MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
4
Conversations With Six Hundred Thousand
WHY LIVING COMES HIGH
Remedies
Little hope can be found that the cost of living will go back to the same place as before the war. All over the world prices are rising. In the countries ravaged by the European Wars there is no way out but for the people to eat less food than they were used to, to wear their old clothes longer and to get on without many things that they used to think necessary. The people of the United States are ac customed to live well, to dress well and to enjoy themselves. They know that it is also to give their children a better chance than they had them selves. The intelligent working man wants an income that will enable him to see his children properly educated so as to give them a start in life. We do not wish to cut down the average scale of living.
The only way that seems at all hopeful is to get rid of the preposterous profits of the middleman in furnishing the necessities of life and especially food. The five farmers who paid $11.60 for a dinner in Washing-ington, and figured out that the materials for that dinner netted the producing farmer only 82 cents, were on the right track. Somebody ought to get after the cereal trust which buys wheat at 3 cents a pound, and puts not over three cents worth of labor and manufacturing upon it, and un-blushingly ^ells the product at 25 cents a pound.
You may pay 85 cents a dozen for eggs, but the chicken farmer does well if he receives forty-five cents out of that.
The people of the United States are famed for their skill in organizing great industries, it's time for them to cut out these ridiculous profits of men who jun almost no risk, render very little service, and take a rake-off on every pound of flour and meat and potatoes.
In the course of the next two or three years, we must expect that a new balance of wages and prices will be established, but only after many heart-burnings and disturbances. People have got to reorganize domestic service, for it is impossible to find enough people for the old-fashioned system of house-work. People must learn to make more use of co-operative methods, so that part at least of the large profit of the retailer may go back to the buyer in dividends. Many people can simplify their lives. Prohibition has brought about an unexpected _ lessening of the demand for expensive rooms and meals at the hotels, for people find their happiness does not depend on a three dollar dinner. Everybody can pare down in some direction without much diminishing his comfort, and without at all affecting his self-respect.
The thing that will do most to cause a tumble in prices and a reduction of the high cost of living is to increase the product of the worker. If the same force of hands can improve machinery and organization so as to produce 2,000 shoes a day in the same hours or fewer hours that were formerly necessary for 1,600 pairs, they are helping to reduce the cost of living for others while keeping up their own wages. There is no other road toward an adjustment which will leave all classes in the United States contented. Profiteering is a frightful evil which is very hard to deal with. The income tax on corporations takes away part of that surplus for the public needs and if those great incomes were made public as they ought to be those who enjoy them could be called to account. In the long run we must expect that progress of invention, machinery and organization combined with economy and saving habits will give a living income to all who are willing to do a reasonable amount of work for that blessing.
By PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Harvard University------------Mooseheart Governor
wages stood still. When the war was over, the demand from overseas continued. The farmer got more than twice as much for wheat as in 1913, but had to pay twice as much for what he bought, and nearly twice as much for his farm labor.
Another thing that has caused prices to raise is the rapid increase of taxation. In many cities, large and small, the tax rate has risen to as much as three per cent of the value of houses and lands, and the owner of a small house is pretty sure to be assessed up to or above the selling value. Then came the war loans and taxes. You cannot defend your country, and help to defend the world with four million men, without paying a big bill. Our bill is about 30,000 million dollars. Whether it is paid by taxes, or out of loans, everybody in the United States has to share in making that good; and that means that one’s income, whatever it is, is reduced by those necessary taxes.
Labor
Now comes in the effect of organized labor . The right of labor to organize into a trades union is just as clear as that of the same men to organize into a fraternity or a church or a political party. Modern industry;-* is, however, full of specialties and groups of skilled laborers so that a comparatively small number of shirkers can throw everything into confusion. The United States is full of key industries. If the railroad switchmen strike or the freight-handlers, or the motormen on the trolley lines, or the power-house men, or (as has recently happened in Boston) the men who inspect wheels and brakes of passenger trains, before they leave the terminals, or the firemen on board steam-craft, or the repairers on telephone lines, a whole city or a whole district may be left without power or transportation.
All our American cities are dependent on frequent shipments of food, so that a complete stoppage of transportation into a great city for a week or two might bring people to the famine point. The great bodies of railroad men and other transportation men are absolutely necessary for keeping things going, and their unions have corresponding power.
