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After you have seen these you have not grasped the whole. You must visit the wholesale's buyers in the United States, in Canada, in Spain, in Denmark, in Sweden. You must go with the millinery buyer to Paris and with the fruit buyer to Greece. You must visit the Irish depots in Limerick and Armagh, the Danish depot at Esbjerg and the Spanish depot at Denia. You must board the little steamers of the cooperative society. You must go out to Ceylon where, at Weliganga, the coolies are at work on the tea estate of the cooperative wholesale. When that is done you have still to make the acquaintance of the Scottish wholesale. It is a vast plant, owned and operated by two wholesale societies, representing fourteen hundred and thirtynine retail societies, representing, in turn, two and a half million British subjects, united as consumers. No wonder the Cooperative Wholesale Society, Limited, is somewhat artlessly pretentious in its title. Here,

among other things, is what it officially claims to be:

"Wholesale general dealers; manufacturers; bankers; millers; printers; book. binders; boxmakers; lithographers; shipowners; butter factors; lard renderers; bacon curers; fruit growers; dry salters; spice grinders; saddlers; curriers; iron founders and tinplate workers; tea growers; blenders; packers and importers; dealers in groceries and provisions, drapery, woolens, ready-made clothing, boots and shoes, brushes, crockery, carpets, furniture, coal," and so forth. Also "Manufacturers of flour, butter, biscuits, sweets, preserves, pickles, candied peel, cocoa, chocolate, tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, snuff, soap, candles, glycerin, starch, boots and shoes, saddlery, woolens, clothing, flannels,, shirts, mantles, underclothing, corsets, millinery, hosiery, silesias, pants, ladies' underwear, cardigans, furni ture, brushes, general hardware, bedsteads, wire mattresses, mats," and so forth. (To be continued.j

SHALL POISONING CONTINUE?

Match Workers' Fate Depends on Esch Bill.

NE of the first bills the present Congress will be asked to consider is the Esch Bill, which was referred to the Ways and Means committee

last year.

The Esch Bill provides for a prohibitive tax on white phosphorus matches. The use of this poison causes phosphorus necrosis or "phossy jaw." Every year 65 per cent. of all the match workers in this country are exposed to it. Among these are many women and children. Infection takes place through the mouth and the teeth decay and fall out and the jaw bone literally rots away. The jaw has to be cut out and in many cases a bandage worn. A liquid diet must be used for the rest of life, and indistinct mumbling takes the place of words. Sometimes the mind is affected.

Phossy Jaw Now An American Disease.

The United States is behind almost every civilized country in the world in regard to legislative prevention of "phossy jaw," which is now called an American disease. Great Britain and Ireland, France, the Nethelands, Finland, Italy, Madagascar, Spain, many of the countries in Africa,

even the Fiji Islands, supposedly most uncivilized of places, have laws protecting match workers from phosphorus poisoning. This legislation in some places was enacted over forty years ago.

France, taking over the production of matches as a government industry, found that all revenue was used up in damages which under the workmen's compensation law of France had to be paid annually to sufferers from "phossy jaw." Every sanitary measure known was rigidly enforced in an effort to stop the disease. When these were found unsuccessful, the French government conducted investigations which resulted in finding a substitute for the poisonous white phosphorus. This sesque-sul phide of phosphorus is now used all over the world. The passage of the Esch Bill by prohibiting the poisonous phosphorus would make its use general here.

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Company, and that independent manufacturers might be put out of business by the passage of the bill.

Cancelled Patent Not Sufficient.

Upon the personal request of President Taft, the trust has cancelled this patent and the substitute is now available to all other factories.

But until a law is passed prohibiting the making of matches with the poison it will continue to be used. For even if all the present factories in the country should enter into an agreement against it, as matches so made are a little cheaper, new

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Workers' Fate Depends on Esch Bill. While the manufacturers are willing. that the Esch Bill be passed, the workers are terribly anxious for it. Upon its fate depends their future. With the awful examples before them of fellow-workers who have been afflicted, they are never free of the fear that their turn may be next. One of the dreaded effects is the disfigurement, which makes hideous caricatures of human : beings, drawing face and mouth out of shape and sometimes distorting it into a horrible grimace. To hide the loss of his,

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j w and the holes in his face caused by the phosphorus abscesses, a man often lets his beard grow, and owing to the condition of his face this gives the terrible grotesque effect of a person swallowing a beard. Women who are the worst disfigured refuse to be photographed, and the outside world never knows what a horrible creature a poor woman may be made to look by this "phossy jaw."

What "Phossy Jaw" Means.

who went

A young widow, Rose to work in a match factory in Ohio was affected by phosphorus poisoning. It made her teeth drop out and developed ulcers which opened into her mouth. With two small children to support, she could not give up till it was necessary for her to go to a hospital and have her jaw, or rather what was left of it, taken out. While helpless in her suffering she had to have money for hospital expenses, and the company gave her $400 upon her signing a paper relieving them from all obligation.

When she came out of the hospital, she tried desperately hard to get other work to do to support her two children. She was was only thirty-six years old, but the poison had so devitalized her that she looked sixty. She can never eat any solid food and she cannot speak. The roof of her mouth rests on her tongue.

How It Disfigures.

The injurious effects of this poison are perhaps more horrible than that of any other known occupational disease. The disfigurement, odor, humiliation and permanent disability are even worse than the acute agony which is usually a matter of a few years.

JOHN WERNER.

A typical case of phosphorus poisoning.
Photographed November, 1911.

One Wisconsin woman, however, has been sick for the past nine years and the bones of her mouth are still breaking up with the dread necrosis. They pass away in the form of pus which keeps her in a state of nausea and requires constant sanitary attention in order to keep it from dripping into her throat.

