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You get this, you "blanket-stiff", you "husky", or "wop", or whatever you are you disinherited of the earth, you proletarians who have only your labor-power to sell, you weak and sickly ones who are condemned to elimination?
A second obstacle to the employment of this new labor-force is due to the government's failure to see the possibility of saving most valuable labor-power and achieving an economic gain by dovetailing the idle months of young women in industrial life into the rush time of agriculture.
There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet. There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger lies in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get more by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a people's war, and with women as half the people.
Traders and money changers, with an eye for business in a growing marketplace made a more ample living. At the same time the more successful among them accumulated capital which they loaned or invested in stocks of goods, shops, warehouses, caravans, ships. By hiring labor-power they multiplied their own limited physical capacities.
But perhaps even more than the quality of the product does the question of the economical disposition of labor-power agitate some women. They are asking, since labor is very scarce, whether the extreme individualistic direction of their labor-power is permissible. The vast majority of American homes are without servants.
The thoroughly ``respectable'' British jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle ``rider'' to their verdict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labor-power, and more ``abstemious, more ``self-denying, more ``thrifty, in the draining of paid labor-power.
Not until it became apparent that the new labor-power only needed training to reach a high grade of proficiency, did County Councils establish, at government expense, technical classes for girls and women. Equipment of the army was obviously the first and pressing obligation.
The group of nations that can make the greatest savings, will be victorious, counsels one; the group that can produce the most food and nourish the populations best, will win the war, urges another; but whatever the prophecy, whatever the advice, all paths to victory lie through labor-power. Needs are not answered in our day by manna dropping from heaven.
Production had so far developed that the human labor force was able to produce more than was necessary for the support of the individual laborer. The time was ripe for the employment of more labor-power, labor-power had become a value. But the limitations of the communal system did not afford any attainable surplus labor power.
The mobilization of this fresh labor-power should of course be taken in hand by the government. Not only that, it should be led by women as in Great Britain and Germany. But the spirit in America today is the same as in England the first year of the war, a disposition to exclude women from full service.
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