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Show r THE CITIZEN 8 1 If we get after the hoarders as earnestly as we did during the war we shall put an end to one source of inHHHHIHHHIIIW1HlllimHWlWllt,llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllMIIIIIlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllllllllllllllllllllWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII s t OBSERVATON RiimmHiiiimiiii : h .'M. whlch optimists and bet on' the American people to win the flgtit' against1 the high cost of living? .; j i. Will, they win? Well say they will. Have ,you noticed in the last few days that the American people, from down 'to the humblest citi- ' zen, ' Are beginning to show some not-b- 4 p. i . i i, . . . .. - e J . nt ' speed? Who won the war? 4 , How did we-d- it? o We won the war by being in earnest i . .and showing 'speed. The American people haye decided to. fight this battle to a finish and Htfuifiph. : Sotne of the younger generation are 'impatient. They are even . talking . Bolshevism and revolution. agonizing. But there was no revolution. The common sense and brotherhood of the American people came to their rescue. They wrorked their way out of the Listen, sonny About years ago your fathers and mothers saw some hard times much harder than we see to-- 1 day, but they .were .different. Today the world is suffering from under-productio- twenty-fiv- e and high prices. In n those days this country was suffering from what some economists called and low prices. There is hardly such a 'thing as is What is . Over-producti- on so-call- ed over-productio-n. usually under-distributio- n. But this is not a talk on abstruse v points of political economy. u,t Those were the days of and low prices. ' Men were not striking for higher over-producti- (so-calle- on d) 1 : - - obvious remedy was to restore . dence, supply capital for industry and put the men into the reopened fac- tories. When President flee that was the the disease and it diseases appeared, other story. V . ' s - 4 . i . . - L confi- , . took McKinley - of- - remedy applied to was cured. Other but that is an. i. g are not producing enough. 4 . . "Reformers urged their panaceas free coinage of silver, Henry Georges single tax and let it be said some r For years after that the newspapers did not use the word panic. It was such a fearful word that they were afraid even its use would start another panic. We must and will find ways to increase production swiftly. Strikes will not. do it. 1 . " : ' t . . Can You Spell Inferno With Four Letters? Hoarding?. .No do.ubt, there is hoarding.- Perhaps there is so much hoarding that we liave an illusion of under- production in some1 lines when, in reality, there 'Is a sufficient output. . , UY all the available laws and cour- esies the contractors are bound to provide proper detours from the highways on which pavements are being laid. It is so nominated in the bond. But if we may believe our eyes and our jolts the contractors seem to think that they are under contract to for the vehicling provide death-trap- s public. No such painful and perilous roads have been provided in all the history of detouring. word Utahns will remember that detour till their dying day, which promises to be not far distant lfthey continue to travel the crooked and crumpled paths furnished by the per- travelers also. Now we - - . . last legs. food. These are distressful times, but they are as elysium to hades, compared with the days of the panic of 93. There was talk of revolution. Ev- ferybody had a panacea. The most This is not Europe. It is the United States. The' high cbst of living is on its , fidious, not to say, high-price- d -- At any rate, be an optimist. . portly profits. Some classes of our citizens made immense sacrifices during the war, but the farmers got off lightly. They?'' had a very enjoyable time. In fact, they enjoyed so much making the public pay high prices for wheat and all the fruits of the soil that in the present crisis when millions of people are not getting enough i They abyss slowly and painfully. were patient and sacrificing. They were patriotic and Christian-like- , Children were undernourished in those days because their parents could not even pay low prices and prices were so low that lunch count-- . ers provided a fairly good meal for fifteen or twenty cents. Corn was selling for twenty-fiv-e cents a bushel. In the corn states the farmers burned it for fuel. As you w'ent along the main streets of cities and towns you saw the display windows of many, many buildings boarded across. You dont see anything like that today. And yet, at this very time, millions of children, we are told, are undernourished because their parents cannot pay for enough of the - wages. They were clamoring for jobs that could not be supplied. At one time there were 7,000,000 That meant that men out of work. between 25,000,000 and 30,000,000 persons were denied the usufruct of industry..- The average time each man was out of work was several months. Men who wanted to work were idle as'long.as four and six months. . have slnce bee" enacted In fact, a long list of reform laws, more or less in the memory of all of us might be detailed here. Laws for the regulation of railways and trusts, . laws giving the people more control . over their affairs, laws improving our money and banking systems, laws purging politics of much of its corrup-Presidetion. The principal remedy, however, was a revival of business. Meantime there was terrible suffering and humiliation among the people. The leading citizens of a commu-nit- y men who had boasted wealth were,, reduced to penury and almost starved. Your father can tell you some of those stories. Times were hard, bad, dangerous, . . high prices. mi Prices Drop? XESayJhey Will WM-Hig- PLANE realized that the fat years had arrived and that now was the time for murderous conwill tractors. The word detour inferno sound as lamentable as spelled with four letters. Why is it that the state authorities do not compel the contractors to live up. to their covenants, or are these contractors guiding themselves according to certain interpretive reservations. The detours are costing the traveler much money. Tattered tires, broken springs and sometimes broken bones mark his progress along these detours. One would think that they had been specially made by a Hun constructors. booby-tra- p corps of The Hun who knows how to make a lead pencil or a piano into a bomb has nothing on the contractors who are laying out our detours and the Farmers Fix Prices And Fix Them High good food, they want $3 for their wheat and correspondingly exorbitant prices for everything they have to sell. Consumers may say with Warren K. Stone that the people will not ' starve; they will die fighting, but the profiteering farmer is not disturbed. Does the public of Salt Lake know that the farmers fix prices on ' the goods they market here? Does the public know that rather than sell below the fixed price they will throw away their fruit and vegetables? The other day they were trying to get $3 a crate for raspberries at the markets . and apparently had few buyers, but they would not reduce by a single cent. At Cleveland the dealers dump carloads of fruit twenty to twenty-fiva day into the lake rather than accept anything less than the fixed price. We suspect that something of the same nature is going on right at our very doors. The farmers and the dealers are organized and are fixing prices. If they dont get their prices they dont sell. The public should demand their of-ficials make an investigation and find the answer to some of these quotations. The governor, the city officials and the citizens should get together in a movement to stop profiteering at the markets and by the farmers. The citizens should furnish to thef officials all the information they have and insist upon action. e l nr HE farmers have been enjoying life for so long that it will do no harm to disturb the serene calm of their money-makin- g. The farmers trusts are profiteer- ing right here in Utah as well as else in the country. To stimulate the raising of wheat the national government fixed a high price and, so to speak, begged the farmer to become a profiteer. Needless to say the farmers did not run away from the opportunity. They at the end of the day, they had most of the berries on their hands. What did they do with them? Presumably, SCHOOLBOY PHONETICS. Walter Jones, said the teacher sternly, you are not attending to the lesson. Did you bear Jessie Smiths description of the American product, hominy? Yesm, replied the small boy glib- - ly All right, then. Give me a sentenced in which you bring in the word rectly. With cor- the courage of despair, Walter replied: Hominy marbles have you? 7 4 |