ditions in the Wilkes-Barre coal regions confirm
the fact of labor scarcity. There are one hundred and fifty-two thousand
men and boys at work today in the anthracite fields, twenty-five
thousand less than the number employed in 1916. These miners, owing to
the prod of the highest wages ever received--the skilled man earning
from forty dollars to seventy-five dollars a week--and to appeals to
their patriotism, are individually producing a larger output than ever
before. It is considered that production, with the present labor force,
is at its maximum, and if a yield of coal commensurate with the world's
need is to be attained, at least seventy percent more men must
be supplied.

This is a call for man-power in addition to that suggested by the Fuel
Administrator to the effect that lack of coal is partly lack of cars and
that "back of the transportation shortage lies labor shortage." An order
was sent out by the Director General of Railways, soon after his
appointment, that mechanics from the repair shops of the west were to be
shifted to the east to supply the call for help on the Atlantic border.

Suggestive of the cause of all this shortage, float the service flags of
the mining and railway companies, the hundreds of glowing stars telling
their tale of men gone to the front, and of just so many stars torn from
the standards of the industrial army at home.

The Shipping Board recently called for two hundred and fifty thousand
men to be gradually recruited as a skilled army for work in shipyards.
At the same time the Congress passed an appropriation of fifty million
dollars for building houses to accommodate ship labor. Six months ago
only fifty thousand men were employed in ship-building, today there are
one hundred and forty-five thousand. This rapid drawing of men to new
centers creates a housing problem so huge that it must he met by the
government; and it need hardly be pointed out, shelter can be built only
by human hands.

One state official, prompted no doubt by a wise hostility to coolie
labor, and dread of woman labor, has gone so far as to declare publicly
that any employer who will pay "adequate wages can get all the labor he
requires." This view suggests that we may soon have to adopt the methods
of other belligerents and stop employers by law from stealing a
neighbor's working force. I know of a shipyard with a normal pay-roll of
five hundred hands, which in one year engaged and lost to nearby
munition