What Lies Ahead

THE PRESIDENT: Gentlemen: We are fortunate in having with us today Mr. Sherman Rogers as our guest-speaker, who is here under the auspices of the American Foundation of Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Rogers is not a stranger to Toronto. In 1925 he was here as President of the Optimist Club International, and as a guest of the Optimist Club of Toronto. Mr. Rogers has a background of platform work extending over a period of twenty years, during which time he has addressed audiences throughout the United States, totalling five millions. He has also been Associate Editor of Outlook, replacing Theodore 'Roosevelt in that particular position, and also of Success, and of Liberty. He left Liberty he states, when that magazine went crazy. His writings also appeared in Saturday Evening Post, Red Book, and Farm Journal. At present, Mr. Rogers is participating in an important weekly radio programme, entitled, "Wake up, America!" He has delivered many lectures on industrial problems in the United States and he is an expert in humanizing economics. He believes in dealing with radicalism; we should prove them wrong, or join with them. He believes in our democratic system as the one thing that establishes itself that is true.

I have much pleasure in introducing to you Mr. Sherman Rogers, whose subject today is "What Lies Ahead?"--Mr. Rogers. (Applause)

MR. SHERMAN ROGERS: Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I hope I don't step on your toes here this afternoon. If I do, I make no apology.

I want to digress a little from the remarks I intended to make. I know you people have embarked on a sea, bound for a port and that you may encounter many storms before you reach there. There may be some doubt for a while as to whether you are going to reach there without help. You realize, if that time does come, as it might come, and I know it is on the tip of everybody's tongue and in everybody's mind, what the people of the United States will do in that emergency. I don't like war any more than you do. I hope we can stay out of it-like I think you hoped six weeks ago--but if that time does come when the British Empire is in danger of disintegration, then there is no question what we will do, so long as blood is thicker than water. (Applause)

There is this difference: In 1914, west of the Mississippi River, our country was very strongly pro-German. The Central States had still a predominance of pro-Germanism. The New England States were pro-Ally, but there was no one who actually hated the Kaiser. Today, without the slightest doubt, ninety per cent of the American people are more bitter against Hitler, I think, than are the English people. Also, probably at this time, seventy-five per cent of our population have a most urgent desire to stay out of the war. I believe that you people can understand our position on that, but let me repeat there would be no hesitation of the people of our country if that time were to come, when you people needed the assistance of that country to survive. Of that let me assure you, and I travel all over the United States, all over the country all the time. On that point, there is no question.

The General here, being a diplomat, cannot say very much. I don't know whether he would back up what I say or not. I am quite sure he would, but from a standpoint of activity I wouldn't want you to compare him with me, because after all, he is a diplomat.

Gentlemen, this war affects us from another angle, and it brings us right down to the thing for which I have given the last thirty years of my life. I am interested only in one topic and one thing confronting the world, one big problem, and whether you live in England, in the United States, in Canada, or in Asia, that one problem stares you right straight in the face. You are going to find an answer to it, or you are going over. I mean radicalism is no joke. Either we will prove those babies wrong, or we will join them, and we won't have any choice in the matter at all. That is what I will do today, without any doubt. I will disprove all of their contentions.

Mussolini in 1935 made this statement: "Democracy is dead wrong, unfeasible, untenable; on one point, that no one can disagree with. In any democracy the national income each year is maldistributed. There is such an improper distribution of the income earned that a few stockholders get all the money and the great mass of labour get practically nothing, and that can only be changed by one plan, by the totalitarian idea, where one man has the power to say to an employer 'You can only make 2V2 per cent interest, and that is all' and then see that labour gets a fair share of the income produced by industry."

Go back to the London Daily Times, in March, 1935, and you get that interview. Hitler backs that up entirely, that democracy cannot exist long because of the fact of the maldistribution of income. A few getting it all and the many getting nothing would finally end in absolute economic slavery for the masses. If that contention is true, you can call up your soldiers-what good will it do? That is the contention of the average radical, and there are no longer a few radicals, like there were when I started out. I heard the first I.W.W. speech delivered in the United States by W. D. Haywood, its originator, and that was the father of Communism in the United States. This man wasn't talking with his mouth full of marbles at all. He talked sense, from his angle. He made a definite statement which was never answered. Why, I cannot tell you. I still don't know why not one employer in ten thousand has the slightest idea of the line of division between the income that goes to the employee and the stockholders. If you had and if you put it up there would be no radicalism, because there couldn't be.

