DR. LOEB ON WAR
Dr. Loeb On War WHEN the war broko out in Europe we heard much about the "biological necessity of war." This barbarous theory was repudiated in an address before the American Society of Naturalists...
...There are, for instance, 1,297 children between ten and fifteen listed as barbers...
...The latter part of 1914, war in Europe having begun and no foreign bids having been received, they increased their prices $100...
...Be-bides these there are the thousands of newsboys, * * * messengers, errand-hoys, and cash-girls who are the more familiar of the child workers...
...Finally, I have concluded that all attempts at regulation are futile, and that the only possible answer is government ownership...
...Monopoly practices are cheeking the spread of information and intelligence among the people...
...This year, still believing that outside competition was impossible, some of them made a price of $539...
...What has your state done for them...
...Since at present the making of war has been ft in the hands of statesmen it may be well to ention that the exact sciences have paved the y for the replacement of the present type of itesmanship by a new one...
...There is just one answer and that is the transfer of the ownership from private hands to representatives of the people...
...THE National Child Labor Committee is making au unusual appeal in its announcements of Child Labor Day this year because, as it says, the passage of the federal child labor law has given the child labor campaign an entirely now aspect...
...Indicting A Great Industry (Editorial in the New York World) ALTHOUGH Secretary Daniel's story of navy shells during his administration is a simple little tale, it carries an indictment as comprehensive as any true bill ever returned by a Grand Jury...
...by another, only 37.7 per cent., and by another, the highest, only 73 per cent...
...Editorial interpretation of important public problems, facts about men and measures, home and education and health articles, stimulating and informing contributed features, will give our readers, as they can get it from no other source, the Truth about the people's common business...
...The federal government has taken over the protection of children in mills, factories, canneries, workshops, mines and quarries engaged in producing goods for interstate commerce...
...So grave is this situation that the Federal Government has taken hold and is endeavoring to fix the responsibility and to determine whether corporations or individuals are liable to legal penalty...
...As the Secretary well says, a difference in price can be expressed in dollars, but a difference in quality, on which the fate of a battle might depend, no money can measure...
...Of shells submitted for test by one maker, only 8.8 per cent, passed...
...With no competition among themselves or abroad, American steel manufacturers in 1912 had gradually advanced the price of 14-inch armor-piercing projectiles to $500 each...
...Some of them are doing things you never dreamed that children could do, for the census of 1910 shows that children work in the most unexpected and apparently unsuitable occupations...
...The National Child Labor Committee, 105 Kasfr22d St., New York City, will be glad to send information and suggestions to anyone interested and asks especially for your co-operation...
...The greater cannot be controlled by the lesser...
...No commission is as strong as the concentrated power of the railroads...
...It must be one or the other...
...To Our Readers SOARING PRICES of print paper and increasing manufacturing costs are bringing a serious problem to every publication...
...In this statement Senator Clapp said: "It was twenty-six years ago that I began ths study of this problem of the remedy for railroad evils, and during these twenty-six years I have had a lot to do in one way and another with the matter...
...There is a wide differcnee in the develop-tent of instincts and in the powers of inhibition different individuals, and these differences ay be hereditary...
...Loeb's authoritative opinion comes as a refreshing antidote to the poison of the primitive jingoes...
...Unfortunately such poorly balanced individ-als have rather too frequently been the leaders governments...
...Coming as this docs from a distinguished and seasoned servant of the people, who has rendered conspicuous service on the Interstate Commerce Committee of the United States Senate, it expresses a ripe conviction that may well give pause to the railroad interests in their efforts to make the stock ticker hum at the expense of public needs, and stimulate the passenger and the shipper to the taking of a fresh inventory'in this business of controlling common carriers...
...Enthusiasts maintain that unless a nation ngages occasionally in war, it will lose its courge which is essential to its survival...
...some of them may black your slides...
...It is not the child in some far away mill or mine that you are asked to remember, but the child who works next door...
...To have yielded to them would have been to plunder the Treasury and, in time of war, to deliver the fleet to destruction...
...you are asked to work for the protection of the other children, the ones whom the Constitution bars from federal protection but leaves to the states...
...One of these manufacturers has recently complained—and confessed—in a newspaper advertisement that of the shells manufactured under a contract entered upon two years ago not one has met the requirements of the department...
...No matter how high-minded the commissioners may be—and I admit that they are generally a very fine class of men —they are only human, and sooner or later the more powerful controls the less powerful...
...Tho exactions of the Print Paper Trust have forced most of the magazines to increase their subscription price...
...What do you know about them...
...On Saturday, January 27, Synagogues observe the day, on Sunday, churches and Sunday-schools, and on Monday, clubs, schools, colleges, unions and other organizations...
...Meanwhile, La Follette's Magazine will remain on the firing line of progress,—one of the very few "un-infiuenecd" publications that are left—-and will strive to be, in an ever-increasing degree, what one distinguished reader has called "a free, fearless, and enlightening magazine...
...We then diminish the danger of war...
...What About Child Labor In YOUR Town...
...Some of them may sell you newspapers...
...A Question of Power PUBLIC interest in government ownership of public utilities was enhanced by a recent newspaper interview with Senator Moses E. Clapp of Minnesota...
...Some of them may be working for your baker, your grocer, or your milliner...
...The new statesman ll apply the results of the exact sciences to improvement of the law of humanity...
...The strain is particularly great upon those outspoken papers that cannot look to the advertising of big consolidated business for existence, but must depend entirely upon the support of their subscribers...
...There are 365 little boys ten to thirteen, and over 2,000, fourteen and fifteen, working on steam railroads...
...With eyes fixed only on prices and profits, they have hardly made a pretense of keeping their products in line with modern standards...
...There are 89,508 children under sixteen working as domestic servants, and over a million children under sixteen listed as farm laborers...
...Individuals with a strong unicidal mania, who just manage to suppress heir tendencies, will welcome war...
...Those arc the questions the National Child Labor Committee asks you in connection with Child Labor Day, and this is a good time to find out more about the child who works in your town and in your state...
...In 1913, learning that Hadfields of England had made a bid, they cut their proposal to $315 each, with other sizes reduced in groportion...
...This barbarous theory was repudiated in an address before the American Society of Naturalists meeting at Columbia University in December by no less a scientist than Dr...
...sinee it re-oves for them the burden of constant inhibi-on...
...loeb said: "The biology of which the war enthusiasts make use is essentially antiquated, and the statc-lent that a nation by not going to war will lose s virile virtues is not supported by our pres-nt knowledge...
...Hadfields, however, appeared with a bid nearly 50 per cent, below the lowest American offer and received the contract...
...There are, according to the National Child Labor Committee, 1,850,000 such children in occupations having no connection with interstate commerce...
...If the steel-makers plead to this indictment, will they defend their extortion on grounds of inefficiency or acknowledge their culpability on both counts...
...There are 1.567 hostlers and stablemen under sixteen years of age...
...Other magazines have been compelled to discontinue...
...Thus the sum of the matter is that American steel-makers are aggrieved because they are not allowed to name their own prices for inferior shells...
...In this respect the American record is bad, even shameful...
...While this Magazine will tide over the heavily increased burden by a reduction in size, it will continue to fill its mission of service to the progressive movement in state and nation...
...Jacques Loeb of the Rockefeller Institute...
Vol. 9 • January 1917 • No. 1
