The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-09-19
HIGH PRICES IN WAR ZONES.

nave occurred ln the leHna where the price is four dollars a pound for beef and two dollars a pound for rice. Owing to the number of other wise productive laborers, engaged ill the unproductive task of killing off their fellow men, the product of the country is not sufficient to supply the demand, and in the competition for what there is the man with the most money gets what he wants, while the man who has no money goes without.
 Naturally those who have to go without resent this condition, and riots result Now such conditions are not unnatural in war zones. There is natural scarcity for there is a natural shortage. But the very remarkable fact is that when there is a natural scarcity riots follow, while when there is all artificial with holding from consumption, and that often when there is an excess Of production, although there be the same deprivation, there will be no riots Thus, and quite repeatedly, in every American city during in dustrial depression the"e are very many who are unable to buy food because they have not the money. There being no work, they cannot get wages, and there is no way Whereby they can realize on their labor and get what they want to eat.
 But there is no rioting. The pen niless unemployed stand meekly in line for bread and coffee, for stew, for charity meals. and that without the slightest sign of resentment.
 Yet, looked at with unbiased eyes, it might be admitted that the one would feel the same right to live as the other, one would have the same desire to prolong existence as the other, and one would imagine that the sense of injustice in the unemployed and penniless in land bursting with plenty, would be above all others more acute.
 Yet we see that quite the contrary is the case. In every warning coun- try the people who are compelled to endure privations, unavoidable on account of the war, are the very first to protest and violently protest. They have their riots and their de- monstrations, and they accept the position in which they find them selves with such a burning discon- tent that revolts against authority break out.
 Now on the other hand in the United States or any other country, the unemployed and destitute no matter what sufferings they endure, seldom manifest any disposition to riot, seldom manifest any exhib1- tion of revolt against the authority that prevents them breaking into stores over stocked and warehouses groaning with a surfeit of proven der. They accept the situation with out demur and with a docility is al ways anticipated by the rest among the nation as natural and in- evitable.
 But there must be a good sound reason for this difference in the at titude of sufferers to privations dur ing war and during peace, and there must be some explanation why fewer of the unemployed no matter how real their sufferings become, be- tray the same desperate resistance and the same determined refusal to accept conditions manifested among the residents of the war zone show towards their fate.
 It is possible that the general change that comes over the social mind as a result of the war has got something to do with it. The in stinct of fight reaches higher de velopment, and there is less tendency to accept things as they are, if things as they are, are unpleasant.
 During peace, the lowest social strata. such as are the unemployed and the destitute. are beset on every side with authoritarian forms which seem to them omnipotent instinc- lively. They see all other classes ac- cepting the conditions as they are,