151PLE REMEDY ONE OF THE WAYS TO CURTAIL OPERATIONS OF TRUSTS. HOME PATRONAGE PRINCiPLES Systems That Oppose the Advance ment of Rural Towns and Agri cultural Communities. Never before have the people of the country been so awakened to the im portance of home protection as they are at present. The wide knowledge spread by means of the public press as to the operations of the great trusts and how the masses are made to serve the more favored classes is having its effect. The residents of agricultural communities are beginning to realize the dangers of business concentration in sections of the country dominated by the capitalistic classes. They are fast becoming aroused to the truth that this concentration is a menace to the prosperity of the nation, and di rectly affects every producer, every laborer and every citizen of the coun try who depends upon his work for support. The building up of great trusts com menced less than a score of years ago. At the same time there were other systems inaugurated that tended to wards robbing the home towns of business and concentrating this busi ness in the large cities. One of these systems, most notable in its injurious operations and its force to draw wealth from communities where it is produced, is the mail-order system of business. None will say that this sys- tem is illegitimate, but no economist can show wherein its principles are sound. By the system communities are impoverished and kept from pro gressing. He who will give study to the basis of country development will see that it is the labor employed that not alone enhances the value of the farm lands, but builds tip the towns. When there is little to employ this la bor, th ■ result is depression, stagna tion and non-progress. The great evil of the mail-order system which has grown up, is its taking away the means lhat small towns have of em ploying labor, and the drawing from ■each community the profits in com mercial transactions that represents the wealth that is procured. It is •sophistry to claim that the resident of a community who sends his money to a foreign town and saves the ten per •cent, that may represent the home merchant's profits, is not. a factor in impoverishing the community. While the saving may remain in the com munity the employment of labor essen tial to every business is given to the foreign place, and the home town is robbed of this employment giving power. Every dollar that is sent away from a community where it is produced •either b>' the tilling of the soil, by the growii \of live stock, by the work of the daj laborer, or by the storekeeper, impoverishes the community to that •extent, and this dollar ceases to be any factor in the advancement of the community. Presuming that there are in a community 2,000 people, suppose that each one of these 2,000 people send away to some foreign place SSO per year. This in the aggregate is SIOO,OOO per year that goes to the sup port of a foreign town. Suppose that • each one sending his money away saves ten per cent.; the savings for a year would be $5, and in ten years SSO. Look at the other side —$100,000 busi ness per year would support in the Thome town five good stores. Each one of these stores would give employ ment to a number of hands. The small percentage of profit that would be made would be retained in the com munity and be invested in new enter prises. Year after year there would ".be a continual increase in the pros perity of the town, and the building up process would add to the value of all the town property, and to the farms within the trading radius of the town. While by sending away the farmer would in ten years' time save but SSO, whereas by patronizing the home town the profits that would come to him in substantial increase in real estate values would be ten times this amount. The building up of the town would improve the home market, affording every producer on the farms better prices for all his pro duce. Then there is another thing, the •town supports the churches, the schools and other public institutions. The efficiency of these institutions are dependent upon the life and activity of the town. Where poor towns exist, the schools do not receive the support that is necessary to make them good, neither are the churches of the high standard they should be. Home pat ronage means good schools, good ■churches and all conveniences that add to the pleasure and enlightenment •of a people. All the residents of a community have common interests in it —the hanker, the lawyer, the doctor, the merchant, the farmer, the day laborer •—all have equal interests. Thus we find that a community is in reality a large cooperative assembly. What is interest to one is of material inter est to the other. But more important than all is that by a practice of the bome patronage principle the possibili ties of building up trusts for the con trol of industries of tne country are reduced to the minimum; in fact, a strict adherence to this simple princi ple of building up and protecting home industries precludes the building up of harmful trusts and combinations. D. M. CARR. SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES. Two Vital Things for the Welfara