The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1910-04-01
HIGH COST OF LIVING
CONTINUED from Fourth Pagei

the cost OF living so high.
These statements about the city and
the farm seem compelling. They seem
even more compelling when it is ex-
planned that they are true. 1t is only
Mr.. Hilrs conclusions from these facts
that are not true. His conclusion that
the cost Of food is high because city
jewellers are relatively many and acre
age production low. His conclusion
that the people are not being robbed
in the prices they pay for food.
The point is that Mr.. Hill over
looked something. He overlooked
the fact that the 80 per cent Of the
population who work on farms do not
till their fields as the 90 per cent did
in 1890. They use machinery. Moth
ing is done by hand that can be done
by power. And the result is that the
American farmer has become highly
productive individual. His moves count.
He doesn't raise so many blisters on
his hands as his forefathers did, but he
raises more things to eat. And, they
are the things that count-the things
to eat, not the blisters. It's not a
question of how many farmers were re-
quired to raise the things to eat, or Of
how much they raised to an acre. It's
only question of how much they
raised. To draw it a little finer, it's
only question Of whether they raised
enough food so that if it had been di-
vided equally, everybody would have
had enough. If one farmer, with
highly improved machinery, had raised
the whole 1909 wheat crop, the result
would have been the same, so far as
the wheat supply is concerned. If
he had raised only half so much to the
acre and used twice as many acres, the
result, so far as wheat supply is con-
cerned, would have been the same.
This is not to justify bad farming or
to decry good farming, but to decry
the arguments of man who seeks to
explain the high cost of food by alleg-
ing shortage of food when there is
no shortage. So long as nation ex-
ports food, the only shortage that the
expectations can indicate is a shortage
of money at home to pay the prices
asked for the food. We are still ex-
porting, even the commodities, the per
capita production of which has been
slightly decreased by robber prices at
home-and selling them abroad for
less than they are sold for at home.
Bread made from American wheat can
be bought in London for third less
than is charged in New York. This
fact was vouched for by ]. R. Cahill,
an investigator for the Board Of Trade
Of England, who visited America last
winter. American beef is 20 per cent.
cheaper in England than it is in Amer
lea. And while American packers,
even in 1906, were crying out about
the scarcity" of beef cattle, American
exports of beef were the greatest on
record. Since then, they have fallen
off somewhat, owing to the refusal Of
many Europeans to eat American meat,
because of the packing-house scandals
in 1906.
But let US return to Mr.. Hill and
his theory. Bread, still the staff Of
life," was never before so high in
price. Yet we are now producing
more wheat per capita than ever be-
fore. A casual inspection, however,
OF the climbing price of flour might
suggest wheat famine. The retail
price of flour, in 1898, was $3.50 a
barrel. The retail price OF -four is now
81 barrel, and, if bought by the sack,
as most families buy it, -four is So a
barrel
Here is almost doubling of price.
A little more than one loaf of bread
now for what used to be paid for two
loaves. Yet if the wheat raised on
American farms last year had been di-
vided equally among the American
people, each would have had more
than similar division Of the 1898
crop would have given the people Of
that day. The United States Depart
ment of Agriculture is authority for the
statement that the average wheat crop
for the decade that ended in 1895 was