Just recently there has been a spate of literature dealing with the enor: mous profits made by armament firms and their far-reaching organizations throughout the world. Indeed they fare laden with more of the world's war guilt in the popular imagination than is, perhaps, entirely to be justified. Mr. Bernard M. Baruch, chairman of the U.S, War Industries Board, the Keystone in the mobilization of the country's resources for the purposes of the last war, speaking before the Army Industrial 'College, made powerful plea that industry' as well as men should bear the burden of war and that no profit should be taken out of it, He did not mean the entire extirpation of profits, which would be a counsel of perfection, but he suggested that a "ceiling" should be put over prices and profits beyond which no one should go. Thereafter A tax programme would have to be enacted which would take away com pletely the difference between selling prices and the costs plus a reasonable return, by which means the profit would be taken out of war. Tt would indeed be an admirable thing if some method could be devised for preventing profiteering in such times, but whether a scheme could be devised to meet the case of armament manufacturers along those lines is an entirely different matter. It is true that during war munition firms amass considerable profit. They also have to encounter the Loan years of peace, and it would seem that if, when business was flourishing they were not permitted to accumulate reserves, they would be in no condition to weather the thin times when their services are not in such urgent demand, so that when they were next required their aid would be no longer available. Even if some such scheme could be perfected, it is doubtful how would operate in the face of the law of supply and demand of such material as has to be imported for munition making, such as, for example wolfram. Aiveady the price of this metal is rising quickly, and in the event of war would soar to unprecedented heights, making profits for the producers which no amount of legislation would be able to curb.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.