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Show FARMERS BLAMED FOR HIGH PRICES. The Illinois Casing company has sent a circular to the Ogden trade in explanation of high prices in which the fanner is held responsible for the ascending quotations. The circular states that, with American soil pouring forth its wealth at the rate of eight billion seven hundred million dollars a year, we may look for a rush back to the farms. "This soil is paying better than gold mines, Secretary Wilson shows, and hence the return of people from cities to the country is liable to resemble a rush to a newly opened gold field. Thirty billion bil-lion dollars Is today the estimated worth of America's seven million mil-lion farms. "It wae when form products were so cheap that it was difficult to dig a Irrtng from the earth that people began to desert the farms Tor the city shops and offices. That was in the days when Kan-lans Kan-lans used to burn their corn for fuel, because coal cost more than they could get for their corn; when piles of grain and other products of the field and garden lay spoiling on the ground as the result of over-production and no market. And the migration to the cities kept up, and the nation's population kept on increasing, until now the reverse conditions are true. Instead of over-production there is a shortage of all kinds of food supplies. "Millions of dollars have been spent by the Department of Agriculture in advancing the farmer's interests. It has taught them how to grow two blades of grass in the spot where only one would grow before. It has furnished them with seeds, literature, and special demonstrations through the many experiment stations it has established. It has shielded them in every way possible, and done all it could to make tho farming business profitable, and the farm home more comfortable. The rural free delivery and many other innovations innova-tions for the benefit of the farmer have been established. "Look at the farmer sitting back in his newly-built home, surrounded sur-rounded by his well-filled granaries, listening to his daughter just home from Vassar playing the latest tcmcI r-? on W new piano. See his sons just returning from town in their rev automobile. Look at the smile of serene contentment on tho old man's' face as he reads in the newspaper delivered to his door about the high prices the city folk3 have to pay. Then pause and reflect and see if you cannot form a solution of this high-priced problem." Several Ogden merchants have called on the Standard to offer their endorsement of tho foregoing. They maintain that the fault is with the people, in their failure to reduce the cost of living by seeking the cities instead of going back to the farms to reap a golden harvest and help equalize prices by making the production equal to the demand. The farmer alone cannot solve the problem. Prices have advanced ad-vanced throughout the world and will continue to advance until the wheels of commerce are in part silenced by business reaction. Nothing Noth-ing would do more to force down prices than the loss of confidence in the business world and a resultant inactivity in all lines of ita. dustry. But the cure is worse than the disease. |