The Tucumcari news and Tucumcari times. [volume] (Tucumcari, N.M.) 1907-1921, 1916-12-14
A Niger IN THE wOOD PILE
You shall not get away with it.

You shall not get away with it.
Your conspiracies in restraint of eat
ing are breaking us and before we will
let that come to pass we mean to
break you. We intend to have an ade-
quate food supply at popular prices.
You are manipulating the markets,
holding an enorm ous tonnage Of edi-
bles and fuel in storage aid are ship
ping provisions which we Immediately
require, to foreign communities.
Your greedy wits have created n
false famine in a land of plenty.
For the past year you have brazenly
defied the laws of humanity and the
laws of the country.
Your avaricious schemes have neu-
traliZed the most prodigious opportun-
ity for general prosperity that Amer
lea ever faced.
As fast as salaries advanced you
boosted basic necessities to absorb the
difference in the pay envelope. You
are utterly without charity or discre.
ton. II you had the one, you would
not loot the tenement pot and the la
borer's pail. If you possessed the 9TH
err, you would shrink before the retri.
button which n hungry multitude will
inevitably demand.
Governmental crop reports and the
Investigations of local officials the ron
tinent over, prove that you lie wher
you claim there have been such natur-
al shortages rs to justify current quo
tations.
No. you are simply charging all
that the traffic will bear.
You exact Illicit toll at every door.
II would be bad enough if you were
Robin Hoods d%epredating the well-to-
do, but poverty's penny is as precious
to poor Shylock souls as Dives dol
lar.
You have spared nc commodity from
your usury. Even beans and potatoes
have turned into luxurious fare by
your despicable c%onnivance.
You have kept cornering and corner
ing until you have finally cornered US
and now the following groups Of infur-
lated citizens are in turn combined to
smash your power:
The employee no LONGER able to sub
sist upon maximum wage that the av-
erage business can afford
The employer already paying the
utmost that his enterprises can stand.
State and federal workers whose
salaries, fixed by legislative enactment
in normal times, are now too little for
fundamental decencies-
Professional folk, harrassed by I'M
bearable bigger household budgets
and on the other hand put off by their
debtors because they cannot settle with
butcher and baker and also pay the
doctor and apothecary-
Old people with limited principals
boarded for inactive years and widows
and spinsters dependent on minimum
fixed incomes
And last, but by no means least, the
grower forced to accept your arbo.
trary purchasing terms or have his
products go TO waste, and the retailer
threatened by bankruptcy because OF
your impossible exactions leave hin
with the ~slenderest margins If his ex,
perience.
You are the meanest and the mos.
mischievious lot that the Republic hai
met with.
Besides differing the dinner-plat'
and robbing the coal-bin, you are up
setting trade calculations from sea Il
sea, tangling our entire program, ant
breeding discomfort, fattening on tn
nations yields and fattening your bis
hank-rolls with tenement savings.
II present statutes are not sufficient
ly punitive, ours is, after all, the Sow
ereign Will and neither Legislature
nor Congress dare deny us such law
as will deal with you as you now dea
with u.s..
The economic cross under which wa.
swept Europe staggers Is not heavie'
than the double-cross you've hande'
America. We have located the mig
ger in the wood pile" and you shan
get away.