Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-07-28
AS TO ovERpRoDUcTIoN.
There In No Such Thing So Far as the
Needs Of the Laboring Masses
Are Concerned.

Our friends in the gold camp have
tuned their fiddles to play almost any
tune. They have played the tune of
Nautilus till it Is threadbare, all to
prove that the poverty of the great
masses is due to the so-called Malthu-
sian law that the ratio of population
tends to outstrip the ratio of produc-
ton. They have done this to make the
voters believe that the conditions of
which we complain do not come from
any defect in our financial and econo-
mic systems. Now they have come to
the point where it is necessary for
them to explain the stagnation OF
trade, and the tune is changed for the
moment. Here is what writer in
Harper's Magazine says:
''The powers of production of the
civilized world have outstripped it's
powers of consumption, and conges-
ton is only averted by the continuous
opening up of new markets and new
fields of enterprise in those portions Of
the earth where the resources of ma
ture and the energies of man still
lie dormant. Industry, in the widest
sense of the term, is to-day the breath
of the social organism throughout the
civilized world, and the cry for more
trade, more markets, is as imperative
as the cry of the human organism for
more air when threatened with suffo-
| cation" For straight literary
bull" this is pretty good. According
to it the overproduction in one part
of the world is to be cured by finding
sections of the earth where the ener-
gies of nature and the manufacturing
powers of man still lie dormant and
stimulating them. Verify, similia sim
| ilibus curantur. The absurdity of the
proposition is obvious. The idea of
finding an outlet for our great manu-
features among the people that can
only afford to live on rice, and that too
without any kind of seasoning more
than salt, among a people that can af-
ford only one piece of cloth q year for
garment, and whose wages are so low
| that the owners of the river steam
boats find it more profitable to employ
drove of laborers to tread the wheels
than to use steam. The truth is that
these people will never add anything
to the comfort of the world until they
have been liberated from their hard
|
they can each consume 100 times more
per capita than at this time.
There is no overproduction, so far as
needs are concerned. Trade condi-
tions have been created that have
made it impossible for hundreds of mill
lions of people to satisfy their wants,
and that is all therei is to the situation.
The average person could easily double
the amount of production now con-
sumed. This even in this country. In
some foreign lands each person could
easily consume 100 times as much as
at the present time and still not be
oversupplied. Trade and exchange
need to be made as free as possible and
our directions should all be in the way
of making exchanges easy. In this
way only can the people be made to in
crease their consumation. A doubling
of the amount of all goods consumed,
including luxuries, would give employ
ment at good wages to every person on
earth, and would insure against glut
in the markets of the century to come.
A financial system that is forever con-
tracing values will make it impossi'
BILE for trade to move freely.
| II r THIJRSTON.