The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1909-02-07
Investigation Just Made in
New York by Competent Ex-
pert Reveals Astounding
State of Affairs.
NO EXPLANATION MADE
FOR THIS CONDITION
While Prices of Commodities
Have Been Soaring Upward
incomes of Workers Have
Increased Slowly.
BY Ford L. Thorpe.

BY Ford L. Thorpe.
New York, Feb. 6.-As a result OF
the general complaint against the high
prices of food stuffs, competent in
vestigator set out last week to learn
just how much foundation there was
to the stories Not only was the in
vestigator astounded. but the publish
Cd results of his Investigations have
astounded New York. He used for
comparison the prices prevailing at
the height of the civil war when every
commodity was at premium and the
wartime prices averaged lower than
the New York prices of today.
Offer no Explanation.
No one yet has come forward with
anything like satisfactory explana-
ton OF this condition. Under all
economic laws which have governed
in the past, this should have been
year of low prices. Crops have been
abundant, it has been a twelvemonth
Of financial stringency and there has
been peace throughout the world. In
the past this combination always has
made for low prices and it is up to the
economist to explain why the natural
order of things has been reversed this
year.
incomes Don't Soar.
1t is all too true, of course, that
incomes have not travelled upward at
the rate prices have. This applies to
the incomes of both rich and poor.
The former have had to give up many
mxuries The latter have had to give
up many things they had regarded as
necessities, sufficient food being the
most vital of them. On the upper
cents a dozen, a higher price than
they ever reached in war times Many
families in New York live on an in
come of dollar a day. They can't
eat many eggs, when eggs are selling
at five cents piece. The butter
brings 40 cents a pound. Chickens
bring as high as 30 cents a pound. and
even picked side pork, the meat
mainstay of the poor, has advanced to
20 and % cents a pound. The prices
of beef have not increased during the
past year, but they are enormously
high as compared with five years ago.
Very few food stuffs show a lower
price and the general average is 20 to
25 per cent. higher than even one
year ago. The average Of incomes is
lower today than it was twelve months
ago. Everyone believes the country is
on the verge of boom times. Ordin-
arily higher prices accompany booms.
If they do in this case a great many
more people will go hungry before
incomes catch up with the increase
in prices.
"oid Fogeies" Excited.
A number of 'old foggies' are quite
wrought up over line of work that
Is being done at the National History
Museum of New York. Children. boys
and girls alike, are being taught to
make pets of and fondle snakes and
toads and other reptiles Of which man
has an instructive horror. The the
DRY is that children must be taught
not to fear these things. AS one pro-
fessor puts it.: They are Gods crea-
lures and as much entitled to human
sympathy and understanding as birds
or cats or any other of the lower ami
mails.
Don't Need Sympathy.
The old foggies-the term is applied
to them by those who support this
latest educational fad-profess to be
unable to see that the snake and toad
have need of human sympathy and
understanding or that they will bene-
fit by them. They do believe to
teach a girl to be fond of snakes and
toads is to take away from her some
of those finer sensibilities that make
of womans Creations highest work
and to render masculine in her views
if it does nothing more. They declare
that to teach girl to coddle toad is
to unfit her to mother baby. and
they refuse to believe that even the
toad enjoys it. Thus doth progress
have to battle against the prejudice of
oid-fashioned ideas.