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Show ONE REASON WHY LIVING IS HIGH. Under this heading a recent number of the Technicla World deals with conditions found in Milwaukee, disclosed by investigations of the department de-partment of weights and measures covering a period of two and a half months. The department in that time, confining its activities solely to the butchers and grocers, took charge of and destroyed more than two thousand dishonest weighing and measuring devices, not one of which was dishonest in giving the purchaseer more than he paid for. In one thirty-day period of investigation, about 7(5 per cent of the grocers and butchers were found to have thieving scales and measures. Only sixty-three sixty-three of two hundred and sixty-three places investigated in-vestigated could stand the light of investigation; the other two hundred were crooked. That is certainly an awful condition of affairs af-fairs to be found. It hardly seems possible that an equally bad showing would be found anywhere else, and yet it is possible that such conditions might be found anywhere. Human nature, it is said, is pretty much the same the world over, and just now the principal tendency of human nature is to get honestly, if possible, but to get. Then just last week, reports were sent out from New York that barrels of potatoes were anywhere from twenty to fifty pounds short of the legal standard in New York of 174 pounds.. Other reports re-ports show that bottles, so long masquerading as quarts, and yet known to be "fives," have suddenly diminished in size so that now, although apparently appar-ently the same size, they run six to a gallon. Salt Lake has the reputation of being a high-priced high-priced town in which to live. Perhaps that reputation repu-tation is undeserved. If we pay a dollar for an article and get full measure, we are buying cheaper I than a Milwaukeean or New Yorker who pays 80 cents, and receives 25 per cent les3 of that commodity com-modity than we do, even if it is called a bushel in all three places. The most distressing feature of all these revelations reve-lations of "honorable" graft, however, is the effect ef-fect they have on the national character of the people. It is impossible to estimate the decline in morals which makes such conditions possible. |
