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Show I STAGGERING PROFITS. A most remarkable article on the high cost of living appears as a contribution to the literature of the clay by Charles Grant Miller, at one time editor-in-chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and recently recent-ly editor of the Christian Herald. Mr. Miller claims the newspapers newspa-pers are not telling all they know as to the cause of the present pyramiding of prices, and he proceeds to offer proof iii a series or articles which are filled with startling 'statements of profits made oy big business. We quote as follows: 6 Ts this question of profiteering beyond the acumen, the integrity of American journalism? T do not think so. AVe can never get at the truth through pernicious publicity pub-licity which misleads and poisons both press and public. We cannot approach serious solution through funny paragraphing. paragraph-ing. "We can get nowhere until we have first got solid facts under our feet. To present tlje real, facts is the function of the press. To mould those facts into public opinion and practice is the privilege of the people. Their judgment and fairness can be trusted. When former Secretary McAdoo astonished the coun-'try coun-'try by announcing that profits of coal operators in 1017 had -ranged as high as 2.000 per cent he furnished a big head-liner head-liner and a nine days' wonder, and there started his boom for the presidency. And yet what he said, and infinitely more, is matter of official record, potentially the property of the people, not the private possession of public officials, and ought to be of universal information. McAdoo definitely said that the profiteering figures could be found in the income tax returns. Why did the press not take the hint? Why is the press silent, except for putting out Big Profiteering's propaganda about profiteering profiteer-ing that is petty? A huge, though incomplete and complex, record of war profits is printed in Senate Doeument No. 259, a special report re-port of the secretary of the treasury, demanded by the senate. sen-ate. . k This dynamic document shows that coal operators' profits in 1917 actually ranged in one instance as high as 7,856 per cent, or 7S times the capitalization. Of the 40-t coal companies 185 (nearly half) made profits of 100 per cent and up. The net- income of all the 404- companies, having a total capital stock of $175,000,000, was $78,000,-000. $78,000,-000. or nearly 45 per cent. On page 365 of Senate Document 259 is listed a meat packing concern with a capital of $100,000,000 and net income in-come for 1917 of $43,810,984. A big story there ; and here comes a hot follow-up : It happens there were just two meat packing concerns , with $100,000,000 capital stock in 1917 Armour & Com- pany and Swift & Company though careful search reveals I only one of them individually reported in this senate docu ment. Which one of them made this 43 per cent profit upon the life-sustaining foods of the whole people, and how has it gotten away with it? If there could possibly be a bigger story than this, here . is one waiting to be uncovered fairly stinking for an airing:- To the public and their stockholders' Armour & Com-' Com-' pany reported for 1917 a net profit of only $30,628,157 and Swift & Company only $34,650,000. In view of the official return of $43,810,000, supposed to be secret, the inference is ' unavoidable that one or the other has concealed from the public and its own stockholders profits of either $9,000,000, if Armour, or $13,000,000, if Swift. I Basil Manly found out, by patient comparisons between I the XL S. Steel Corporation's income tax return and its own published state of profits, that in the two years, 1916 and 1917, after all allowances, its net profits amounted to $888,931,511, which is $20,000,000 more than the total stock I of the corporation. Besides, its original $500,000,000 cpm-I cpm-I mon stock was nothing but water at that. |