Get this one thing straight: all over the world, no matter where you go, radicalism is based on one contention only, that under all of the systems throughout the world, on private ownership and private property, the employee gets practically nothing, and the employer gets practically all of the income produced. Right now, twenty-five years ago, any time, it has been exactly the other way around. It can't be otherwise in a competitive country. It is the employee who gets practically all. It is the stockholder who gets practically nothing. I have to prove that which I will do-definitely.

I came into town this morning rather late. No one was up yet, but it was still late, as far as I was concerned. I got in the front of the hotel and started for the Manufacturers' Association. You probably know where that is. I didn't get there until noon. I checked eighteen people and asked each person what he thought the employee received from each dollar of income produced by the employers of Canada in the manufacturing industry. The first man I talked to said, "I would say about five cents". I said "Never mind 'about' five cents. If you are going out to change a country you must have some definite idea. What do they get? It is not definite." He said, "I would say five cents is as much as we get". I said, "You are as smart as most United States Senators, so it is still all-right".

The next lady told me she was a barrister's wife. I didn't know what a barrister was for a little while. I found it is the same as our lawyers in our country. I put the question up and she said she was not quite familiar with the figures but she did know that labour got practically nothing. I said, "You are still up to par".

I talked to eighteen people and the highest up was one in a bank. He said he thought the employees got about thirty percent. I said, "Who gets the other seventy per cent? Your manufacturer's income comes down to two points-the stockholders and the bondholders and labour. If labour only gets thirty per cent, and you are trying to tell me that in this country the stockholders and bondholders get seventy per cent of the income produced? I will drag out my money, what few cents I have, and invest it quick. This is a grand country." The banker saw that.

It is the most peculiar thing in the world. For thirty-five years radicals all over our country have talked. We have thirty thousand experts and in the last thirty-five years in the United States there hasn't been, by the Chamber of Commerce, by the Manufacturers' Association, by the Republican Party or by the Democratic Party, a single man trained to defend the system of private enterprise. Never. But thirty thousand radicals have been highly trained to tear it down. You go ahead and fix that one up. I have been following the thing for thirty-five years. I have never heard an address on an American platform, I have never seen a book by an American business man, I have never heard an address by a college graduate or a professor in our country disprove the contention made by labour.

Listen, Gentlemen, you had better get an answer to it. I am not talking about something a few people believe. You walk down the street, take a hundred people, and not a single one of them are within sixty per cent of right on that question: "What do you think the employee gets of the income produced in industry?"

Whatever we may think of the United States Government, whatever our loyalty may be in party, Roosevelt did one thing for which we will have to build a monument to him, that will probably outshadow the Washington one. For the first time in all world history he produced a campaign and produced figures that will sustain the system of private enterprise--that will at least explain what it is and whether is it workable or not. It took three years to do it. The Department of Commerce undertook the research and for three years they worked on that survey. It appeared in 1936 and the astonishing thing is that right today, probably not a thousand business men in all America have seen that book. It is by far the most important document ever printed in the English language, outside of the Bible. In itself it has absolutely demolished every argument you ever heard of for radicalism. The book shows, of all the income produced by all the manufacturing industries of the United States, eighty-four cents of each dollar went to the employee. It showed that in the incorporated retail trade that from ninety to ninety-six cents of every dollar of income produced has gone to the employee. And that changed the mind of almost every one, it has changed the mind of practically everyone that has seen it. That book came out in November, 1936, and I was never so excited in my life, because it was the first definite answer to a Communist, the first definite answer to a Socialist, the first definite answer to the wild cranks of our society who always hate everything substantial. That is a strong statement-I mean it.

I find that there are a tremendous number of men in our colleges with these ideas. I have two boys who are nineteen and twenty. I am saving up money to send them to Harvard to study Economics. I have talked to a lot of the young professors down there and I am not sure I want them to go. I am not certain how many years it will take me to undo the damage they will get in their minds down there. I have talked to some very high professors in Harvard and I can assure you I have talked to them several hours on economics and there isn't a book on earth that can show anything they talked to me about. There isn't a scintilla of fact in the arguments put up to me. I am wondering if that prevails up here? We will find out for a fact.

