The Richfield recorder. (Richfield, Idaho) 1909-1931, 1916-12-08
MIDDLE WEST
WAKES UP
AT LAST
Lifting Ourselves Out of
the Slough of CONNER
cial Depression.

Everybody, who thinks at all, knows
exactly what happened when the war
broke out in July of 1914. Ship sail
ings were cancelled. Stock exchanges
closed Cotton could not be sold at 4
cents a pound, and wheat was en-
bargoed on rail sidings at Buffalo,
New York, and Baltimore, so that the
great grain exchanges of Chicago.
Minneapolis, St Paul and Winnipeg
wired to their country buyers to stop
buying altogether | happened to
have as a guest in my home veter
! an Board of Trade operator from
Chicago. Unless the sea lanes
open," he predicted, you will see
wheat down to so and 40 cents by
Christmas" Cotton operators and
growers saw looming ahead Of them
the total loss of the years crop. At
one fell swoop grain-growers saw
wheat at prices that would not pay
the cost of seeding and threshing;
for it now costs 81 an acre to seed
and harvest wheat; and when the
price of thirty bushels to the acre
drops to 40 cents, you have not en-
ough left to pay man hire and team
hire.
For the first time in history, the
Middle West realized, what does the
sea matter to us? For the first time
in history, the Middle West sat up
and asked-What's a merchant ma
rine to us? What's a navy to us? All
the world knows the rest-the flust-
rated, frantic efforts to provide ma
tional funds to finance cotton, to buy
freighters, to provide federal mer-
chant marine-in a word, to lift our
selves by our boot-straps out of the
commercial slough in which messy
methods and blind bullheadedness
had plunged our export trade. With
huge cotton, corn, and wheat crops,
prices dropped plumb to bottom.
Why? Because the sea was closed and
we couldn't ship the output. l had
friends in the West with ten-thous-
and bushel crops. Ruin seemed to be
staring them in the face.
Suddenly, something happened. In
stead of selling at 40 cents, wheat
moved up to 81, and S150, and $1.65. |
Cotton was back to pre-war levels, |
while experts were still discussing |
how to avert ruin. What had happen
ed? The sea lanes had opened. Every |
sea lane all over the world was open |
wide, and safe What had produced |
the miracle? Sea power-a great |
navy patrolling the lanes of the sea, |
and keeping the seas broad highway |
wide open. If the British Navy had |
not been powerful enough to do this,
it is inconceivable to what depths of |
depression American foreign trade |
would have fallen in the last two |
years. Pending the depression of the
last half of 1914, there were 100000 |
idle men in New York City alone. |
There were literally millions of work
ers unemployed all through the coun-
try Factories closed. Wheels stopped |
going around. Railroads ran on half
and quarter time. Today, factories are
running on three time shifts There |
is not an idle wheel in the United
States, and there is hardly an unem-
ployed person, who can work, from
to Pacific. Wages are the
highest ever known III tffe History of
the country Why2 Because the sea
lanes opened and permitted Uncle
Sam to feed, clothe, and provision the
warning world.-From Our New
Navy" by A. C. Laut, in the Ameri7
can Review Of Reviews for Novem-l
Der, 1916.