There comes a voice without reply, 'Tis man's perdition to be safe

When for the truth he ought to die."

It was with some degree of surprise and disgust that I read the article written by Mr. Grant Hamilton and entitled "Unions Warned Junkers Would Militarize United States." Surprise that such vociferous nonsense should find admittance to our Journal, and disgust because the article is full of fallacies and is virtually treasonable. The writer presumes to lecture the President and Congress upon a situation of which apparently he has not the slightest moral understanding. In this crisis he is willing to abandon fundamental facts and Ideal in the cheap and shallow arguments of a street faker. He is either ignorant of the facts involved or purposely misleading in his statements; either a hyphenate in principle or a demagogue in practice. A meddler fancying himself a doctor, when, in fact, he is only a midwife.

our

As reasoning beings let us determine for ourselves whether this labor legislator is right in his conclusions or deliberately pandering to prejudices. The article is headed with a verse so transparently false and silly as to prevent anyone expecting a fair and able presentation of the subject in that which follows.

Why does not this criticiser of Congress and the business world in general make very plain to us what a junker really is? My dictionary tells me that it means a young German nobleman, especially one of aristocratic and feudal prejudices. Now, when we are informed that America has a junker class, we know that this

feudal

class has aristocratic and prejudices-German-like as it were. In the first paragraph there are three sentences. The first is wrong, the second is gloriously right, and the third is sheer nonsense. War was declared against Germany at one o'clock on Good Friday afternoon, April 6, not on the 5th, as stated. What autocratic proposals are now being considered by President Wilson and Congress? To declare that our representatives at Washington favor autocratic proposals, as though they possessed independent and unlimited power of government, is too silly for anyone to patiently consider. Let Mr. Hamilton protest quickly and vehemently if he wants to; but, as for me, I have no desire to buck against the Government. Right or wrong, I shall be loyal to Uncle Sam.

The second paragraph is a mixture of patriotism and copperheadism, and makes plain what is meant by "the autocratic proposals under consideration." The people's representatives are warned against fastening militarism upon this nation. If they do, they are "junkers;" that is, men of aristocratic and feudal prejudices.

The third paragraph informs us that the people from every quarter of the country demanded that Congress adopt a conscription law. These demands proceed largely from the American junker class; that is, "these holders of investments," these rich men, wish all, rich and poor alike, to bear their share of the burdens of war. Good! Why not?

The fourth paragraph starts off with the striking declaration that for over 190 years we have glorified our democratic institutions. That we fought the war of independence in 1776 with a volunteer force. President Wilson is a profound student of American history and character. He has carefully considered all the les

sons that history has in store, and yet he advocates universal conscription. His attitude is endorsed by the great majority of the American people. Those members of Congress who have opposed conscription have done all they could to weaken the Government in a time of national peril.

Students of American history have come to realize this one great fact: That humiliation and disaster have always followed the dependence upon a volunteer army for the protection of the country. Washington found it so, to his sorrow and discouragement, during the war of the revolution. But let us consider Washington's own words: "Experience has shown that a peremptory draft will be the only effectual one. Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning, which, by the continuance of men in service had been capable of discipline, we should not have had to retreat with a handful of men across the Delaware in 1776, trembling for the fate of America, which nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could have saved."

Thomas Jefferson, third President of our beloved country, and a pretty fair specimen of the Democrats of his day, was an ardent advocate, if you please, of the volunteer service. After seeing its breakdown in the War of 1812, wrote as follows: "We must train and classify the whole of our male citizenship and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe until this is done." Jefferson must have been a "junker," too.

In our own Civil War, Bull Run should have sounded the death knell of the volunteer service. (Read the life of Gen. W. T. Sherman.) Yet it required one year of war to bring the South to universal service, and it took two years of disaster and humiliation to bring the North to the same way of thinking. Yet we find men, fancying themselves oracles, rushing into print and calling upon their fellowworkmen to protest against the necessary actions taken by our President, admonishing our representatives and,

incidentally, every one else, as to present public duty.

Going back to the War of 1812, we find that the volunteer army for the defense of Washington became panic stricken and fled before a force of English regulars one-half its own strength. When a small force of American regular troops had won a position on the Canadian shore and asked for assistance from the volunteer force on the American side of the river, they failed to get them be. cause these volunteers were enlisted for service in America only. And as for the Civil War, it would have been over long before it was had it not been for the serious defects of the volunteer system. Read Brook's "Abraham Lincoln," if you want to learn more about the volunteer system of his day.

In the fifth paragraph we are confronted with the startling statement that the Chamberlain bill (since adopted, thank God, by Congress. House, 397 to 24; Senate, 81 to 8) was introduced for the purpose of revolutionizing our democratic government and placing it on a military basis. This is arrant nonsense, a state becomes militaristic when the military and not the civil power has supreme control. But in a government like our own, where every soldier may be a citizen and a voter, the military and the civil power would become one and the same thing, and militarism, in the very nature of things, would be impossible. We are not apt to oppress ourselves. And besides all this, there is the United States Supreme Court still alive and doing business at Washington.

Every one who shares in the benefits of our government should share also in its perils and responsibilities. Freedom and protection demand of every man and woman unqualified loyalty and service.

The agitation against conscription proceeds from the same sources that have inspired every alien plot and supported every anti-American design. It is just as reasonable and fair to force conscription upon a peo

ple as it is to force the payment of taxes upon a people. Suppose the payment of taxes was made by the volunteer system, who would volunteer?