Today we have a great many preachers in our country embracing the radical doctrines on this, from the standpoint of the theory that a few people get too much money, and if we get some system to even it out we would all be rich. Yet, if we took every income in the United States above $5,000, every single dime that comes in to anybody in the United States, above $5,000, each worker would get $1.50 a week more. That is all. If you give everything in the United States to the worker, he won't get the ten per cent increase in his wage, because industry in America has never made ten per cent. It has never made the half of it. The greatest year we ever had in America, the return on actual invested capital reached 4.90, and it ranges from 2.75 to 3.10. That is why the banker are so anxious to buy government bonds at two per cent. Did you ever see a banker put his money out at two per cent if he could get six? If capital makes so much money why can't they make six? Why can't they make forty, fifty, sixty? Go down to the average man in the street, and on his judgment the British Empire rests, just as on his judgment the Constitution of the United States rests, and that man is fifty to seventy-five percent wrong in his conclusion as to the division of what is earned in a country, do you call that a dangerous point? I should say so.

I talked to a Communist in Chicago not long ago. There were 277 in the group when I started in and there was not a Communist left when I had finished. And nobody left the room. It is the easiest thing on earth, because you put him out of business in two minutes. He won't talk any more and when a Communist can't talk you have got him.

All right, let me give the figures. You keep them in .mind. United States Steel Corporation, from 1928 to 1938 had an income of $3,225,000,000. It paid out to the employee, $2,901,000,000. It had available for the stockholders, $324,000,000. What is the ratio? Almost 91 cents of each dollar went to the employee. All right. There is actual gold dollars invested in the U. S. Steel Corporation, $1,000,000,000. There has been many, many billions poured back since, in expansion. We will just ask for interest on the original billion. They should have made 5 per cent, certainly in any industrial investment. They didn't anyway. There was $324,000,000 to be disbursed to the stockholders over ten years. That was 3 3/4 per cent in the richest country in the world, the United States.

No, Gentlemen, I don't know of two industries in the whole of the United States that could increase wages seven percent and not increase the price of goods, without finally going broke. They would just have to do it.

I delivered an address to the Metropolitan Club of New 'York last month and I made the 84 cents out of the dollar statement. An old gentleman in front of me was listening and when I put out that statement his eyes were getting bigger and bigger. Finally, I heard him explode to the fellow next to him, "My goodness, that fellow is wild. I still hope he can prove it!" He was opposite to me in the elevator going out and I said to him, "What firm do you belong to?" He said, "I am with Bridgeport Brass Company". I said, "How much do you give to the employee?" He said, "I don't know. I would say about thirty per cent." I said, "You haven't paid any dividends for several years-what do you do with the money?" He scratched his head a minute and said, "I will look it over". He called me up three or four days later. They paid out 94 cents of every dollar. They had a total income of $3,500,000, and they paid $3,039,000 to labour. The balance goes to the stockholders.

Westinghouse Electric--there was $670,000,000 available of which labour got $583,000,000, or 91 cents on each dollar.

Johns Manville was 91 cents on each dollar to labour. You can take them right across the country.

There was an old gentleman with whom I fought for seven days--that is pretty quick to reach the mind of some industrial capitalists. I did three hours of hard work every day and every time, just as I finished, he would say, "Sherman, where do taxes come in?" Taxes aren't income--they are outgo. Anyway, he went over his books the Crucible Steel Company of America. His was 93 cents on each dollar. He just couldn't get over it. He can't get over it yet. Now, he is going to war. He didn't know it himself. I tell you, the average employer has not defended himself because he didn't have any line of demarcation. I can't find an employer in ten thousand who has.

When I started speaking on this subject when the government book came out, I had big industrialists coming to Detroit to listen, and for a solid hour not a man moved. After it was over every man knew it was a jubilee, if I could prove it. I didn't have to talk--I took their own books. One of the Macey men in New York questioned the figures very bitterly. He couldn't see them at all. I said, "You fellows haven't paid any dividends for four years. What are you doing with the money if the employees don't get it--who does?" They had paid 98 cents of each dollar.

Now, you get that story out to the public and you won't have any more trouble about radicalism. You say, "How are those figures arrived at?" The net income figures of one corporation and the gross income figures of all corporations are exactly the same in the percentage column. Take the United States Steel Corporation--in income that is all of the money left after the expenses have been paid, after their steel has been purchased, their railway rates have been paid, all the money has been paid out, and the taxes paid. That is all the money that was left that was available for either worker or company. It is called income and labour got 90 cents of each dollar, and the stockholder of the company got the other 10 cents.

Now, you go and trace down all the money they spent for raw materials, and take the income sheet of each company in turn, right down to the basic point of the production of raw material and it will be exactly the same gross as net. That is why the United States Government book did not mention either net or gross in its compilation, because in the long run they are both the same.

