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Show IjtfIG CUT IN PRICES.' :Xfr? There is a wave of price cutting throughout the country and yesterday yes-terday the merchants in nearly every large city began a marking-down marking-down of goods. This may be the beginning of that period of sanity for which we have been praying. While sugar was being jumped $10 a bag in a day, and clothing was going beyond the purchasing power of the wage earner, and High Cost of Living was running amuck, the fear was being expressed that the day was not far off when this country would be the scene of a calamity which would rock the foundations of society. With the turning downward of prices, some degree of confidence in the future will bje established and once more there will be hope of a stability which will tranquilize the nation. There was a race on between wages and prices. Everytime a half dollar was added to the pay 'of the workers, goods were marked up 50 per cent, and this went on until the necessaries were placed almost beyond the purchasing power of a man of average family in which only one wage .earner brought revenue to the home. "Where the fault was even our most expert economists could not say, except to declare the profiteer was abroad in the land, somewhere some-where between the first cost and the ultimate price to the consumer. Here in the west the opinion prevailed that the manufacturers in the east were the quality offenders against the welfare of the people. In this scaling down o-prices, retailers no doubt will suffer temporary tem-porary financial reverses but it is a relieving of the safety valve before be-fore an explosion occurs which might scatter wreckage over the erre United States. 1 |