Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/106

 are three factors to industrial production—labor, machinery and raw materials. In Germany are nearly three million cotton operatives, as expert as any in the world. Standing ready to their hands is a full equipment of the most modern machinery. Half of the cotton operatives of Germany are living in idleness and semi-starvation for lack of raw material. We raise the raw material in the South of the United States—and our southern farmers are in financial difficulties this winter because they have no market for their cotton!

It was agreed in the Versailles treaty that Germany should furnish to France the equivalent of the coal-production destroyed when the Lille and Valenciennes mines were flooded. Germany has nearly fulfilled at least that clause of the treaty. At this moment (January, 1921) German coal in enormous quantities lies piled up on sidings of France, unused. France has the expert operatives; except in the devastated North, she has her intact machinery; she has a great job of building to do, and that involves steel, which is made with coal. But she cannot use that German coal just now, because a combination of adverse exchange, undermined credits and shaken confidence keeps her working men from their machines. There is in Poland and Austria that same combination of strong men and good machines, ready to work for their daily bread. But the men are starving because they have no work by which to earn food; and at the same time our farmers and