Yet, go right down to the street--I have made 135 surveys throughout the United States, and it never changes. Always 17 per cent of the people you talk to think that labour gets less than a nickel out of each dollar, and they are not always dead Communists, but they are awfully close to it. You will also find that 60 per cent of the average men on the street say that labour doesn't get over 10 to 15 cents, and 75 percent say that they don't get 20 cents, and there are never over one or two percent who think it is as high as 30 cents.

The greatest delusion in the world is that misconception, nationally and internationally, regarding the distribution of income produced in any democratic country.

Gentlemen, I went into business. I earned some money when I first came east. As a matter of fact, it came very easily and before I knew what it was all about I was making thousands where I had made dollars before, from the platform and with the pen. So I went into the manufacturing business. I made up my mind I was making money too slowly. $40,000 a year-what did that amount to? All I had to do was go into business and make real money. I bought a business and I paid a lot of money for it. A college professor, a friend of mine, out west secured the investment for me. I knew that he, with his great knowledge of figures and facts, would protect me. He did. It guaranteed 17 percent return. Pretty good! Maybe it had given that return some time, but not after I got it. I left in the same President and the same Management, from top to bottom. I had only owned it six months when I found I had to change all the machinery because we needed to make changes. Lock-bar welding pipe was no longer any good and all the machinery I bought had to be replaced. I hadn't thought of that. I learned about it. I kept going, but I found out what I did and I did it for seven years. I went on the platform to make money to make up for the losses in my factory, because I had learned another funny thing, that the professor never thought about. There were seven competitors in the town in which I operated my factory. Every time I made a bid, if you don't think those other fellows were busy birds, they were. They were right after me every minute. It got so I couldn't take a contract and make a dime. So I operated five years at a loss, the same as the rest of them did.

Then one morning I told the sheriff I wouldn't fight any longer about it and I let him take it. I learned a lot more than any college professor ever learned about business. In those six or seven years I learned there was a lot of difference between the lead pencils and paper in college and the cinders and grease you got down in a factory, and that meeting a payroll is no joke.

Gentlemen, don't blame the college professor. It wouldn't be possible for him to know because nobody knows anything about labour unless they have put on overalls and worked with them, sweat with them, went hungry with them, rode in box cars with them. I have done that. I did it for seventeen years. I don't worry about labour. Put them right up here (the head), I have worked with them all over the countries of the world, I have worked with them in Manchuria, a year, in Alaska, in Chili, I have worked with them in Mexico, in the mines and in the timber. I have worked in the lumber camps of British Columbia and I have worked with them in the mines of Montana, and on the west coast. I used to ramble because I loved new places, new experiences and new people. I never worked with a bad man in my life. I have worked with men who have gone wrong up here. I hadn't seen a church or a Bible until I was nineteen years old. I was brought up in Idaho, where there were neither churches nor schools. I want to tell you the people I have mixed with all over the world have convinced me that the greatest thing ever produced is man. I have watched him. On every shipboard they have to risk their necks for total strangers. I have never seen a man turn it down. Every day in the logging camps they have to risk their lives for total strangers, and I have never seen one go yellow. I t have seen them pay, too, when they have showed someone around. I have never yet seen a man turn yellow in that pinch, and believe me, Gentlemen, they will give their lives for a total stranger. What can you not do with him if you f reach him down here first? That is all you have to do. Take that now from Sherman.

The employer has probably had more gray hairs, more problems in the last ten years than the individual of any other group of people on earth. He has suffered a great deal, and whether we put our people back to work or whether we do not depends entirely on whether he gets back to the position where he is safe, but your public doesn't know that. As long as the public doesn't know that, they are going to fight this man. You can't expect labour to sit on one side of the table and meet in a fair and friendly fashion the employer on the other side of the table, when he believes his employer is an absolute thief. That is what he thinks, that he has been stealing his money ever since he went into business. Just as long as that feeling prevails you are never going to have tranquillity in industry on either side of the line. You just can't have it, and the time has come when we have to put our cards on the table and you have such wonderful figures to show that I don't know why you try to hide them.

A fellow the other day was talking about a company having four million dollars in the bank. I said, "They are pretty nearly broke if they haven't". Let us see what it amounts to. It was a steel corporation in Pittsburg, and it had $4,500,000. 1 said, "Supposing you had part of that money--let us figure it out. The United States Steel Corporation in 1938 paid $282,000,000 to the employees of that company, to labour. It paid $4,500,000 to stockholders. There were 202,000 employees, and 260,000 stockholders. Yet, the money looked big, but it had to cover an operation of 202,000 men, and it had to cover an investment back of 260,000 men. It really was nothing. That company couldn't have paid a five per cent increase in wages without increasing the price of its goods or going broke--one or the other. Yet, not one man in ten thousand realizes that business works on that close a margin. Yet, you can bring down figures to prove it that any school child could look at and understand. I am talking of the public schools in the United States. There is not one who couldn't understand the picture as soon as you are through.

