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tion of the proportion that is allotted to the several devices of scarcity by those who have been discussing the causes of the high cost of living in the last two decades. Dr. Patten of the University of Pennsylvania, writing on the subject, The Crisis in American Home Life, 250 presents the following proportion of the evils that threaten the home:

"I give the following figures of savings and gains of income to a family at the minimum comfort, say $1,000 a year: A rational tariff 10 per cent; the control of monopolies, 15 per cent; reduction in rent, 10 per cent; cooperative buying, 10 per cent; technical education, 25 per cent, total 70 per cent."

Professors Laughlin and Willis name the tariff: 251 "Something must be done to overcome some of the injustices of the tariff. It is time for a revolution of public opinion."

Mr. Byron Holt expands the statement concerning the tariff and trust evils:: 252

"In 1903 the cost of living was 12 per cent higher than it Iwould have been had there been no tariff." It was estimated that the 17,000,000 families consumed goods worth $16,000,000,000 or $941 a family. 'On this basis the tariff was about $111 per family, of which $16.52 was collected by the government, and $98.40 by the trusts and other protected industries." "The average family expenditure is now probably $1,080 (1910), of which about 10 per cent is due to tariff 'spoilation.' If then prices are now 60 per cent higher than they were in 1896, the cost of living was then $675 per family." "Our tariff was at that time much less 'protective' than it is now, although it produced relatively more revenue. Our trust system was then very imperfect, our manufacturers were only just learning how to make the tariff an instrument of extortion. Today they are experts. The Payne-Aldrich tariff ... protects neither wage nor salary earners nor farmers, but does plunder them to enrich the trusts."

The "trust" is but a name for the group of men who are disposed to engineer artificial scarcities. Dean Tucker had attacked it in vain. Nothing can prevent trusts, to apply Ricardo's thought, "as long as society is constituted as it now is." It is constituted to play

the game of scarcity. The trust is the legal vehicle of the game.

The voice of the trust speaks at least eloquently in the following words; which show the value of the prizes of the game of scarcity as it is played:

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"You must remember that following this war we will be called upon and it will be our economical part and duty to assist in providing for a cold, tired, and hungry world. The great and representative producing classes should take a direct part in constructing the rules of organized life-commercial and political-and even of the law The banker, the manufacturer, and the merchant will contribute their practical knowledge, at the same time aiding the jurists, and the legislative draftsmen to simplify and improve the form Of approximately $80,000,000,000 worth of manufactures produced annually in the world, (only) about $8,000,000,000 enter international trade." 253

If tariffs can be arranged on the eight billions of dollars' worth, scarcity profits, if the law is attended to, can be arranged for the remaining seventy-two billions' worth.

The device of gold receives treatment at the hand of Professor J. Pease Norton, who shows that the depreciation of its value eats up the interest on the people's savings-accounts, and has done so for many years. His article, which is published in the Independent, Feb. 10, 1910, under the title, The Remedy for the High Prices, is headed with this statement from the editor of the Independent:

"Mr. Norton is Professor of Political Economy at Yale University and is also Actuary for a large firm of New York bankers. He is a member of many learned societies and has written widely on economic and financial topics. His suggestions of currency reform are along the most advanced lines."

Mr. Norton says: "The popular outcry now sweeping the country against the prevailing high prices, forcibly illustrates some of the social consequences of the depreciation of gold." "Bradstreets index of average prices indicate an advance of 60 per cent since July 1, 1896. In other words, a dollar's worth of goods today could have been bought for 62 cents in 1896. During the past 13 years, prices have maintained an

average advance of 42 per cent per annum." "The individual, therefore, who deposited one dollar in the savings bank in 1896, to be compounded at 4 per cent for the 13 years, at the present time would have an amount, principal and accumulated interest barely sufficient to purchase goods which he could have purchased with his original dollar in 1896." 292. "Measured in purchasing power, the savings bank depositors of the United States have received no interest on their funds for thirteen years." 292. "The gold inflation is world-wide and prices everywhere have moved upward in response How serious It is reasonable

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the situation may become nobody knows . to infer that % of the advance in this country are probably due to the gold and banknote inflation, and to other causes, such as trusts and the tariff." 292.

Mr. Norton, taking the word "Dill" for the unit of value, develops his scheme. There would be a currency based on the annual national products. For the foods there would be storehouses. The power of the trusts would be broken. "In short, with such a scientific system, what has been suggested repeatedly by the great thinkers of this as well as previous generations, the vexatious problems of the past fifty years, to a large extent would be solved forever."

