Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1912-09-16
Cost of Living Important.

Ihere can be no more important
question than the high cost of living
necessities. I he main purpose of the
progressive movement is to place the
American people in possession OF
their birthright, to assure for all the
American people unobstructed access
to the fountains of measureless pros
perity which the Creator offers them.
We in this country are blessed with
great natural resources, and our men
and women have a very high stan
dard of intelligence and of industrial
capacity. Surely such being the case,
we cannot permanently support con-
ditions under which each family finds
it increasingly difficult to secure the
necessaries of life and a fair share
of its comforts through the earnings
of its members. The cost of living
in this country has risen during the
last few years out of all proportion
to the increase of most salaries and
wages; the same situation confronts
alike the majority of wage-wOrkers,
small business men, small profes-
sional men, the clerks, the doctors
the clergymen. Now, grave though
the problem is, there is one way to
make it graver, and that is to deal
with it insincerely, to advance false
remedies, to promise the impossible.
Our opponents, republicans and dem
ocratS alike, propose to deal with 1t
in this way; The republicans in their
platform promise an inquiry into the
facts. Most certainly there should
be such inquiry. But the way the
present administration has failed to
keep it's promises in the past, and
the rank dishonesty of action on the
part of the observation-disclosures
helm national convention, makes
their every promise worthless. The
democratic platform affects to find
the entire cause of the high cost of
living in the tariff, and promises to
remedy it by free trade, especially
free trade in the necessaries of life.
In the first place, this attitude ig-
nores the patent fact that the prob
lem is worldwide, that everywhere,
in England and France, as in Ger
many and Japan, it appears with
greater or less severity; that in Eng
land for instance, it has become a
very S6NGI6
er the tariff nor, save to small de-
gree, the trusts can there have any
possible effect upon the situation. In
the second place, the democratic plat
form, if it is sincere, must mean that
all duties will be taken off the prod
ucts of the farmer. Yet most GER
tainly we cannot afford to have the
farmer struck down. The welfare of
the tiller of the soil is as important
as the welfare of the wage-worker
himself, and we must sedulously
guard both. The farmer, the pro-
ducer of the necessities of life, can
himself live only If he raises these
necessities for profit. On the other
hand, the consumer who must have
that farmers product in order to live,
must be allowed to purchase 1t at the
lowest cost that can give the farmer
his profit, and everything possible
must be done to eliminate any mid
dleman whose function does not tend
to increase the cheapness of distri-
button of the product; and, moreover,
everything must be done to stop all
speculating, all gambling with the
bread-basket which has even the
slightest deleterious effect upon the
producer and consumer.