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Show THE CITIZEN 4 the most part, are dealing with manufactured products. The packers, for example, pay a low price for beef on the hoof and obtain a high price for beef on the block. The inflated nature of the packers prices may be realized when the simple threat of high cost of living laws reduces the price of pork $1.75 a barrel within a few hours in the speculative markets. The government must concern itself with stimulating the production of grain and live stock. That was the government's task during the war. It accomplished it with a vengeance. Prices were raised to such an extent that all producers of raw and manufactured materials became profiteers. The excuse was that there was no other way. We had to win the war. Now we must pay the price. Our big problem is to get ourselves out of our flying machine in safety. Senator Reed tells us that we ought not to keep on supplying Europe writh food if we cannot feed ourselves. Herbert Hoover tells us that Europe is in danger of depending too much on our charity and should be told to shift for itself in the matter of food. standEuropean harvests are in, but they cannot be up to the pre-wards. Twenty or more wars have prevented the farmers of Europe from producing as much as is necessary for their own wants. While there should be no disposition to starve the Europeans it is our duty to be circumspect in our charity. If it be true that 6,000,-00- 0 children in the United States are undernourished because their parents are too poor to pay the high prices we can see that there is vast room for charity at home. We must not enfeeble our race to strengthen the races of Europe. We made unparalleled sacrifices during the war and now Europe should be asked to carry its own burdens as much as possible. We must not become fanatical, however, on this subject of keeping our goods at home. If we have anything to spare we should see to it that Europe is supplied. If we are going to get back within a reasonable time the $10,000,000,000 we loaned to Europe we must supply Europe with raw materials and give her a chance to work. That $10,000,000,000 is part of our debt. On it is based much of the circulating medium which has produced inflation and a fifty-cedollar. If we had it back we could begin the process of deflation without difficult by liquidating that part of the public debt and contracting the currency based on it. But are there no remedies ? Let us pause, for a moment, to consider what might be called home remedies while Congress, is trying to devise panaceas. If we are to lower prices we must work hard and avoid waste. Hard work means increased production. Avoidance of waste means conservation. We can work hard by avoiding strikes and by giving full measure of service. We can produce more if we make our labor-savin- g machinery produce to the limit of its power. We can avoid waste by saving formerly unconsidered trifles and by cutting down on luxuries. The last bit of advise may be regarded by the poor as a mockery, but all classes waste by indulging immoderately in luxuries. If the labor used to create luxuries were cut down and the surplus labor used in producing necessaries of life prices would decrease. The market basket, if used in the proper measure, would do much to reduce the cost of living. While we are waiting for Congress to invent the universal methods let us practice the particular methods of making our fifty-cedollar go as far as possible. Meantime, however, we must not relax in our efforts to bring the profiteers to book. Only by constant agitation and action can we keep profiteering down to a minimum. ar nt . nt JAPANESE CAMOUFLAGE Japan, when you belong to the opposition party, you try to kill your opponent with kindness. You indorse all his policies and shout banzai when he turns a good political trick. At least so it would appear from the speech of the delectable Viscount Ivato, honorable leader of the Kenseikai, or opposition party, of IN Nippon. In our country an opposition party considers it the moral as well as the political duty of its leaders to pick flaws in the foreign policies of the party in power. If, for example, T. Woodrow Wilson, President of the good old U. S. A., and guide, philosopher and friend of the human race except an unconsidered 36,000,000 in Shantung goes wrong the opposition critics very gently take him to task in the most refined language. Not so in Japan. Witness what Viscount Kato has to say on the Shantung steal. The Shantung question was settled as it should have been settled in the Paris peace conference. In benighted America we are accustomed to say that no question and-domesti- is settled until it is settled right. In more enlightened Japan they have an old German saying that might is right. Viscount is evidently the chief camoufleur of the opposition party. He proves the case against the United States by a very simple piece of verbal camouflage. He pictures the United States as objecting to the Shantung deal from motives of selfishness. China is a vast country, he says, where there is plenty of room for Europeans and Americans as well as Japanese to work side by side and extend c 't ? " their interests in full measure. And there is much more of the same. The implication is, in pure and honorable Japanese, that the United States is sore because Japan gets first chance at robbing China. The wily viscount, repressing laughter, says not a word about our real motives. Perhaps he is cynical like so many Japanese and in huma naffairs. And, of doesnt believe in honesty and course, he cannot appreciate our love of liberty and democracy. These are two spiritual qualities which are suppressed by the censor in Nippon. That we should plead the cause of Shantung from the standpoint of principle does not impress him, for in Japan, as it was in Germany, the state is everything, the individual nothing, and if the and government sees fit to steal anything, all parties, the hurrah for robbery. If the government declares for the the slavery of 36,000,000 human beings the politicians emit 36,000,000 rt of the rank and file mostly rank of banzais with the and the the The United States is seeking nothing in China except the esteem of the Chinese. If our motive were commercial expansion at the expense of the Chinese we would remain silent on the Shantung question, for we would realize, as Kato points out so trenchantly, that China is big enough to be robbed by all deserving bandits. If we were merely selfish we would permit Japan to have her way with Shantung and we would consider silence golden. It is because we are the spiritual heirs of freemen that we protest against the enslavement of Shantung. fair-deali- ng pro-par- ty con-part- y, lung-suppo- pro-par- ty con-part- y. DICTATORSHIPS million workers, most of them voters, belonging to the political machine fostered by the Democratic party, have turned on the government and demanded a dictatorship. In a flash they have revealed to us what government ownership may mean. If government control can give the railway brotherhoods such power, will not government ownership give them even . more dominion over politics? Four times in the last three or four years has the railway labor machine brought pressure to bear upon either the administration or Congress. Before the government took control the machine enforced the passage of the Adamson law. Since then, if our memory serves, it has compelled increases in wages three times.- Now it is demanding a fourth increase. Since the government took control of the railways the political power of the machine has increased enormously. If the government buys the railroads the 2,000,000 and more employes will be able to exercise even greater influence over the executive and legislative " branches of the government. At present the railway workers are not using their votes, .but direct action. A strike is direct action. By means of strikes or threats of strikes they hope to compel an increase in wages. We are not questioning the reasonableness of the proposed wage increase. TWO - |