Adams County Makes the News - Adams County Leader #25

The Adams County Leader - Official Paper of Adams County
Price $2.00 Strictly in Advance
Published Every Friday by E. E. Southard
Matter for publication should reach this office not later than Thursday noon – earlier if possible

June 22, 1923
SHAMEFUL

The Leader is in receipt of a pamphlet containing an address by Elbert E. Gary, president of the American Steel and Iron Institute, at a big New York hotel on May 25.  Judge Gary in this address discussed “The Twelve Hour Day” for workers in the steel industry, deciding in his own august mind that “whenever there became enough workers in America to justify it, the 12 hour day should go.”

This paper would be ashamed to print such an address in its columns and tell its readers it was made by an American citizen.  For 40 years the steel industry has imported its workmen from southern Europe, ignorant, uneducated, unenlightened humans, dull as clods and knowing nothing whatever except that they were expected to show up for work promptly when the whistle blew and that they were permitted to totter home half dead when the same signal was heard at dusk, thousands of them perhaps never seeing daylight out of doors unless it were at a brief lunch period at noon.  For this service they worked from before daylight until after dark for a wage that an American citizen would well-nigh starve to death on.  With the exception of the textile industry, steel workers have been and are the lowest paid and hardest worked set of men in America.  And steel has paid fabulous dividends and is still paying them—blood money on human lives.

A man working twelve hours a day winter and summer twelve months in the year—what chance is there for him?  He has no home life.  He can have no time for recreation.  He can have no time to read or study.  He can’t even read the newspapers because when he comes home he is dog-tired and dead to the world.  He can have no interest in politics, religion or art.  In short, he is scarcely a human being, of less account than a machine.  A slave was better off because a slave was valuable and few owners jeopardized his life or well being by mistreatment.  No such fears are entertained in reference to the steel worker who labors 12 hours a day in Judge Gary’s mills.

Altogether Elbert H. Gary is perhaps the most despicable spectacle in public life in America today notwithstanding the fact that he may be several times a millionaire. Industry is one thing—a thing most desirable.  Drudgery is another and is in no way desirable.  What chance is there of making Americans out of foreigners brought here to work 12 hours a day in a steel mill for $2.40 an hour, mostly less? 

December 7, 1923
G. E. STEWARD WANTS TO SAVE BEAVER
LITTLE ANIMALS ARE GOOD, CHEAP WORKERS, THIS RANCHER CLAIMS
 
Work like a beaver and get rich. 
If men worked as hard as the beaver, there would be few in want.  There are some who seem to think the beaver is a nuisance because he sticks to his job of building dams and cutting timber.  He will take a small amount of timber and some mud and build a dam that a man could not build with three times as much material.  He is one of the fur-bearing animals that should be protected for the good he does in protecting the streams by storing the water, causing it to sub-irrigate and holding it in check so it cannot wash out and become a dry canyon.  If the beaver is killed off and the brush cut away from the streams, the channel will get so deep that check dams will have to be put in, and that will cost money.  Then the man will “dam” the man who “damned” the beaver that dammed the river.

I want the beaver on my farm to work for me.  They are the cheapest and best workers that I can get; have no bad habits.  If I were the game warden, I would not allow a single beaver killed if I could prevent it.  If anyone seems to think the beaver is doing damage, just tear down the dam a few times and they will soon leave and go to some other place where they may be wanted and appreciated by someone who is looking ahead for the good of his farm.  I would rather have the silt that the beaver dam stores than six feet of gravel thrown up by a swift stream.
G. E. Steward
 
IDAHO INDUSTRIES  1923
Short Pithy Items Showing Progress Over State

Bonners Ferry – Flour mill to increase milling and warehouse capacity.
Idaho Falls – Pea cannery and seed pea warehouse costing $300,000 to be built this year.
Twin Falls – Rim-to-rim toll bridge 550 feet above Snake River proposed.
Wallace – Hercules mines employing 75 men in mine and mill.
Pocatello – Architects ordered to draw plans for $100,000 auditorium and library for
Idaho Technical School.
Nampa – Teams being brought in for grading Pacific Fruit Express car repair plant.
Blackfoot – Milk-fed poultry going by carload to Los Angeles and Butte.
Idaho Falls – Negotiations continue for location of paper mill.
Wallace – Pacific Telephone completes two more copper wire circuits from Spokane to
Missoula, Montana.
Boise – Plans are completed for $80,000 temple of the Mormons.
Swift & Co. bought 35,000 turkeys in southeastern Idaho.
Juliaetta – Local cannery completes season’s run, seven carloads of canned apples.
Paris – Idaho Phosphate company properties near here are now shipping commercial
phosphate.
General Electric company buys 2,000,000 feet Idaho white pine lumber for shipment east.

Mackay – From 10 cheese factories in this locality, 100,000 pounds of cheese being
marketed, bringing in $23,000.
Kuna – Local creamery turns out 1,740 pounds of cheese daily.
Coeur d’Alene – Local canning company handled 2,000 tons of fruit during past season.
Hamer – Mud Lake tract to be colonized with Mennonite families from Canada.
Fenn – district votes $35,000 bonds to finance last link in North and South highway between Lewiston and Weiser.


compiled by Eberle Umbach