of the Masses. There is wisdom in the old slogan, "A school on every hill top and a church in every valley." Citizens of the United States may well feel proud of the great educational system which makes it. possible for all classes to ac quire the proper mental cultivation. They may also feel proud of the re ligious liberty that each and every citizen enjoys. There is no estab lished church to Interfere with the free exercise of conscience, neither is there any law that interferes with the exercise of religious belief. The United States can be looked upon as a nation where schools and churches flourish to the fullest. The public school system is one of the most perfect that civilization has yet evolved. Of course there are com munities where local conditions are not so favorable for schools as other places. It will be observed that the more important is the city or the town, the more advanced are the edu cational facilities offered the people. The residents of rural communities have their state or district school, the curriculums of which are restricted. It is to the nearby town that the chil dren who are residents of the farm districts must look for their higher education, which is a necessary prep aration for entry into college, and for business life. How important it is, then, to the resident of the farm dis trict that his home town be an active place and of sufficient business im portance to justify the maintenance of a high class school! It can be seen how each resident of a farming com munity should be interested in the home town and all that pertains to its upbuilding, if on no other account, purely on account of the educational facilities. Running parallel in importance with the schools are the churches. The hotter the home town the better are the church buildings, and the greater i« the talent that fills the pulpit. lioth schools and churches have education al qualities that should not be lightly valued. They mean the highest men tal and moral development, and upon this development depends the good citizenship and the advancement and perpetuation of the nation. OVERLOOKED OPPORTUNITIES. Chances in Average Small Town for Profitably Engaging in Business. According to the United States cen sus of 1900 there was produced in the United States 1,29.'!,662,433 dozen eggs. The same statistics give the annual production of poultry at 250,623,114. The butter made on farms each year is in excess of 1,000,000,000 pounds. The-cheese made on farms averages about 20,000,000 pounds annually. These statistics are interesting, and with each farmer growing poultry and eggs and making butter and cheese, it hardly seems possible that such com' binations as dairy trusts and egg and poultry trusts could exist, but that they do is nevertheless a fact. Every small town in a farming dis I trlct can command sufficient butter, I egg and poultry trade to support a prosperous exclusive produce estab lishment. The practice has generally obtained in agricultural districts of storekeepers in various lines taking farmers' produce in exchange for goods. The produce thus received by merchants is forwarded to the com mission houses in the large city, and these houses are factors that make it possible to maintain trusts in the pro duce business. It appears that if each town had its exclusive produce estab lishment to buy what the farmer has to sell instead of the produce going through the local stores, that better prices could be paid the farmers and the business made a most profitable one if rightly conducted. According to the natural laws of business industry succeeds best where advantages are most abundant. Thus it seems that the produce offers a most excellent field in the majority of agricultural towns. GOOD ROADS MOVEMENT. Millions of Dollars Annually Saved to the Farmers of the United States. One of the most important move ments that has been inaugurated of recent years, and which has resulted in wonderful benefit to the people is the good roads movement. Within the United States there are approximately about 8,000,000 farmers. If during a year each of those farmers can be saved $lO in time, or in wear and tear upon horses and wagons by means of improved roads, it means a saving of $80,000,000 annually; the truth is that the improved roads that have been built up the past half dozen years through agitation of the good roads movement saves each farmer in the land from SSO to SIOO. Thus it can be seen that the savings brought about through this movement aggregate hun dreds of millions of dollars each year. Good roads are important to the progressive town. This fact has be come so recognized that wherever there exists a live agricultural town its citizens will be found to be staunch advocates of road improvement, and there is a civic pride and friendly corn petition in the matter of having good roads leading to the towns. The work of road improvement has only fairly begun. A number of state legislatures have taken up the vrork and during the next dozen years great changes will be wrought as to the building and maintenance of public highways. Gave Much Work to Women. The invention of the typewriter lias given work to rnort lhaa 1,000,000 