The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-12-12
THE CHICAGO INVESTIGATION.

The Grand Jury investigation ot the high prices which prevail in the Windy City will doubtless be follow ed by series of indictments. The of this nature usually are. But it is quite another matter to bring those who artificial1y con trol the supply, so that it will never equal the demand, to prompt justice.
 Chicago Grand Jury investigations are strewn with quashed indictments They got after the wheat speculat- ors. the packers, the white slave trust. the police graft, the landlords of baWdy houses, and after these indictments had been duly returned and the evil conditions fully probed, there the matter lay until the court went in session when demurrers and motions to quash put the indict- ments out of commission.
 In no place has legal chicanery reached the high state of scientific development that it has gathered to itself in Chicago. There the higher IDS are immune, and although every now and then someone with highly developed civic sense obtains a little fame and notoriety by his investiga- tions. the matter settles itself into the same stagnant pool of every day capitalist immunity.
 Even the one exception of Jack Johnson who as a colored gentleman paid the penalty of exile for an of- fense under the Mann Act, the rest of the vicious ones are really so completely in alliance with the poll tically great that they are quite safe.
 In any event, these probes have an educational effect. It takes a considerable number of them to make an impression, but constant dropping wears the stone and even- tually some will realize that things are not as they have appeared to them.
 That the food supply of the nation is being manipulated by combines admits of no doubt. But it is done in a perfectly legitimate way. It IS all a matter of business. It is a case of extracting as high profits as possible from the circulation of food commodities.
 What is the use of this finding fault with an intensive effect when the cause is left wholly untouched?
 The farmer himself will hold back his grain, quite regardless of the demand society makes for it, if the farmer can afford to do so. Usually the farmer is a poor man in debt to the bank or the store and has to sell just as soon as possible to pay up his debts. But dozens, even hund- reds of farmers have deliberately withheld their grain until a higher price would put in an appearance III the market. He did not raise the grain to feed anybody. He raised the grain to make money. lie Will make money if he can and his main objection to present conditions is that the brokers and the spectators and the elevatormen function as he would like to function. They are just in the same line of business as he is himself: as any business man is: handling the goods that pass through his hands not for the satis- faction of the social need. but to make profits. And those who stand for the profit system have no squeal coming over high prices. They have no kick coming if legitimate efforts arc made in the way of trading and buying and selling to make those profits as globulariy large as poss- ibie.. They certainly are not justi- fed in finding fault with one man because he makes big profits out of human need, and uphold the small man who makes very small profits out of the same functiOning. The difference of that function Is not in kind but in degree. The quality of the transaction of the man who wants to secure one hundred percent oront and that of the man who is satisfied wth 25 per cent is Identical The quantity of per centage alone varies and that is all.
 The trouhe is that we do not look at the economic situation fair