Science, government and private re search, precedent in other countries, both the employees and the employers are on the side of the Esch Bill. It is an amazing array of argument.

What Can Labor Hope?

If in the face of all this, legislation cannot be secured in regard to this awful menace to health, what hope has Labor that its good is ever to be considered by Congress?

Commenting on the failure of the last Congress to pass this bill, the New York Times said editorially, December 5, 1911:

"No more senseless and harmful action than this, by a Republican Congress, could have been taken against the best interests of the public. Will the Democratic Congress in which Mr. Esch's bill will be reintroduced, refuse in its turn, to impose an internal revenue tax so high that no manufacturer can use the pernicious and only slightly cheaper process?"

The American Association for Labor Legislation is planning to take some "phossy jaw" victims to Washington when the Esch Bill comes up for a hearing. Only those near Washington can some, however, as the odor from the disease, even with the greatest personal attention to cleanliness, is so unspeakable that transportation by railroad is out of the quest'on.

How to Help Pass This Bill.

The American Association for Labor Legislation asks that citizens write to their representatives in Congress and to the Ways and Means Committee of the House, Representative Underwood, Chairman, urging the passage of the Esch Bill.

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This expert knows decoration from mansion to cottage; from city skyscraper to country store. He knows goods and can speak from intelligent experience in their use. You know Bahlhorn and that he represents the best element in the Brotherhood, that his opinions are not for sale and cannot be purchased. Read in the December Number what he says.

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The Beautiful Wall Tint

has not always met the requirements of Mr. Bahlhorn. While willing to admit the many commendable features always possessed by the goods, he will tell you that in common with many other craftsmen he objected to the workings of Alabastine, particularly to the setting if left standing over night. So

Alabastine Book strong had that prejudice become that when his attention

was called to the fact that this had been entirely overcome in the modern Alabastine, he "had to be shown."

Some practical men today are opposing the use of Alabastine honestly thinking the goods will not work to

please them and are in their working qualities the same as they may have used years

ago, or that their fathers may have used.

Alabastine as now manufactured spreads freely, flows together making a perfect wall

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Alabastine is a time saver and a money saver. Your customers know about Alabastine, its advantages, and want it used on their walls. They are willing to pay a good price for good work.

Fill out the coupon at the bottom of this page and let us tell you how we can help you get business and why it will pay you to be listed up as an Alabastine Man in your town. Do this to benefit yourself, not us.

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A NEW YEAR'S GIFT FOR "U. S."

W. G. EGGLESTON, in The Public.

N building the Panama Canal we are learning to do things for ourselves instead of turning the job over to syndicates and higher-up financiers, and paying them millions to do what we can do better-plus other millions of interest and dividends on the values we create.

We are learning to co-operate for the Common Good and for our common wealth in our Panama Canal task. We are doing that job far better than any "private enterprise" could do it, and that is natural; for public enterprise can do a public work better than private enterprise can, because the latter is interested chiefly in private profit, while public enterprise is concerned with public service.

Our public servants down at Panama are engaged in and are carrying to completion the greatest engineering work of modern times, the greatest of all ages. They are digging that public canal without "contractors," thus giving flat and conclusive denial to the myth that men must have the incentive of private profit to do good work; they have taken the straw out of the bogie that warns us against trying to do anything unless we get the consent of money-lending Oliver Twists who continually demand "more."

Just think of it-the spirit of Common Good has taken hold upon the laborers at Panama, and two gangs of common laborers, or Common-Good laborers, working on different dams, are engaged in a great Marathon race to see which crew shall have the honor of completing its work more quickly, more efficiently and at lower cost. One of the gangs has the advantage by one-eighth of a cent per cubic yard of concrete laid, and the other is striving to reduce that lead. Ever see two street paving contractors en. gaged in such a race for the Common Good?

Panama was once "a place where white men can't live," but our sanitary corps in our little army of the Common Good down there has put the morbidity rate and the mortality rate below that of any city in the United States. We have learned why it was once true that white men couldn't live at Panama, and now we are beginning to apply to our States and cities the knowledge gained in preventing disease at Pan

ama, The village in Kansas will be more sanitary for that knowledge.

In some other matters we have "butted into" the temple of holy private enterprise by our Panama experiment-for it is an experiment, based on scientific calculations.

We have learned that we can run for ourselves a line of steamers; we are running a line between New York and Colon, making the run one day quicker than private enterprise is running its steamers, and last year our profit on our line was $150,000. Yet is his too "radical"?-wouldn't it be even more profitable to us if we ran the line at cost? And still more profitable if we ran it free, as "business men" run elevators in their office buildings, and pay the cost out of our land values?

Then, on the Isthmus are two little railroads, owned by "us." On the cars and locomotives is the legend "U. S.," and that spells us. Our railroads down there show gross earnings of a little more than $6,000,000; and since passenger and freight cars that travel up and down in high buildings are run free of direct charges, the service being paid for in rentals, can't we do the same with our back-and-forth passenger and freight cars, and pay expenses of serv ice out of our increased land values? Is a system that is conservative enough for conservative business men too "radical" for us?

We are doing still more down there at Panama,

The great and good government of the United States has actually burglarized the Socialist platform-we are the burglars, mind you-and is conducting at Panama and along the route of the canal, publicly owned, Common-Good hotels, laundries, machine shops, bakeries, boarding houses, stores, et-cet-e-ra! Lost our minds, haven't we? And the Supreme Court hasn't issued a single injunction against us, so what we are doing at Panama must be judicially reasonable, even if it be commercially wildeyed.

And again, worse and more of it,

Those of us who are doing our work at Panama get the best food for themselves and their families at anti-race-suicide prices. At our experiment station down there we are showing that we can do our Common. Good housekeeping honestly and efficiently

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