women. CAMERON COUNTY PRESS, THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1907. .j§ (L hiltlraw, HtraDRMVE million American worn- B en and children are work- JH I ing in gainful occupations. Three million of these la l)or outside the home. These women workers are "ij.v handicapped by their physical weakness and un t'-K-r accustomed environment. vSkK they have entered our Jjfffjyj' sharply competitive Indus li+SftSa trial system, and must often take tip single-handed a strug gle for existence in which the war ware is no less sharp because the weapons are the tools of manufacture and the stake the supply or failure of their daily bread. The fact that they have been able to do this without loss of virtue, and with an increasing degree of justice from the men who are their competi tors and employers proves chivalry to be something more than a beautiful dream of the past. The great army of men represent ed by the American Federation of Labor are pledged to the fulfillment of these vows, not only by the ties which tho human heart holds most sacred, but by the fundamental prin ciple underlying the organizations, and the stern economical necessity that gives persistence and force to all their efforts. Whose little ones gather the spools and watch the endless threads of the cotton mills, or run to and fro on the countless errands of tlie great stores? These are not the carefully protected children of the capitalist or professional man. The frail young girl who stand 3 long hours behind the counter or sacrifices health and eyesight in some basement work room is the daughter and sweetheart of a wageworker. In proportion as the conditions surrounding the working man's life become less brutalizing, his finer human sentiments urge him to insist on the protection of those bound to him by the tenderest of hu man ties. The labor organizations are not only pledged to the protection of women and children workers by these most primitive and potent of human ties, but by ideals that give deeper meaning to the movement. Economists assure us that wages are largely determined by the stand ard of comfort demanded by the workers. The high standard of th* American workman is threatened, not alone by the competition of foreign ers, unable to adopt it, but also by the more insidious inroads due to child labor, or to some forms of fe male competition. 1 How is a child whose immature mind and body have been stunted by the deadening round of machine tending to learn pride of race or attain the manly vigor neces sary to claim and defend the priv ilege of his> class? Occasionally one of exceptional strength may overcome the difficulties of his youth, but the majority grow up to reinforce that class of incompetents, mentally, mor ally and physically, who prove heavy burdens within the unions, or with out them menace their fellow-work men more seriously by their short sighted readiness to accept the lower standard against which the unions are struggling. Dr. Englemann, in a recent in vestigation of the health of women of the professional and working classes, finds that women who have undergone the severe mental training necessary for a professional career suffer much less front the ills peculiar to women than the working girls, with their long hours of standing and confine ment. Direct observers, like the Van Vorsts, lay great emphasis on the uni versally unsanitary conditions tinder which women work, and the resulting prevalence of anaemic and distorted physiques. These women will be the mothers of the next generation of American workmen. The most ef fective and far-reaching efforts to promote class and national welfare will begin with their protection. In the closing paragraphs of an ar ticle in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Walter Macarthur says: "The attitude of the American trade unionist is that of appeal to the spirit of independence and to a reali zation of the truth that the workers are themselves the sole repository of power to better their lot. The solemn lesson of history, to-day and every day of our lives, is that the woriters must depend upon themselves for the improvement of the conditions of la bor." Aside from inherited incapacity for organization, women have been de terred from any systematic and per sistent effort to beiter their condition as workers by the feeling that their employment was but a temporary ex pedient, from which they would be re leased by marriage. While this must continue to be true of a large number of women workers, still as a class there can be 110 question of the permanence of their position in the industrial world or of the necessity of developing the higher altruism which shall prompt temporary work ers to guard the interests of less for tunate sisters, whose lives depend en tirely on their conditions of work. Notwithstanding these drawbacks to organization on the part of the women, their influence has not been entirely wanting in the organizations of the past. They were admitted on equal terms with the men in the old English crafts guilds, and seem to have re ceived full recognition, both in the con trol of the affairs of the guild and in the consumption of ale. Women's