Solution Of Labor Problems From The Spokesman-Review May 17, 1914

Tue., April 20, 1999

To the Editor of The Spokesman-Review:

If Spokane should substitute automatic phones for all the manual phones now in use in the city, either by a publicly owned or privately owned system, what will we do for the 350 telephone girls who will lose their jobs?

This is a serious affair from the viewpoint of these girls and those dependent upon them. That the automatic phone is more efficient and costs less to operate is pretty generally proven.

The automatic telephone is just one of the many labor-saving devices that is responsible also for the stupendous problem that is now confronting all civilized nations - the conflict between labor and capital. These telephone girls probably feel toward the automatics as the weavers of England felt toward the power looms a century ago, and as the glass blowers of 10 years ago felt toward the great automatic bottle-blowing machines.

Notwithstanding this bitter feeling, which has sometimes manifested itself in destruction of the machines, the invention, the improvement, and the installation of new machines will go on. Therefore the labor problem will become more and more serious.

It becomes not merely a question of higher or lower wages, of longer or shorter hours, of even more or less happiness, but a question of life and death to the great majority of people.

Socialists offer the only sensible scientific remedy - the ownership and control of the land and the machines by those who use them.

The interests of the telephone girls are inseparably connected with the interests of the department store clerks, laundry workers, stenographers, teachers, domestic servants and housekeepers. Their economic salvation depends upon the united cooperative action of working people of both sexes, of all kinds of occupations, and of all nationalities. A.E. House Spokane

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This sidebar appeared with the story: NEWS OF THE DAY From The Spokesman-Review May 17, 1914 Timber Cruiser Wins $700 in Big Picture Puzzle Game To Make Spokane Live Stock Center / Company Yards to Mean Greatest Market in Northwest (On the incorporation of the Spokane Union Stock Yards Co.)

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