The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-02-15
PRICES.

The high cost of living is to be probed. When the democratic ad- ministration faces an inevitable evil, it sticks it's head in the sand and orders a probe. It has dlscoV- cred that inaction Is just as effec- tive as action, and there is nothing very difficult about watchfully wait ing while an investigation is in pro- gress.
 Without wasting much time or this new system of r1eeting political questions, we may roughly say that high prices are inevitable. The nrices have to overcome a good many costs which have been artifi- cially injected into the production and distribution of commodities, and although it is supposed that prices will circulate above and below the values of the articles according as the supply is in proportion to the demand. the great interests in the commercial and industrial world have such a lead pipe cinch upon the circulation Of commodities that the law of supply and demand is naturally interfered with. They use it for their own ends.
 Anybody can still whiskey. The labor cost ii such were allowed free and unlicensed production would be little over 25 cents a gallon. But when the government steps in with costly excise regulations, licenses and revenues to be paid by those gallons Of hootch, the manufacture is naturally restricted. The supply is decreased and the demand sets up the price. It has no relation what ever to the labor values within the gallon of hootch.
 What is taking place in the indus trial world is somewhat similar. Great profits are to be made; great dividends, rents, salaries of manage ment and so forth have to be forth coming. Railroad rates are in creased, transportation fees are lar gc and above all control is cen tralized. The natural movement of supply is interfered with, Demand is intensified anl up go the prices.
 It is obvious to any person that were society engaged in purely pro- ductive occupations, positively would it be necessary for wages and hence values in products to equate the price. Only in such way would the consuming capacity be kept up, and only in this way would the wealth of the country be maintained through labor proGuction. It would be from this labor of productive nature that the means of paying dividends, rents, interests, profits and all the other incidentals would be forthcoming.
 But what actually is happening is that the country is engaged in in- dustries which are to very great extent strictly non-productive. They
 
 they provide neither the means, lux urious or necessitous, of the people feeding, clothing or sheltering them selves. They are engaged in in- dustries as strictly non-productive as is the war in Europe. They build shipyards for war vessels; they make shells. guns, armor plate battleships, explosives, war planes automobiles and hundred other things which keep millions busy al strictly non-productive labor The productive workers must feed anc clothe them; they in turn must pay the productive workers for thai feeding and clothing. The money for that comes from the accumu lated gold of Europe. That golo while it may have been worth 2s per cent more ten years ago, and ii the very same gold that was ex tracted from mines at that time, i! worth today exactly what the labol cost of gold production in the aver age mine of today. That is to say sum up the total gold production to day and find it's net cost per uni of the metal, and we have the valu' of gold which will find expression not in terms of dollars and cents which have a gold unit of price ant it would be ridiculous to speak O an ounce of gold being worth al