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Show A .VliXACn TO (Ot'NTI'.V 1,IFK Will our oii ins eventually bring1 (lisasler to our country towns? f In doiiiK this will they also bring; ruin upon themselves? In accomplishing both of these! will they become a menace even to! tin! stability of the republic? There is grave danger that all of these may happen. A few years ago in any city a woman could be secured to clean house for $1.50 or $2.00 a day. Now they receive as high as $4.00 a d;iy and three meals. Carpenters, plasterers, bricklayers and others in the trades formerly were content with $4.00 and $5.00 a day. Now they demand as high j as $8.00, $10.00 and more a day and get it. In the factories, on the railroads,: in the offices, behind the counters, I everywhere the same story is told in the big cities. Wages are mounting', and the amount of work accomplished accomplish-ed in a day is decreasing. Profiteering in clothing and other necessities and luxuries of life flour-: ishes unchecked. There is no diminishing dimin-ishing of this crime because city people have gone insane on the subject sub-ject of spending. Merchants have made the bold statement that they have offered excellent ex-cellent articles at moderate prices only to have them rejected by the buyers as "too cheap." Unable to dispose of them, they have taigged the same articles at 'double the price and they have been immediately snapped up by the profligate spenders. spend-ers. We might fill the columns of this paper with such cases and still tell only a small portion, of the story. This riotous use of money in the cities is having an injurious effect; upon country life. It is enticing our young men and young women from us and is leaving the rural-communities stranded for help. It is. forcing; us to pay exhorbitant prices for com-! modifies when we are curtailed in1 our own power of production and in j our earning capacity. The false lure of sudden wealth is proving too much for the country boy and girl. They are forsaking j their happy and peaceful homes and , are rushing In droves to the call of the cities gone mad. The bubble has been inflated almost al-most to the bursting point. It cannot can-not forever stand the increasing strain. In time it must collapse. Already city banks are curtailing their loans for building purposes. It is necessary to stop the alarming inflation of fictious values. Following Follow-ing this will come a cessation of activity in the building trades, with $10.00 a day laboreis looking' for jobs that are not to be had. Similar conditions may be expected expect-ed in other lines, with money becoming be-coming tighter as work ceases. Added to this will be the scarcity, of food. If farmers lose their help they cannot produce the food neces- ! sary to feed the cities and the country towns. A country town is dependent largely large-ly upon the farming community adjacent ad-jacent to it. If those farms become non-productive for lack of help the country town is a heavy sufferer. And that is the condition in which We fear we will soon find ourselves" in the country towns. j The insanity of the cities has done its work only too well. If that insanity is checked in time disaster may yet be avoided. But it not checked soon the crash will inevitably come and then the deluge. de-luge. Wholesale assininity has never yet been known to produce any permanent per-manent beneficial results. But it has tappled kings from their thrones, overturned republics, and let loose the wildest passions of ungovernable mobs. The rural population of America is not overjoyed at the prospect the cities have forced upon the nation we revere. |