Gentlemen, that is the fact, and it changes opinions. I might say this to you. For years people thought the world was flat. Then a man went around the world and he found that it wasn't flat and the whole world changed its opinion. Since that delusion, I think the biggest one is this delusion regarding the distribution of national income. It is what Mussolini bases his hatred of democracy on; it is what Hitler bases his hatred of democracy on, and it is what Stalin bases his hatred of democracy on. It is what all the parlour cranks in Canada and the United States base it on, and it won't hold water two seconds. You have to have figures in your pocket to disprove every bit of it.

Gentlemen, I want to say this to you: Get busy on that one score. There are only a couple of democracies left. I always like to get under the British flag, because under the British flag a man is free to go where he likes, he is free to do anything he likes, or he is free to do nothing, so long as he is honest. There are only two countries in the world where you can do that. There is no other system under which a man can ever be free, except under the system of private enterprise. Nothing else can ever grant freedom, because if you ditch that, what do you get? Let us be fair. There might be some radical in here. If there is, I am talking to you. Whenever the Government becomes responsible for your living and must take care of you, they also must have absolute direction over your actions and activities. There isn't any law on earth can ever change that status. But so long as you have private enterprise you pay your debts and you earn your way. There isn't a thing on earth can tell you anything, any time, anywhere in peace time.

I have lived in Canada about four years of my life. I came across up in British Columbia one morning, and went back there. A fellow asked who I was, where I was going. I went up into British Columbia, and that is the last time any officer of this country ever talked to me, or cared two cents where I was. When I went across the line I had more trouble getting back into the States than I had getting into Canada.

I find the same thing in America, where I have lived all these years. When I travel anywhere else-in South America, in Asia, in Europe-yes, Sir, the Government is taking an interest in me, somehow or other every second and I don't like it. A lot of people say, "Let us make it more so. Let us get to the point where we owe our existence to the government and where the government must take on the responsibility of seeing that we get three square meals a day and will take care of us."

That is okay--go ahead and do it. But, Gentlemen, I will tell you and it is what I tell my own son. My son came up the other day when he had a swell idea of what he was going to do. I said, "Sonny, as long as I pay the bills, I tell you what to do. When you make your own, that is the last I have to say to you. You do as you please." He never thought of that. I said "Sonny, you make your way, you make your own money, and I have no right to talk to you. I don't care how old you are, but so long as I pay your way, I don't care if you are forty years old, I am going to tell you exactly what to do all the time."

Gentlemen, I hope I never see the day, when the government is in a position to tell me what I have to do--even when I ring my alarm clock, because I am fussy about that, and the only way you can keep what you have is to maintain that system in the British Empire and in the United States that has been proven to give everybody the finest show and the highest standard of living ever known to civilized man, and he is free while he is getting it, and that is worth all the assets you get going through life.

I addressed Sing Sing Prison not long ago. Those fellows are much more free than anybody is in Germany or Russia. They can condemn the President of the United States, and they do down there, and they can talk bitterly about the Governor of the State. They do that too. They can't do a thing about it. They are perfectly free--it is their constitutional right. But if a man says the same thing in Italy, or Germany, or Russia, then he is dead-and after you are dead it doesn't make much deference what you say.

Now, I can't figure out the working of any man's mind if he is saying he wants that situation. Krivitsky gave a few statements in the Senate yesterday. There was nothing surprising about them. Stalin didn't like the way a lot of army officers were behaving so he took 35,000 of them and stood them against the wall and shot them. Not many men--just 35,000. He took Generals from the army, Captains and Lieutenants, and they didn't argue about trial. He just stood them against the wall and shot them--and he should have that right so long as each individual Russian says, "I want three meals a day, Mr. Stalin, you give it to me. You are responsible for my three meals a day, give them to me," and if Stalin is loaded down with responsibility, then Stalin should have the absolute control of the actions of anyone that gets his living that way. There is no argument about that for one second.

And they say Mr. Hitler has also liquidated several people--I don't suppose as many as Stalin. He hasn't been dictator long enough. Stalin has had more experience. Hitler will get the general idea later, and probably he will purge more than he has. He will have to, if he stays in there.

