The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1896-07-24
Who Will Pay "High Prices"

From The New York Press
tHave the farmers free-silver friends ever
allowed him glimpse at the side of the
.high-prices" argument which would put
the vast majority of his customers on short
rations, subtract meat and eggs entirely from
their dietary and ourtail their allowance of
milk, vegetables and even bread? If not,
they should haye done so. We shall en-
deavor to supply the omission.
There are about Is, 900, 600 families in this
country. OF these nearly 5000, 600 are farm
families, leaving S,0O0,000 other families
for them to supply with food. OF these
100000 only a little more than 600, 900 are
classed as rich, less than 1900, 600 as we'll
TODD, and about 5000, 600 as poor. That is
to say, their annual wages-for all this class
are wageworkers-are estimated at $461 for
each worker, or 1926 for each family.
How much of rib roasts at 80 cents, NUT
ton at %, pork at %, butter at 40 pound,
milk at 10 cents quart, would these people
be able to buy? How many potatoes at 40
cents half peck, eggs at 40 cents dozen,
onions at 10 cents bunch, would they con-
sumo? And most important of all, with the
five-cent loaf shrunk by one half, as 1t as
suredly would, how much better than 90
cent wheat would $1.25 wheat be? These
are no fanciful figures. We take them from
Washington market and simply apply the
ratio of increase of 100 per cent. which
every period of imitation has furnished at
home and abroad. The American work.
ingman, owing to his high wage rate, has
heretofore been the most avid consumer of
farm products that the earth has seen. He
it is alone among the workingmen of all
time who has never had to stint himself In
the matter Of meat. He 1t Is OF whom, and
his dependents, 1t mas been said that q
French family could live ON an American
family's waste. He it Is who has enabled
the farmer to take up in the decade of 1880
80 100000 acres of new land-worth
S1I2, 900. O00--on State and railroad con-
tracts alone. His are the mouths that are
fed. The rich are a mere fraction of the con-
sumers, the we'll to do only fair proportion.
Foreigners take only the surplus, mere Is
cent of the whole product. 1t is the poor
man who takes the bulk.
But In the best times he has been able to
do little more than take 1t. He is on
higher plane In living conditions than the
workingman of other lands, but he is al
ways, so to speak. at the outer edge of it. 1t
would take little to sink him as consumer
to their level. Save for few dollars In the
savings bank, he eats and drinks and wears
and pays in rent every copper that he earns.
II "hgh prices" come upon hint having
bean demonstrated, over and over again,
that no commensurately high wages will
come with them-he will simply have to
stop eating some kinds of food and largely
curtail his consumption of others. He will
simply have to step down to the labor level
of er-standard countries. He will not
submit tamely. He will bitterly complain
and roundly curse the men who have led
him there. But he will have to step down,
and with him will 20 the best part of the
farmers market. Is 1t supposable that the
Colombian laborer at go cents a day buys
much of the Colombian farmers beef at 60
cents pound, or that the Mexican factory
hand at so cents day THE Press is In
error In this statement. Laborers In Mexico
receive only about % cents on the average.
Ed. TMEsl eats many of the Mexican
farmers beans at so cents peck?
: The whole question before the farmer Is
that of killing the goose. The wage work.
ing class is the goose. The golden egg Is its
capacity for consumption of food. Whether
he will deprive 1t of that capacity and make
of it as poor customer as the Central and
South American poems, and scarcely better
than the Asian coolie, is the question before
the farmer In this election.