East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1912-03-21

longer luxuries but absolute neces-
stiles.
1t is true the price of some ar
ticles have been reduced by some of
the trusts. The Standard Oil once
sold its refined product for thirty
cents a gallon. 1t cost them then
twenty-five cents a gallon to refine
oil. Their net profit was five cents
! a gallon. The same oil sells today
| for twelve cents a gallon but the
cost of refining is now three cents.
Their net profit today is nine cents.
| The amount we pay for nothing is
what hurts. The amount we pay in
net profits for articles in controlled
| lines was never as great as it is to-
J day. The savings the trust have eff
! fected by new and better business
methods, improved machinery and
complete organization have not ben
Gifted the people. but have reverted
to the trusts, and not to the con-
sumner. The cost of living has been
steadily increasing for years in all
| the civilized word. not bcause it costs
more to manufacture goods (modern
. machinery lileh1S TIC tiNNutll NboN
| less) but because trusts and combi-
nations control and fix prices.
Hard times are here now for some
people and fast approaching for
others but differing from all other
financial depression, prices of con-
trolled lines are not declining. In
1873 everything declined in value.
The same in '93, but not so now be-
cause the natural law of supply and
demand has been replaced by these
modern monarchs of business who
control our coal beds, our railroads,
our factories. our electricity, in fact
control our land by controlling the
! lines of transportation. Their factory
warehouses are bare. 1t does not
matter how hard times become, how
many men are GU of work. or how
hard it is to secure money, prices
/ of the necessities Of life are not go
/ ing to decline. How like the French
revolution, when the aristocracy own
| ed practically everything, wheat SELL
/ ing for $500 a bushel in Paris,
wild eyed woman exploded the bomb,
rivers of blood flowed in the streets
of Paris.
/ We differ from all other people
! who have ever lived, in that we have
greater degree of intelligence am
| Ong the masses. We have been taught
and have enjoyed standard of liv-
| ing from which we are not going to
recede. A milestone has been erected
on the road Of human progress back
of which civilization will never
move, We have been taught the use
of the telegraph, electric lights, the
, railroads, the automobile, and hum
dreds of inventions that we are not
soing to give up. Some solution must
and will be found so we may enjoy
I modern inventions, necessities and
! luxuries at prices we can afford to
pay
More than fifty years ago Lincoln,
/ the emancipatOr, said This govern
ment cannot exist half slave and half
free. / do not expect this govern
ment to pass away but / do expect it
to become all free or all slave" Com
ing from the firing line of active
business feeling most fully the the
effect of keen competition on one
hand, fixed and regulated prices on
the other, / say to you that the indus
trial world cannot long exist with half
OF its business in the hands of a doz-
en- men who fix and regulate prices
upon their commodities according to
their own whms and notions and
with complete disregard of the law
Of supply and demand, while the
other half of the industrial world is
feeling the sharp triple edge Of the
stilleto of unfair competition.
The wealth of the United States
increases annually three per cent but
more than half of the business of the