Mussolini is the only man who has got along so far. He is very smart, of course. But he has his African possessions, and whenever a man gets a bit difficult he can send him off to Africa, like he did Balbo, and so on. It is quite easily done. Leaving out all that, if this great system is going to continue, the system of open competition, the system that gives everybody exactly the same chance starting out in life, the system that lets a man utilize to the very utmost the power of his brain every minute, the system in which he can reap the product of that effort, we must realize that the men who live under that system are only going to live under it if they will remember one thing, that eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.

You were born without clothes, but you weren't born without responsibility. I say to you people, as employers, you people who are supposed to direct have a double responsibility. Personally, I am very, very favourable to organized labour, very, very favourable to all types of labour. I have lived with them nearly all my life. I would like to finish with them, and I say this to all of you: You put your cards on the table so labour knows where you stand, and they will make any sacrifice with you at any time to keep your plant going, so long as they know what these figures are.

I guarantee that labour will treat you as fair as a Sunday School teacher. (And I am not saying that to you, Mr. Massey.) They will treat you fairly, just as soon as you treat them that way. Put your cards on the table. We have nothing more in business to hide. Without any question we all realize today that the same slice of bread is buttered with the same knife, whether it goes to the stockholder upstairs, or whether it goes to the worker down in the plant. Shouldn't we look out not to have cinders on the butter knife for either one of us?

'No, I will back my stand on the fairness of labour if you put your cards on the table with labour. But, Gentlemen, with all my experience with labour in every port, I have come to this conclusion: You can lead any good man right down through the fires of hate, but you can't drive him across the sidewalk. We have got to stop trying to drive men, and we have got to begin to lead men, and I want to leave you with five little axioms. I want you to take them. I figured them out after I heard Bill Haywood speak first. He made a tremendous impression on me and for eleven years I believed what he said. When I wrote my first series in Saturday Evening Post, Horace Lorimer said I led an I.W.W. strike. I never was an I.W.W. During eleven years, I was far too radical to ever belong to any tame gang like that.

Bill Haywood said that labour got less than ten cents on every dollar. Where the labourer got the ten cents, the boss got the other ninety. Bill wanted to wait, to fold his arms, and paralyze industry. I wanted to hang the employer.

Years later I heard Charlie Schwab make his first speech. It was the first time I ever heard any opposition to any of the wild charges made by thousands of radical speakers. It was the first time a man had come out and given us a chance to know the facts. He broke down his company to show that had he paid 57 cents a day more than he did, he would have gone broke.

I went over and asked for the books of another company. It had been in operation twenty-one years and employed 15,000 people. I went to the boss, whom I had never seen before, and I said, "I want to ask you a question. I get pretty close to $5.00 a day. How much do you think you make off my day? How much net do you make? Figure out the net profit you make from that day's labour." I was in the army then. I said, "I want you to figure it out." He said, "It will cost a couple of thousand dollars." I said, "Your strike is costing you $25,000 a day-you'd better find out." He put his accountant to work, and one day he came to me all excited, and said, "Come up right now". I said, "Listen, I am in the army. You have to go through Camp Lewis to get me out." It took three hours. I went into his office and he was walking up and down like a Felix Cat. He said "I am flabbergasted". I had never heard that word before and I asked him what it meant. "You never heard that? Don't you use those words in the woods?" I said, "That is a new one--yes, we use words in the woods." He said, "What I am excited about is this: I find, going over my books, and figuring the money we paid out to the employees, and that was paid to the stockholders, and that was put back in the business, had we paid 23 1/2 cents per day more to the employee than we did pay, there would not have been one dime for the stockholders or bondholders in this company in its entire history. It would never have stood an advance of five per cent unless we had raised the price of goods. I always thought I was a great business man. Here I have been skirting along on the ragged edge of bankruptcy all the time."

I said, "That is the condition of all American industry, only you don't know it. It is the first time you have ever figured it out that way." He said, "It certainly is. I never thought of working it out that way."

You will find that all over the country. I want you to figure five little points. First, the C.P.R. and sun time. I was out in British Columbia and there was a man there who had come out from Britain. He had sun time. A fellow came along and asked what time it was. "By the sun, the regular time, it is twelve o’clock. By C.P.R. time, it is one o'clock." He said, "Listen, every time I turn around it is C.P.R. this, and C.P.R. that. The C.P.R. owns the hotels, the C.P.R. owns the railways. 1 get out of the city and the C.P.R. owns the land. I get out on the ocean and the C.P.R. owns the ships. Now they want to control the sun."

