Norwich bulletin., 1912-05-11

Nature keeps on being "dreffie" old fashioned. She doesn't seem inclined to speed up her processes even a little bit to gratify our impatience er our greed or our laZiness.
 The whole thing sinners down te just this: either more people nave got to get on the farms and raise beef' etc, CT our city friends have got to eat less and pay more for it. Ana right there is where an economic doc Urine of free-will and fereordinatien comes in AS l have repeatedly said, there seems to be those foreeroalned to a city life. In the case of such, the city is their rightfu place. Let them ge there, and stay there, and be as happy as they can in the environment which is natural to them. But there are A great many thousands who go to the city, not from any preordinatien of Providence, but out of their own free will, just because they want to, think they'll have easier work or shorter hours or more ice cream and candy All right; they're free Anerf- can citizens and have the right to do it.
 But, when they have made their bed for heavens sake, let them stop
 
 chosen their doctor; let them take his medicine and look pleasant. If not real pleasant, then as pleasant as they can. At any rate let them step snivelling, It's only contemptible cry- ba bieS who whimper over the conse- uuences of their own deliberate acts,
 The farmer doesn't have te pay fifty cents a peck for potatoes. He raises his own, if he is able, and willing to work, He doesn't pay thirty cents for beef. He raises his own meat, If he is able, and willing. to work. He doesn't pay forty-five cents pound for butter. He makes his own, if he is able, and willing to work.
 But if he stops raising potatoes and beef and butter and goes to town, then somebody else has got to raise them for him and he has got to pay for them. His change, moreover, has reduced the production and increased consumption, l. e.. has tended to boost the price.
 The town consumer, who leaves the asphalt and the trolley line and goes to raising things on a farm has, to the same degree, reduced city con sumption and enlarged rural product tion. His action has tended to reduce prices
 Of course there are other elements which enter into this price question. There's the cost of transportation; and the expense of handling; and the various middlemen's profits; and just now l suppose we're having to pay back to the beef packers the expense of their defense in the recent farcical ''triaF' they went through. But the law of supply and demand is till su- preme, after all. In a large way and in the end it controls.
 The tendency of the people is to desert the producing farms and flock, pell-mell, to the consuming centers. Just how it will end, if it keeps on unchecked, only omniscience can fore tell. But the end will be disaster of some sort. So much can neither be denied nor over looked by any student of history or any primary scholar in arithmetic. It's no answer to sheer at ''croakers' or "pessimists". A man isn't a pessimist who sees a hole in the bridge and refuses to drive into it. You'd think. to hear some people talk, that we all ought to blindfold our eyes and drive full gallop any old way we happen to be headed, relying on luck or Providence to prevent smashup. Yet that sort of thing isn't push" or enterprise: it's simply dumb idiocy.
 It's just about as idiotie as it is for two thirds of the American people to expect the other one third to support them as well and cheaply as three quarters used to to support one quarter I can't prevent Bill Smith from throwing down his hoe and re- fusing to help me raise potatoes, if he thinks he can get more pay for shorter hours in city factory or store But l can't raise as many potatoes without his help as with it. And he IS going to want potatoes, just the same. Very well; then he will have to take that extra money he earns in town to pay the extra price caused by the scarcity of potatoes, due to his abandonment of production. That's all there is to it. He has the right 10 stop raising potatoes and go to raising wild oats, if he chooses, In which ease he must buy potatoes at higher price, or live on his wild oats. He las his choice. What l want especially to emphasize is the fact that, having made his choice, it doesn't lie in his mouth to sniyei because wild oats are unsatisfying, OF potatoes high priced.