During the war, and since, a new pretext for taking advantage of Young's Law has begun to be rampant. In spite of the fact that it is recognized by the Government that half of the produce of our agricultural areas fails to reach the market; and in spite of the known fact that the country has been districted under able transportation experts to market perhaps half of this unmarketed produce; and in spite of the fact that even then only three-fourths of the produce will reach the general market; nevertheless, it is now considered a stroke of genius to harp upon the fact of the 'vast hunger of the world,' which America must meet, and which it cannot hope to be able to meet for perhaps years to come, it may be never. Thus the New York Times: 254

"If ever there is to be a check to the rising cost of living the beginning must be made with food, and next with fuel. The beginning cannot be made with food until after the next harvest at the earliest, and more probably not until after several harvests, so great is the world's hunger. Only in less degree is that true of coal."

In the smaller cities editorials quoting the farmers are now almost the rage, it being possible for the farmer himself to enlarge upon reasons why food must be put high enough to make it quite difficult for a hungry world to reach it. Thus a Michigan daily: 255

"A national organization of farmers, to be known as the American Federation of Farm Bureaus, was formed in Chicago recently, at a meeting of representatives of state associations for farm bureaus from 31 states. The purposes of the organization, as outlined in its constitution, are 'to correlate and strengthen the farm bureaus of the several states, and to promote, protect, and represent the business, social, economic, and educational interests of the farmers of the nation L. S. Strivings of Castile, New York, in discussing the food situation, declared that food would never be cheap again, as economic conditions of agriculture have changed."

We may notice in closing the chapter the earnest protest to the system which divides producers against consumers by expedients founded on the alienation of the people from the land. First, the word of Thorold Rogers:

"It is allowed that commodities are plentiful; the question is why prices are high, why complaints are general .Wheat,'

says Young (Arthur Young, author of Young's Law) from the sowing to the selling goes through the hands of a set of pilferers, whose principal business is to steal it, as every farmer in the three kingdoms knows.

"Men live in opulence on their bargains. A speculator often does, as those who have to purchase the materials of industry discover. Somebody pays for their enjoyments. There is a superstition among old-fashion (imperialist) economists that all parties are the better for the middle man. Experience is gradually proving that the abstract theory is incorrect. Hence under competition producers are getting rid of the middle man If you can entirely get rid of the middle man, all the better; if you cannot, it is an economy, which even he can hardly dispute, to narrow his functions and to curtail his profits." 474-5.

"I cannot join in the chorus of exultation which comments on the virtues of a middle-man who, having saved ten or twenty millions (of pounds sterling, that is up to $100,000,000), dies in the odors of the peerage and sanctity. I do not care for the opulence which, beginning with questionable gifts or grants or plunder, has, through generations contrived to take enormous tolls on enterprise, on industry, and on population, and is ever on the look-out to fleece all, if they will submit to be fleeced." 569.256

The word of William Pare is a word of equal protest, and it is being heard today in England, as is Thorold Rogers' word:

"The tendency of the existing arrangement of things as to wealth, is to enrich a few at the expense of the mass of the producers; to make the poverty of the poor more hopeless, to throw back the middle classes upon the poor, that a few may be enabled, not only to accumulate in perniciously large masses, the real national capital, but also, by means of such accumulations, to command the products of the yearly labour of the community. Who sees not the gradual undermining of the nation's resources, the sickening of the very spirit of industry on the part of her producers, if this progress cannot, by recurrence to first principles, or otherwise, be arrested? Is it not time to inquire whether, by the laws of nature and society, we are doomed to submit to actual and anticipated evils, such as these, under the peril of enduring still greater, if we rashly attempt to remove them? All moral and political wisdom should tend mainly to this, the just distribution of the physical means of happiness making wealth tributary to the happiness of others." xxix-xxx. 257

CHAPTER XVII

British Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth

"As one form of government must be allow'd more perfect than another, why may we not enquire what is the most perfect of all, tho' the common botcht and inaccurate governments seem to serve the purposes of society, and tho' it be not so easy to establish a new government as to build a vessel upon a new plan? The subject is surely the most worthy curiosity, of any the wit of man can possibly devise. And who knows, if this controversy were fixt by the universal consent of the learned, but in some future age an opportunity might be afforded of reducing theory to practice, either by a dissolution of the old government, or the combination of men to form a new one,

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