There are three sides to every question. Be sure you get that in your mind. We are none of us going anywhere. There are three sides to every question and if you look for the right side you will never find it. You never have any controversy, but there is your side, the other fellow's side, and the right side, and neither man in any argument is ever a hundred per cent right. If both are looking for where they are both wrong, both will find what is right.

Ninety-nine percent of the people want to be secure. Of that there is no doubt. If you believe the slightest in God Almighty, you have got to accept that. No man or woman who lived yesterday, no man or woman who lives today, or no man or woman who will live tomorrow is big enough to hate and reason at the same time. It can't be done, so for Heaven's sake, don't let us hate any more. No individual can possibly ever get anywhere unless he has the respect of the people he associates with. He can't command it, he can't enforce it. There is only one way to get it. He must inspire it and to inspire it, he first earns it.

And, lastly, tolerance--the greatest word in the English dictionary. A man may be dense or ignorant, but if he is tolerant he will find the answer to any problem. An intolerant man, with the scales of prejudice over his eyes, wouldn't know the right answer if he saw it.

So, rules of that kind must govern business contacts, and especially business contact between business and labour, and between government and public, from now one. If they do, we will have but very little trouble preserving democracy.

I hope when I come back that a lot of the clouds around your country will be dispelled. Now, I want just three minutes to finish. Don't worry about the air. You say it is pretty hard to sell these things to people. People don't want to believe them. I went to Woodrow Wilson in 1922. He wasn't President then, he was paralyzed in his little home. I went to Mr. Wilson and asked him if he would give me a story, as the new Editor of Outlook. I wanted to know what was the most difficult time in his career. He said, "The few weeks or months after war was declared, when we found in the Puget Sound there were a hundred thousand I.W.W.'s. That hundred thousand men had sworn to obstruct that war. They would obstruct the draft, they would see that no aeroplane timber was produced, they would stop shipments of lumber, they were certainly going to sit on the port and see that nothing was shipped. It scared me to death. Finally, one morning, I got a telephone call from the Governor of Washington. He said, 'There is only one thing to do. Put five thousand soldiers up there, grab those people and put them in concentration camps until the war is over'. I knew we couldn't afford a revolution-it would bring more satisfaction to the Kaiser than happiness to us."

Then Wilson remembered one woman whom he had heard make a speech in a vaudeville theatre in New York. He called the Variety Magazine and asked if she were still on the stage. Yes, she was playing the Orpheum Circuit in Seattle right now.

Woodrow Wilson said, "I thought the hand of God was pointing my way. She was in the very town where I wanted her to be. At eight o'clock, Washington time, I called up and got her on the telephone. I told her of the dilemma, and that I either had to send soldiers and start a toy revolution or prove something I wanted to prove all my life--that you can reason with people if you meet them, and right here I think the argument is ours. I want you to go out on all the street corners in Seattle and I want you to talk and reach the hearts and minds of those men-will you do it?" She said, "I will do it, Mr. President."

I said, "Will you stop right there? I would like to finish the story for you." He said, "Can you?" I said, "Absolutely--right from there."

The next day after he speaks of I came to Seattle. I came down with two big I.W.W. Swedes--lumberjacks. Anderson weighed 240 pounds, and stood 6' 4" in his socks. I went into a saloon one night. I never took a drink in my life, but I went in to get several of my boys out of there. The boys still had some money. When I went in half a dozen of the bounders came up, and they included me. About that time I had no friend in there, but I saw somebody coming my way, and every time, three or four men went down and stayed down. I could hammer them down but they got right back up again. After it was all over and we got outside, I said, "What's your name?" He said, "Army Anderson". I said, "I am going to work pretty close to you--on general principles."

We were coming up the street, and we saw all the big I.W.W. buttons, about four inches across, almost like the Landis buttons in 1936 in the States. I said, "I hear the voice of a woman. This isn't Salvation Army night." We walked for a few more feet. I said again, "I hear a woman." He said, "So it is."

We got to the corner and turned around and here was a place roped off between the streets, and there was a 1916 Packard automobile in the centre of the group of three or four thousand people who were crowded around the automobile, from one end of the street to the other. You remember the 1916 Packards--they were about two feet lower than the Eiffel Tower. There was a woman, a big woman standing in this Packard, explaining the development of the United States, the development of the country, and the sacrifice it took, and I want to tell you, I thought I knew the United States history backwards, but that lady was putting out something there--she didn't embellish anything, she didn't draw any coloured pictures, but that woman was telling a story that everybody could understand, and with every ounce of her power she was putting it out.