Hence, in nearly all the controversies over the wages of transportation men, the managers in the long run give way. The transportation men ask that their wages shall have the same purchasing power as wages not half as great six years ago had at that time. Of course, if the cost of transportation rises the cost of everything that is carried also rises, including the cost of the food and clothing, and other things used by the railroad men and their families. That is the ׳‘Vicious Circle.”
pocket and gear works in harmony with every other. The great world trade in stable raw materials such as rubber, lumber, iron ore, and coal, was all adjusted like clock-work. The carrying trade of the world exactly fitted into it.
In the United States, there was always coal enough, and iron ore enough, and silver enough, and copper enough, and flour enough, and potatoes enough, and cotton enough, and cars enough, and steamers enough, because wherever people saw a demand, they arranged for a supply. This country was better organized than any other, because there is hardly any important raw material, except rubber and sugar, and cocoanut products, which we have to get from outside.
So with labor; plenty of laborers were underpaid, and many of them were dissatisfied; but. most of them had at least a living for their families at the prices that then prevailed. Even the very low rate of wages and poor conditions of unskilled laborers in factories and mines were so much better than those in Central Europe that millions of immigrants came over to find work on those conditions.
Many people then believed that the whole system was such that the laborers as a class got less than their fair share of the total product and that the employers and owners got too much. Still the country as a whole was very prosperous. Many small business men enjoyed good profits and a good living; professional men got on, and brought up and educated their children. Low wages and low prices seemed to fit together.
The New System
That state of things has gone by. Prices began to rise as soon as the war broke out in Europe, because Great Britain and France and Italy could _ not carry on without food and supplies from other countries; and the United States was the only other country sufficiently near and with a sufficient surplus to help out. Those governments bid high for food and munitions. They furnished capital to build new factories. They guaranteed to take rifles and shell at very high prices. These war industries broke up the balance of wages in the United States.
How could you keep a girl at a loom earning seven dollars a week when she could go into a munition factory and earn forty dollars in about the same number of hours ?* Why should a man stay on a farm at twenty-five dollars a month and board, when he could get work as a ship carpenter at seven dollars a day ? After all, only a small part of the wage earners went into the new industries, and millions of men and women saw prices rising, while their
In the Supreme Council session at Boston on October 2nd, full plans were made for a vigorous European campaign under the supervision of Vice Director General Jos. A. Jenkins, who is now in Paris. Encouragement was evident on every hand. The Loyal Order of Moose is truly to become a fraternity “OF THE WORLD.”
NEVER before has the United States of America gone through such a series of dangers and crises as during the last six years.
Even in 1913, although the country was in the full tide of prosperity, the relations between labor and capital, between the producer and the consumer, between the shipper and the railroad, between the big corporation and the small business man were very uneasy. In that year Congress established a new Trade Commission, straightened up the Sherman Act for dealing with trusts, set in action a new system of Reserve Banks, and made changes in the railroad laws. In 1916 it passed the Adamson Act for settling disputes between the railroad men and the railroad companies. Things were not moving very easily.
Changes of the War In 1914 came the European War, which within a few months caused a great demand for food and other supplies to be sent to other countries, and the building of immense factories for munitions and other material of war, in which the operatives earned wages unheard of up to that time. Never was there such an overturn in conditions of labor and business; and this confusion was increased by the effort of German agents through secret methods to divide the people of the United States and set them against each other.
In 1917 our own war with Germany caused the creation under forced draft of shipyards, arms factories, nitro plants, and farms. Within a few months four million men were taken right out of the work-shops, the railroads, the farms, and the offices, to put on the khaki and go and fight for their country, immensely enlarging the demand for food and supplies of ■every kind, while cutting down the workers by something like a fifth. Naturally the good old Republic rocked under this strain.
In 1918, the war was practically over, and shortly after the boys began to come home. The result was the demand fell off for many lines of goods. The railroads had been taken over by the government, and found it hard to meet the changes in service and in labor conditions. Wages began to go up in many industries. Then the returning soldiers wanted their jobs back or wanted better jobs, for which their military service had helped to prepare them. For a time people thought everything would quiet down when the boys were all out of the service. They expected that the country would return to the place where it left off in 1914 when the European War broke out. Had not the nation settled down after every other war, and gone ahead with greater prosperity than ever ? On the contrary, there has been no period of peace for a good hundred years when there has been so much commotion and pulling and hauling as today. What does it mean ? Where shall we come out ? Is the country in danger? What can we do for the Republic ?
The Old System
We may as well admit at the start that the United States can never go back again to the relations which existed even six years ago. The first reason is that the great World War has broken up the organization of trade and business which had worked itself out in the previous fifty years. Six years ago the commerce of the World was all fitted together like a Corliss engine, where every valve and