The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-05-28
CLAIM THAT OUR PROSPERITY Is
NOT REAL.

The Journals Washington correspondent
states that the Democratic campaign hand
book, which will be issued Immediately
voted in large part to effort TO show
that the prosperity which Republicans
claim exists is not real; that wages are
lower and prices higher. This conclusion :
reached by manipulating some statistics is
sued OF the Bureau OF Labor regarding
wholesale prices. 1t is said. however. that
other statistics soon to be issued by Com
missioner of Labor Carroll ID. Wright give
the actual cost Of living from retail prices
and showing the rate OF wages from 1880
down TO the close of 1903. II is said these
statistics will show that while prices have
been higher in the past four years. they are
now falling. Wages. on the other hand, Il
will be shown, were higher in 1913 than
they were in 1882. the highest mark RECORDED
in the history of the country before the de-
preston of 1S93-1s94. There is said TO be
tendency in wages to decline slightly with
falling prices of commodities, but the wage
standard is still much higher than ii was
even before the period of business depres-
sion.
II is quite in keeping with the record of
party that has never done anything by
legislation TO promote the prosperity of the
country. and whose success has always
been followed by the alarm of capital and
business stagnation, to attempt TO prove
that the prosperity of the last eigh. years
is a myth. 1t is about as if they should
assert that the Mississippi river is a fig
ment of the imagination or the Rocky
mountains the result of a mirage. The truth
is that during that period no other fact IN
the current history of the world has stood
out as boldly and been so universally &C.
knowledged and widely commented on as
the extraordinary prosperity of the United
States 1t has been shown by official re-
ports Of our foreign and domestic trade, by
statements of our constantly increasing
production, by the activity of our factories,
mills and Mines, by the general employment
of labor at good wages, and in many other
ways.
The country has never enjoyed long a
period of exceptional and uninterrupted
prosperity that which has prevailed since
1896 He must have a short memory who
does not remember the business boom that
followed the election of Mckinley. Within
forty-eight hours after the result was
known the papers were filled with an
nouncements of the opening of closed mills.
the ST ring of neu eptarpr;Sac the iocraa co
Of working forces and the pouring in of or
ders. The prosperity that began then has
continued almost without interruption. 1t
is true that owing to overproduction and
repeated increases of wages manufacturers
have begun to take in sail somewhat and
railroads are reducing the number and
wages of their employees. but these precau-
tionary movements have not as yet affect
ed the general prosperity in the slightest
degree. Whatever reduction of wages may
have taken place in few lines the average
is still higher than at any time since the
high-tide year of 1892.
The Democratic attempt to prove that
the country is not prosperous will labor
under the disadvantage of having no Dem
ocratic period of prosperity with which to
compare the present. If it wants to find
period Of greater prosperity, II must be
under Republican rule. The only argument
1t could possibly make would be that be-
cause the country is not as prosperous now
as it was under some former period of Re-
publican rule. therefore the people should
place the Democratic party in. power. But
the attempt to deny that the present pros
perity of the country is not real will only
show the desperation of party whose
principal political asset is calamity.