The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-07-12
If PRICES NEVER FELL.

For three years Democrats have
nunciation becauSe not what they did,
but apprehension of what they might
do, decreased prices. 1t is the stock
slogan of every platform demagogues
built this year. On the other hand
the silverities allege that ''the crime
Of 49, is the cause of the shrinkage in
prices. The conclusion follows that, in
the opinion of these ecomnomists, a
decrease in cost is calamity and, per
contra, that rise in prices is a univer-
sal blessing. This, Of course, contradicts
all experience. Itsrflies ditectly in the
face Of the individual experience of
each person so declaring or sharing
views so declared. What is it on which
this end of the century prides itself?
After giving due credit to our progress
in science is it not our chief boast that
chemistry and the mechanic arts have
combined to SO reduce the cost of the.
comforts as well as the necessaries of
life, that what were the luxuries of
of the moderately circumstanced and
even of the poor? Is it not the fact
that the very poor are able to have
what the cost barred their fathers from
having?
Is then this universal impulse of men
and women to get what, they want or
need with the least expenditure of eff
fort an economical error that must be
corrected with all the power of a ma
tional legislature? Are our merchants
committing public offense in alluring
custom with their bargains? Are the
people all really what Carnegie said
the majority of Americans are, ''econ-
omic fools?" Let US suppose that the
economic millennium of Republicanism
Populism aid Silverism were to dawn
and that prices should never fall but
always rise. Suppose that in some
way not yet discovered but possibly to
be revealed by some application of
Roentgen's discovery an American con-
gress were to have the power to cause
prices even to rise and that it used the
power. We have seer it make an eff
fort in that direction by excluding
competition that would lower prices.
but so far it has failed to make the rise
general. While manufacturers were
able to- advance prices farm produce
did not respond to the efforts in it's
behalf but has continued a downward
course. Labor has sold it's energy in
an unrestricted market. 1t is not pro-
bable that, if again given a chance, any
congress will, in the absence of
Roentgen, do any more than has been
done. But suppose it could and that
prices of everything could be inflated
by congressional decree. We would
have then the millennium towards
which Republicanism aspires.
And, human nature and impulses and
motives remaining as they are-for
ever, PopuIists, let alone Republicans,
will hardly claim that these can be
ensue? The Almighty, from the Re
publican point of vfew,- enormously
imbued humanity with a desire to get
the most possible forfits products and,
also enormously. endowed, men with
desire, equally strong, to get what they
wait at the least cost. Experience in
land booms and grain corners make it
quite certain that no one having any,
thing to sell. would dispose Of it as
long as congress was showing prices
up. waiting for the top notch to be
reached. AS every seller is also a buy
er, would we not have~a paralysis Of
trade quite as drastic as any. created
by apprehension Of Democratic icon
| oclasm? Or suppose that people who
thought the top was reached. found
others WHO thought it was not and
| who bought for a greater rise, what
would we have but a continual fever
| Of booms of execrated memory? Would
there not be the same craze for specu-