Page Sixteen
THE UNITED AMERICAN
kind are indispensible to create added sources of huge
revenue, commonly called war-profit.
The change in mental attitude, from one that
breeds hostility to one that is committed to peace, as
Ellen Key so frankly put it, is a task for which the
world of men seems wholly incapable. It’s the women
of the world that must undertake the task. In this
movement the women of America seem best qualified
to take the lead.
Every mother, wife and sister of man should.be
an active soldier in the cause for peace if she is to be
spared the agony of seeing a son, a husband or a
brother recruited in the cause of war.
No stronger force can be lined up to champion
this cause than the mothers of man who hold the key
to the mental transformation necessary to render
possible the inculcation of new moral ideas and a dis
position to tolerance and perpetual peace.
The preachers of Christianity and other soul
saving dogmas, have seemingly failed to accomplish
this transformation of the man-mind. Insofar they
have neglected the mandate of peace which is the
cardinal virtue in every religion of civilized men. Neg
lect of duty is conducive to eventual grief. There may
not be a present cause for any immediate anxiety, but
there are ominous clouds on the far horizon.
If the women neglect the cause of peace now, the
time may come when the careless souls will feel the
gnawing anguish that is intensified by a consciousness
of contributary guilt. What defense is there then
for rights neglected, the rights, including that of vot
ing, that could have been exercised toward the creation
of a better social and political state?
The present highest duty and task of women is to
weed out of the minds of the people the superstition
that war is inevitable and necessary. Until this is done
peace, in spite of all the labor of men who are en
deavoring to bring it about by means of a universal
organization, will be neither real nor lasting. Only
that condition of things will be solid and lasting which
rests upon and is brought about by new moral ideas and
dispositions.
After fifteen years — years which have brought
the greatest war of all time of which we have knowl
edge and with lesser wars still raging, while we still
are writing and talking, conferring and legislating for
peace—the perpetual peace — Ellen Key’s words con
tinue to reverberate with greater force.
Are the mothers: of America, and of the world, im
pressing the spirit of peace consistent with liberty and
justice?
SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF STRIKES AND
INDUSTRIAL CONFLICTS IN BELGIUM
¿''©OPERATION in industry, both in production and
-in marketing, is of late finding broader fields of
development in Europe as well as in America and thru
its expansion is bringing increased revenue all around.
At Ostend, Belgium, a high seas fishing company,
has developed a huge fishing industry, the biggest in
that country, with sixteen steamers engaged in bring
ing in many varieties of fish from the briny deep. The
company was organized in 1920 during a prolonged
fisherman’s strike and though at the start it had only
two steamers, its development and growth bids fair
DECEMBER 1925
ta assure the Belgian people of a constant supply of
fish-products for home consumption, independent of
both selfish -fishermen and selfish dealers. Belgian
papers, report, that the cooperative fishing company is
now negotiating with other Belgian cooperatives for
the distribution of fresh fish in Belgium at reasonable
pricey. The company also plans to establish canneries
and plants to convert fish refuse into fertilizer. Al
though the fishermem receive higher wages than those
paid, by private concerns, as .well as a share in the
profits on each catch, the cooperative is reported to be
prospering and is accumulating capital . to extend
operations.
.
..
Where means of fair and equal distribution of
profits, are found, whether through a distinctly co
operative organization or through mutual arrange
ments, between those who produce and those who are
engaged in. marketing a product, such arrangements
to promote labor and revenue from labor will serve
as a check on Bolshevism and radicalism in every
form. For after all these are nothing more than local
diseases which can not develop to any great extent
where means, have been found to check effectively
the greedy elements engaging in a game of tug-of-
war over the proceeds from production and marketing.
“PROFESSIONAL ALIMONY DIGGERS”
/T' HE YOUNG rouged thing so frequently seen in
court nowadays with an air of injury over her face,
trying to create the impression of having been wronged
and oh, so cruelly treated by a brutal husband, who
through an attorney is telling the kind judge all her
woes to sustain her case for alimony and the severance
of marital ties of but a few years standing, had better
not try to pull that “stuff” in the court of Chief Justice
Harry A. Lewis, of the Superior Court in Chicago, for
that dignitary is through listening with sympathy to
the sob-sisters.
The wrath of the judge went “on the air” in open
court the other day while listening to the plea for divorce
and alimony made by counsel for a bride of three years.
In her testimony she charged her husband with cruelty
— the old story — and affirmingly answered, with a
sigh of relief, that there were no children. She ad
mitted that she was working and making a fair salary
and, although her husband’s salary as a chauffeur was
not high, she asked for ten dollars a week alimony. His
patience exhausted, the judge sallied forth with a very
unpleasant opinion about feminine alimony seekers,
which made nearly a hundred women in court waiting
their turn to obtain freedom and comfortable alimony
awards, fairly gasp for breath. In a sizzling announce
ment, made from the bench, the judge characterized
such women as “professional alimony diggers.”
The judge who hears about half the divorce petitions
filed in Cook County, made it clear that in such cases
he will continue to award support money for the care of
children. Where a wife is physically helpless he will
command her divorced husband to provide for her and
even temporary alimony in cases pending, will be
granted, but here is where Judge Lewis draws the line.
The plaintive — and nretty — petitioner who dabs
her eyes with a handkerchief as she tells of a short and
unhappy married life, in which no children figured, is
in for a drubbing. She will be lucky to receive a decree'