The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-04-26
\~~v~ u1@>~ Is 1t Possible Necessary Study
0OA1olxSlll of Some Social Problems.
BY NORMAN 8. DRESSER.

Just at present currency reform is
| occupying a great deal of public at
tenuon. Congress is trying to tinker
up some kind of a bill that will meet
! the approval of the bankers, the needs
or the ordinary moneyless man having
put little consideration. 1t is doubtful
II this congress win pass any measure
mat VIII be the slightest improvement
on anything we now have Something
more radical than what is now pro-
posed is necessary to give US a curren-
cy adequate to the needs of the country
and sufficiently elastic to meet the
varying conditions of exchange An
'rredeemable currency issued direct to
the people, accepted BY the govern
ment for all obligations due the gov
eminent, the free coinage of silver, and
the establishment of postal savings
banks would meet these requirements.
Gold. silver and currency would thus
be kept at parity. and we would not
be selling our silver at half price for
the benefit of other nations. Postal
savings banks would furnish that am
pie security which is not now guaran-
teed by private banking institutions,
and by varying the interest slightly as
money was in greater or less demand
its f1exibility would be insured, and it
could not be arbitrarily contracted and
expanded as can now be done By the
private interests which control the
money. But our government has given
over to such corporations it's functions
of issuing money so that the bankers
instead of the people may receive the
profit
The committee has reported favor
ably on the postal savings bank bill,
and this may be passed if Gear Cannon
permits IL. Such a measure has long
been desired, and advocated by many
postmaster generals, and will be of
considerable benefit.
Yet while a stable and adequate cur
rency is much to be desired, ii does not
cut much of a figure with the proper
tyless and moneyless man. With an
expanding currency he finds his living
expenses increasing at the rate of 30
or 40 per cent. while his wages may in
crease 10 or 10 per cent. Under a con-
tracing currency he finds his wages
failing faster than his cost of living.
He looks abroad and finds that there
is poverty and low wages in countries
having widely different monetary sys-
TENS.
1t is evident that the causes of pow
erty and hard times must lie in some
thing more fundamental than any of
those which we have been examining
II Is not because less wealth is pro-
duced that the worker does not get a
larger share, for never in the history of
the world has the productive forces of
labor been greater than today. Steam,
electricity and labor-saving machinery
have enabled labor to multiply its pro-
ductive powers a hundred fold. They
have not increased wages, lessened the
of labor required to make
living, nor decreased by any appreci-
able extent the cost of living The
sweat shop employe tolls as hard over
his sewing machine for as little wages
as did the seamstress of fifty years
ago, of whom Hood tells US in the |
Song of the Shirt" and 1 don't know
that the cost of shirts is much less |
The cost of shoes turned out by ma |
chinery more than human in its pro-
ductive power is little if any less than |
when they were the entire product of |
human labor, and the condition Of the |
machine worker is worse than that of |
the hand worker of earlier days.
Where does this surplus value go? |
Who gets the benefit of this immense
increase in productive power that ma
chinery gives to labor?