Let us all be patriotic but do not let us be hateful. A Christian may be patriotic but he cannot be hateful. There may be war without hatred and hatred without war. We should defend our principles when attacked, but we need not hate those who attack them. Our splendid President has endeavored to make this truth plain to the people of our beloved country. Almost anybody can make me fight, but no one can make me hate them long.

As Americans we have no quarrel with the German people as a people. But it does make me hot under the collar to hear a native-born American defend Prussian militarism. To choose autocracy rather than democracy; to defend the pretensions of the strong in their war upon the inherent rights of the weak; to prefer an emperor instead of a president. We understand how difficult it is to resist the influence of heredity. Our angle of vision would be different had we chanced to be born on the banks of the Rhine instead of on those of the Hudson or the Potomac. Therefore we should make some allowance for the opinions of our German associates. Some will not be able to make this distinction, but we ought to. We are going into this war because it is our duty to do so; but not with joy which springs from the lust of killing. Let us hope that it will be without undue bitterness and fury generated by hate and the desire to avenge the wrongs committed by the enemy. No "hymn of hate" shall rise from our lips, but we shall by the portrayal of the nobler qualities of self-denial and fortitude uphold the ideals of a citizenship as patriotic in its home life as in its readiness to die on the field of battle.

WILLIAM HAVENSTRITE. Local No. 1.

BOSTON, MASS.

What Causes the High Cost of Living? To the Editor:

What is the matter with our country? Concentrate your vision upon all American cities. What do we find? The per capita tax in ten of our largest cities ranges from $50 to $70 per year, including state, county and federal taxes. With allowance for the very old, and the very young, the idle class and others who produce nothing, which is set by economists as 4 to 1, we have the producer, upon whom all tax ultimately falls, through the sifting processes of trade and domestic economy, shouldering a yearly burden of $300, not the less surely because imposed upon him by indirection.

Turn again to the census reports and you will find the income of the average producer is less than $700

per year.

Such is the true inwardness of taxation, as it is now running riot. So long as it was levied off the many for the few it was not so keenly felt, but now by the multiplication of all sorts of sinecures and all sorts of pretenses, the officeholders and tax-eaters are rivaling in numbers to producers and exceeding them in voracity and demands for salaries to sustain expensive living.

Here you have the true cause of the high cost of living. It is high because the producer has to support, besides his own family, the families of all office holders. A few years of easy money from the public treasury atrophies any productive capacity the average man might have. He simply has to be provided for. So we see an endless making of bureaus until our governmental functions are almost alimentary for the hundreds of thousands of helpless people who have attached themselves to the hulls of the nation, of the states, of the cities.

The situation has now reached the phase when the man who has not a public office in possession and a pension in prospect, is at a most grave disadvantage and has to face a serious

and gloomy prospect in life. He has to pay into the food and clothing market for his own living the increased cost which support the nonproductive officeholders, and while often, not knowing where to lay his own head, he has to provide from the proceeds of his day's work, for a pension for the other party who retires after a short service, in an easy place, to live out his years in tranquillity. M. A. O'BRIEN, JR.

Local No. 4.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

To the Editor:

This year will be long remembered even after several decades for the high cost of living, the scarcity of labor and the entry of the United States into war.

Now that we are at war, every man and woman feels it incumbent upon themselves to do something to help.

Well, here in Philadelphia it is hard for a man to decide which is the best course to pursue, either to enter some branch of the Government service, of which there are fourteen separate divisions, with many sub-divisions, or to stay at home and bend all his energies to help in the industrial field. Every day men are advertised for to work in the Frankford Arsenal as tool makers, machinists, coppersmiths and other branches requiring skilled men. If we leave these industries of the Government, where will the ammunition and other supplies come from?

Notwithstanding this condition, many of our men have joined the colors. Local No. 5 has passed resolutions that any member enlisting in any branch of the Government service shall be exempted from the payment of all dues and assessments and in case of death the full amount of benefits shall be paid to his relatives. We have also appointed a committee to look after any matter of a business nature of any of our men who enlist might have. There are a whole bunch of good, strong, husky young fellows in our local who no doubt ere long

will be in the ranks somewhere.

Local No. 5 has set a new record for herself. Our agreement with the manufacturers expired on May 1. The new agreement was presented to them on November 1, 1916, and nothing was heard from it until early in April, when a letter asking for a conference was received from the manufacturers.

The Agreement Committee met with them in conference, and, of course, nothing definite was accomplished, but a start had been made. During the interval of early April and May a number of such meetings were held, and each session clarified the situation. Finally, on Monday, April 30, the committee agreed to the following proposition as made by the manufacturers, but before signing the agreement we went back to our local and advised the signing.

From May 1, 1917, to August 1, 1917, mechanics, $5.50 per day; helpers, $3.50 per day.

From August 1, 1917, to May 1, 1918, mechanics, $5.80 per day; helpers, $3.68 per day.

From May 1, 1918, to April 30, 1919, mechanics, $5.90 per day; helpers, $3.84 per day.

From May 1, 1919, to April 30, 1920, mechanics, $6.00 per day; helpers, $3.94 per day.

This wage rate with our old agreement was signed for three years, with cut one dollar of loss in wages or a day's business of the firms lost. Everything unpleasant is being blamed on the war, but here is one thing that can be placed there. If there had been no war and the trade conditions as they now are, we would have held out and went on strike, as some of our members demanded other working conditions. Practically every elevator firm in the city has signed the new agreement.

We are enjoying a full measure of prosperity. Every man is working and we have 50 permit men working. We have had an average of 40 permit men for the last six months.

Not only are the elevator firms busy, but all the machine shops, mills, foundries, factories, ship yards, car