The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1916-04-15
HIGH cosT or LIVING.
Increase in Output of Gold Response
Bile For Present Condition.
BY DIR. W. o. scRoGGs, Z. 5. U.

1
/ The phenomenon of high price
| levels, or the increasing cost of liv-
ing. is not new thing in history. II
| the third century of the Christian
era there was much complaint of the
high cost Of living, and the Roman
Emperor Diocletian issued an ed1ct
| by which he sought to check advance
| ing prices. For the past thousand
years the trend of prices has general
/ " been upward, with an occasional IN
| terval of decline. It has been esti-
mated that prices today are about ten
| times as high as they were thousand
wears ago and from four to six times
as high as they were five hundred
wears ago. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries there was a
very sharp advance in prices, and the
increasing cost of living in this period
undoubtedly played a part in Ameri-
can history by causing European
wage-earners to migrate to America
in order to escape the pinch Of high
prices.
In our own country, after the es-
tablishment Of our federal govern
ment, prices rose slowly till about
1909, when the upward moyems ont was
checked. After the panic of 1887
prices tended to decline, but the dis
covery Of gold in California in 1849
caused another upward movement,
and this continued till the panic of
1878. From that year till 1896 prices
steadily declined. Since 1897, how
ever, they have constantly advanced,
and the advance has been greatest in
food products. BY the end of 1913
the. average price of fifteen articles
of food was 35 per cent higher than
the average price for the decade 1890
SO. Since the outbreak of the war in
Europe the advance has been even
more marked. The rise has not been
the same for all commodities. The
price of bacon has shown the most
remarkable change, increasing 1870
per cent from 1896 to 1913. Sugar
is the only one of these articles that
did not advance, the price in 1918 be-
ing slightly lower than that in 1896.
The European war, however, has
caused sugar also to advance. In the
period from 1896 to 1913 corn meal
advanced in price 68 per cent; flour,
33 per cent; butter, SO per cent; po-
tatoes, II per cent; and eggs, "a per
cent.
Some of the reasons that have been
advanced for this increase in prices
are: the exhaustion of our natural
resources, excessive profits of middle
men, cold storage, trade union activ-
tiles, high freight rates, the tariff,
the trusts, the increase of population,
the movement of people from the
country to the cities, speculation, ex-
travagance, and rising standards OF
living. The causes thus alleged may |
explain the rise of prices in a few
isolated cases, but they do not suffice
to explain the general advance in
prices in all parts of the world. Eng
land, for example, has no protective
tariff, and yet for several years has
been complaining of the high cost of
living. The Germans are not noted
for extravaganza, and yet they too
have felt the pinch of high prices.
The Chinese have no trusts in their
country, and yet they have also been
about high prices. The
real cause Of this worldwide phe-
nomenon is the enormous increase,
since 1897, in the output of gold. The
leading countries Of the world use
gold as their standard money, and as
gold becomes more plentiful it
naturally must become cheaper.
When we say that money becomes
cheaper we mean that it loses some of
It's purchasing power; that a dollar
will buy less than it formerly did.
This is only another way of saying
hat prices are rising.