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Show $50,000 in sugar company stock told me last year that his dividend! was 40 per cent, and that 20 per cent more of the profits was set aside for other purposes. .The freight on sugar from California to Kansas' City is 53 cents, so the railroad company loses 3 cents a pound on it. . "The railroads charge us $1.15 per hundred weight to haul oranges from Los Angeles to the Missouri river. All rales are based on specification as well as ad valorem, and according to this basis the rates on sugar should be $1.60, and on oranges 90 cents. "Now, when the railroads will transport sugar for a great corporation cor-poration for-less than they will do it; for you, something is rotten. In other words, the orange producers of California are paying the railroads for hauling sugar. Here we find another African in the " wood pile. "Forty per cent of the goods the retail grocer handles does not give him an honest and fair profit, yet he, as the last of the middle men, is generally held responsible for the increased cost of living." The speaker also paid his respects to mail order houses, saying: "The most aggravating form of business dishonesty is found in the mail order houses. They sell you one or two articles at cost to bribe you, and then rob you on the rest." Aftor reading the denunciation of the "trusts" by the retail grocers, listening to the defense of the trusts by the attorneys of the trusts, hearing the explanation of the railroads and getting the side of the manufacturers, the average man will confess that no one is blamable for high prices; that prices are high "just because they are high." : HIGH PRICES IN OGDEN AND ELSEWHERE. "Don't complain about high prices in Ogden," said a former resident res-ident "Up in the Hood River country we pay $1 .95 a sack for flour, $1 a pound for butter, 60 cents a dozen for egsrs and $25 a ton for hay, with everything else correspondingly high." A day ago President Taft gave out a statement comparing prices of goods delivered at the White House with the price list when Roosevelt was in office. The advance averaged 40 per cent. Governor Hughes of New York says there should be an investigation investiga-tion of high prices. The entire country seems to be suffering of high prices and Ogden Og-den is not more distressed than many other cities. What is the cause. All kinds of theories are advanced. United StaUs Senator Stephen B. Elkins, the multi-millionaire from West Virginia, chairman of the senate committee on interstate commerce, who has introduced a. resolution in the senate calling for an investigation investi-gation into the present high cost of living, in a recent interview said that tourists from the United States spent annually over $100,000,000 in Europe, that foreign laborers sent a like amount out of the country coun-try every year.. He charged that the people of the country are entirely too extravagant, but adds that the cost of living has advanced ad-vanced beyond all comparison with the increase in wages. 0. G. Barber, founder of the Diamond Match company, and one of the organisers of a great trust in this country, blames the railroads rail-roads and the trusts for the present condition. .He is reported as saying that both the railroads and the trusts extort money from the laboring man, that there are too many politicians whose aim in life is to get rich at the expense of others, and urges that the people think more for themselves. At a meeting of the Retail Grocers of Colorado last Monday, in discussing the trusts, the grocers were brought up with a jerk when one of their number mentioned that the organization must proceed with care in the matter of prices, lest an injunction issued by the state supreme court bo violated. This came up when a motion was made to endorse "the Pacific Coast plan" which contemplates an understanding between manufacturers, jobbers and retailers, not to invade each others' field. "Does this include the doctrines of protective prices?" asked a delegate. An affirmative reply was given with the result that the motion to endorse the plan was withdrawn. President Sullivan, of the National Association of Retail Grocers, called special attention to the alleged price regulations of the meat trust, stating that, for example, mutton sold to the retailers at eight cents a pound more in Los Angeles than in Chicago; that the sheep raising district was midway between the two cities mentioned, men-tioned, and that with a market governed by natural conditions the producer would have sought the higher market. "The high cost of living," he declared, "is due to the fact that these combines have gained control of the necessities of life and that they absolutely govern prices. Let us put the blame where it rightfully belongs. These modern shylocks grasping, grabbing leave no stone unturned to blame the retailers. Not satisfied satis-fied to rob him of his time and money, they now seek to take also his reputation." J. R. Newberry, president of the Pacific Coast association, enumerated the four trusts which he declared were most to blame-Rockefeller's blame-Rockefeller's oil trust, the packing house products combine, the euar trust and the flour trust. 'The part that packing house prodcts play in this is easily understood, " he declared, "when we consider that one of the packing companies recently declared a dividend of 35 per cent. This is an enormous prc-fl but it isn't alL We must remember that of the $110,000,000 capitalization on which this was declared, $65,000,000 is watered stock, bo that the 35 per cent means actually a dividend of about 80 per cent on the capital used. Does not that account for . ae African in the wood pile? "Lot n look at sugar. A California gentleman who owns J |