There we stood, all of us absolutely petrified. I can still feel goose pimples running up and down my back like they did that afternoon. It came to 34 minutes. In 34 minutes the lady stopped. She had certainly sold those men. There was no doubt they were 90 per cent I.W.W. Every man was dead against the government, every man was dead against war, every man was dead against the whole system of private enterprise, and every man was dead against the system that built this country. In 34 minutes she started to change that. She appealled to this top part of man. Then suddenly, I saw her stop. I saw the little white line around her throat, it was as white as a sheet, and red above and red below. I didn't know what it meant then, but I do now. I saw that tremendous woman reach down there into the hearts and souls of every man there. In about two minutes she had awakened every ounce of decency in a man's body, and had him up where he could see himself, as he should be, and could be any time he wanted to be. I stood out and watched these tough lumberjacks who only knew hate for ten years, and I watched big red bandanas come out. I saw the furrows on the weather-beaten faces begin to soften up. I realized that that woman had touched a part of those men that nobody had known since they left the knees of their mothers. She still was not giving any hot air, she still was not painting rainbows. She was talking sense, and she wanted those workers to know that she had faith in the same God who made both of them and she let them know she was banking on them with all the faith of someone that had been given faith by the great Creator. I watched that great pulsating heart appeal to the best there was in any man, anywhere and any time. As she finished, I watched 3,000 people go wild. They almost tore the streets up. I saw them make a mad rush for her car. Two or three big Swedes grabbed her out of the car, made a seat for her, and walked up Second Avenue to the hotel. She was the most popular woman on earth to those men who for the first time, probably, since they had left home, had listened to any real, genuine, motherly, honest-to-God sympathy from somebody else.

The war was over and I was walking back on Broadway, trying to find the Capitol Theatre. At 12.01 my train left for Seattle. I walked past 34th Street, and as we walked past I saw on the large marquee the name of a woman. I rushed across the street and rushed in. The curtain was going down for the eleventh time. She couldn't come out any more. I rushed to the stage entrance, put my name on a little slip of paper and asked the attendant to give it to her. He said, "She is a famous woman. She won't talk to a private." I said, "Beat it. Give her this." I wrote on this slip of paper, "Mother you got us in the army. We have had a lot of experience that was worth a lot to us. I am going back home tonight. I would like to see you." He gave it to her. About a second, and bang, open went the door. A woman came rushing out and I happened to be standing in front. Around my neck went her two big arms, and that is the only person in this world that I have ever seen or known of whom I stood in awe. I knew I was in the arms of a woman who was the biggest woman that ever lived. I nearly dropped on my knees to her. She had pointed out the way for a government to act, for business men to act, for all people to act. That woman had lighted a beacon that has never gone out, I have tried to carry that beacon since. Gentlemen, the woman, you all know--Marie Dressler, the motion picture actress. I would give more for one dozen of her laughs today than all the other forces I know of in any country.

Gentlemen, being in a democratic country, where you people run your own ship, where everybody has that divine right to get out and help create his own niche, and help his own government and his own people, and where he is part and parcel of everything that happens around him, the big job is this: If every one of you, from right now on, all the time, will let the best you have got two and a half inches under here (the heart) appeal to the least best you have got up here (the head) we will get out from under the dark gloom that is facing us now, and we will get our feet back on more solid ground than we have ever had before, and, Gentlemen, this will be the kind of country that God Almighty intended it should be in the first place.

I thank you. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: I am sure we appreciate this very excellent address of Mr. Sherman Rogers' and we now realize the reasons for the many tributes that were paid by the press to his dynamic and forceful presentations of his subject. He stated, on starting his address, that he was digressing somewhat, but nevertheless, he has dealt with the basic problems and those fundamentals which enter into the subject that he gave at the Kiwanis International at Boston, and he has no doubt dealt with them with equal force today.

Mr. Rogers believes in giving the facts, in order to deal with that particular subject which he has at heart. He has stated that he has discussed the matter with Mussolini. He has also discussed the basic economic facts of Hitler's policy, and they haven't changed one iota his views on democracy. He has demonstrated that he is for democracy, and that he is an opponent of radicalism, by dealing with its basic facts and economics.

I am sure we have all listened with a great deal of pleasure to what he has said today. Dale Carnegie has quoted Emerson in speaking of Mr. Rogers-"The secret of his success is the triumph of enthusiasm", and certainly Mr. Rogers has demonstrated this today. I extend to him on your behalf, a hearty vote of thanks and appreciation for this excellent talk today. The meeting is adjourned.