Daily Kennebec journal., 1913-12-29
ONE CAUSE OF
THE HIGH PRICES.
Economists Convene in Min
neapolis--Dean Small Says
Present Is Paying Bills of
Past--Public Regulation Is
Decried

Minneapolis, Dec. 2S.-The overhead
charges of the capitalistic system are
the cause of the increased cost of liv-
ing, according to the address Saturday
of Dean Albion w. Small of the Uni
] versity of Chicago to the annual meet
4 ing of the American Economic Asso-
ciation. Dean Small is president of the
American Sociological Society, which
is meeting with the Economic Associa-
! ton.
Now, when we are paying for to-
| days dinner" said Dean Small, we
are paying also for dinners served and
paid for long ago and we are also pay
| ing instalments on other dinners that
will be served generations hence. Yet
we marvel at the growing size of the
! bill.
I'VE are still paying interest on
/ SAP, 600 of National debt incurred
] before 1865. Interest payments already
/ have equalled the original loans twice
+ over and are now disehafging these
leans a third time.
Americans for the next so years will
4 be paving interest for portions of the
/ Panama Canal and at that time will
have repaid the original borrowings,
/ but the principal and interest will be
! just as much due as if no payments
/ had been made
/ Dean Small pointed out what he de-
scribed as functional fallacies that
/ radically ignore social efficiency, The
/ fallacy of treating capital as If it We're
an active agent and of crediting income
/ to the personal representative of capi-
tai, irrespective of their actual serv-
| ices" was one he indicated.
The fallacy of Incorporating the
] fallacious eapitalistic principle he
! continued, thus promoting the legal
! person to Immortality"
THE fallacy of a system of fnheri-
/ tance which assigns the powers and
! privileges of incorporated capital to
! sentimentally designated individuals
creates hereditary economic sovereign
| ty, which must eventually become
! more intolerable than the hereditary
! political sovereignties overthrown by
| revolution"
David Kinley, president of the Eco
nomic Association, speaking at to-
/ nights joint session said in part:
Man is so constituted that when he
feels the evils of an existing system
| he is likely to adopt measures of re-
| form which will produce evils as great
as those he is seeking to remedy.
THAT danger exists now. We need
! to look very closely at the tendency
| toward the extension of the authority
/ of the government into the details OF
our economic life. The principle of
/ competition, the system of economic
| liberalism, has been too valuable to
the progress of mankind to be given
up altogether.
For competition has been deyel-
oping force, even if it has failed some
what as a controlling one. The mo-
tive power to action is of more i'm
portance on the long run than the reg
ulation of action"
Mr.. Kinley referred to the various
proposals for government regulation of
economic life, including general social
legislation, wage and price regulation,
| the determination of the form and size
of business organizations and the su-
pervision of big business Aside
! from industries that are clearly mo-
nopolistic by nature" he said, the
whole aim of government interference
| should be to establish conditions which
will induce healthy competition
The convention was opened Saturday
with an address by r. H. Woods of
| Boston.
! Prof. John H. Gray, head of the de-
| partment of political science and eco
nomics of the University of Minnesota,
advocated a more rigid government
| control of all public service corpora
/ tons. Prof. Gray claimed that such
control wisely administered would stay
the possibility of public ownership for
which the country, he declared, was
not prepared.
mo state can long endure when one
of its citizens or subjects or any organ
ized group of citizens or subjects, is
stronger than the state itself" he said.
"The rapid development of corpora
tions and the constantly increasing
combinations of capital into trusts.
makes it essential that the government
more rigidly control all concerns sup
| plying public service utilities"
The meeting will continue over Tues
| day. Railroad rate making will be dis
cussed by B. II. Meyer of the Inter
state Commerce Commission. Syndical-
| ism and the economic effect of supreme
court dissolutions are subjects sched-
ued.