unions were not unknown in the early annals of the English trades unionism. We hear of them as early as 183". To quote from history by Sydney and Beatrice Webb:: "Nor were the women neglected. The grand lodge of Operative Bonnet Makers vies in activity with the miscellaneous grand lodge of the Women of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Lodge of Female Tailors asks indignantly whether the Tailors' order is really go ing to prohibit women from making waistcoats. Whether the Grand Na tional Consolidated Trades Union was responsible for the lodges of Female Gardeners and Ancient Virgins, who afterward distinguished themselves in the riotous demand for an eight-hour day at Oldham, is not clear." While women have been admitted to membership in the older, more con servative men's unions for over 20 years, their greatest advance in num bers and influence has been during the last ten years. To-day women not only sit as members in the central labor unions of the great cities, but also exercise the full rights of dele gates in the American Federation of Labor. They have not received such recognition in any other national or ganization of men. That this great central body has complete faith in a wise use of what ever power they may help put into the hands of women is proven by tho adoption' of the following resolution in favor of woman suffrage, which was introduced by Vice President Duncan at the 1903 meeting: "Resolved, That the best interests of labor require the admission of women to full citizenship as a matter of justice to them and as a necessary step toward insuring and raising the scale of wages for all." The labor organizations have dis covered that the principles of union ism are as applicable to consumption as to production; they are trying to influence the demand for the finished product, as well as the condition un der which it is made. They hope to do this by means of the union label. In the recently published prize essay on the subject Macarthur says:"The union label enlists and arms in labor's cause those elements which determine the issue of every cause in civilized society, namely, the women and chil dren. In many places there are women's union label leagues organized to pro mote the demand for union-made goods. "The instincts of woman and the interests of labor are conjoined in the union label. Both stand for cleanli ness, morality, the care of the young, the sanctity of the home; both stand against strife and force. The union label makes woman the strongest, a3 she is the gentlest of God's creatures." One has only to look over the rec ords of the American Federation of Labor to realize that the labor organi zations are unqualified in their con demnation of child labor. Over ten years ago President Gompers declared ' the damnable system which permits young and innocent children to have their very lives worked out of them in factories, mills, workshops and stores is one of the very worst of labor grievances, one which the trade unions have protested against for years, and in the reformation of which we shall never cease our agitation until wo have rescued them and placed them where they should be, in the school room and the playground." Since then the president and delegates have repeated and indorsed these senti ments so often that, they are now looked upon as axiomatic, the last committee 011 the president's report remarking, "that the child belongs in the school ami on the playground in stead of in the workshop and factory is as well known and recognized by those not blinded by personal inter ests as is the multiplication table." 1 Balcom & Lloyd. | H ; WE have the best stocked tk general store in the county 81 and if you are looking for re „' r liable goods at reasonable fv prices, we are ready to serve * you with the best to be found. Our reputation for trust- Bj B worthy goods and fair dealing is too well known to sell any 9 U Our stock of Queensware and g| ® Chinaware is selected with 8j great care and we have soma M of the most handsome dishes ® ever shown in this section, both in imported and domestic makes. We invite you to visit us and look our goods over. J3 I i jj 5 | Balcom & Lloyd, j *mmtmrnm mmm mm m*± mm m mmmmmsikm mm A |J || LOOK ELSEWHERE BUT DON'T FORGET II THESE PRICES AND FACTS AT |l 1 | LaBAR S|| N II M M ' M |i| We carry in stock ~ . ] fcjj the largest line of Car- -,, |-| mi pets, Linoleums and fi£_ [?Kg£/0 tered cak 4>OU P* »S2B Bedroom Suits, COI $32 Sideboard, quar- E3 solid oak at 4>Z! tered oak 47 Zj - fflO M Km solid oak at 4)ZU Cered oak, 4)10 $ 0 A large line of Dressers from Chiffoniers of all kinds and H $8 up. all prices. §1 J M fci The finest line of Sewing Machines on the market, kg the "DOMESTIC" and "ELDRIDGE.' All drop- gj JJ heads and warranted. A fine line of Dishes, common grade and China, in j *2 se ts and by the piece. Pi As I keep a full line of everything that goes top€ 6 4 make up a good Furniture store, it is useless to enum- $4 crate them all. if Please call and see for yourself that lam telling H you the truth, and if you don t buy, there is no harm kg done, as it is no trouble to show goods. |i GEO. J .LaBAR. i| TJISTDEFITAKLmO. #4 3