The Lafayette advertiser. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], La.) 1865-19??, 1907-04-24
There's Something Rotten In
Denmark.

during MS present VlSlU 10
America that eminent English
man, Mr.. w. Il. Stead, is profit
ing much by his observations
and Investigations. He has
talked freely of what he has seen
and noted, and in turn the
American people should profit
by his truthful criticism of con-
@itions as he has found them in
this country. For instances;
there is abundant justification
f1r his assertion that the price
one has to pay for food in the
United States is outrageous, and
he can not explain it except on
the ground that the American
people, by their willingness to
be gouged to the very limit, pay
extOrtiOnate prices for every
thing they buy. Our people he
says, are extravagant because
with them money comes easy
and goes easy.
This is true of the privileged
class-the law-made plutOcracy
of the land-who can afford to
spend .lavishly, because their
money comes through special
privilege and is unearned. but it
is not true of the millions of
plain Americans who toll hard
with their brains or their hands.
Yet these people, too, spend
lavishly, not because they would.
but because they must if they
would live. 1t is a fact that this
country produces more food per
capita than any other country in
the world. The cost of prOduc-
ing this food is less, not more,
than it was ten, twenty or
thirty years ago; exchange of
products among our people is.
because of the cOuntry's unsur-
passed railway facilities. made
with more dispatch and less ex-
pense than among any other
people, yet the necesssaries of
life consumed to-day by the
American people cost more than
in any other country in the
world. In this condition We
have the clearest proof that there
is something rotten in Denmark,
and the people knowing it, are
beginning to protest against the
the awful grind they are suffer
ing.
The country is entertained by
the spectacle of President ROOse-
welt in profuse perspiration
chasing first one trust and then
another without doing them
harm or intending, perhaps, to
do them any, for it has been
noted that this furious chase
never takes the form of an at
tack upon the thing that breeds
and shelters the plundering com
bines. While Mr.. Roosevelt is
raging, showing his teeth and
iourishing the big stick" in
what is either a sham battle OF
a wild goose hunt, the average
American citizen who has to
work hard for a wage. or q salary
and live on the same, finds rents
higher than ever, food dearer
than he has ever known it to be,
clothing costlier than eyer be.
fore. and in spite of the fact
that he is assured by party
newspapers and mounting spell
binders that he is fairly revealing
in prosperity, he realizes daily
that it is becoming more and
more difficult to so stretch his
income as to make it meet his
expenses. At the present time
there is not a single necessary OF
life the cost of which it can be
t~ruthfully said is regulated by
the law of supply and demand,
but on the contrary. the prices
charged measure up to the ex'
tortions of monopoly.
The truth is, the American
citizen whose income is a salary
knows that he is being plumber
ed and knows also that he is
powerless to change the condition
that bears SO heavily upon him.
Without any organization to safe.
guard his rights or interests his
position is between the upper
and neither millstones OF organ.
lied capital on one hand and or.
ganized labor on the other, each
of which possesses in oroaniza.