The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-06-04


 with it. That is a hard thing to get into the nut, or whatever may be the skull of many human beings. l Prices are simply regulated by the law of supply and demand, and their expression is in terms of a of exchange.
 It is quite true that labor and labor's wages have everything to do with the ultimate values ofSan ar ticle. But the value of an article and it's price are two different things altogether.
 The price of a commodity de- bends purely upon our old friend the law of supply and demand. If the supply is very great and the de mand very small. our old friend the same law says that the price that will be paid will be very small, ana vice versa.
 Take this homely illustration.
 Here is the fur market all shot to pieces as any man will tell you. Many fur dealers are holding great stocks for which they paid good money in wages for getting and handling, wages that have hardly varied an iota since or before the fur slump began. But there is not the demand for these stocks, and quite regardless of the labor values of those furs, or their cost of pro- duction, the price is all shot to pieces.
 Or again, take the wheat market. The wheat was sold last fall for one dollar and half bushel to some, although most got it for a lesser price. That wheat sold in May last for three dollars and a half a bushel. The labor that went into the wheat was the same in both in- stances. But in the interim stocks | had decreased, and stocks were mo- nopolized and the supply, the nor nal supply which held normal re Iation to a normal consumption, was | interfered with either by gamblers or the European buyers, and the demand was greater than could bt met But labor hadn't a damr thing to do with it. and that ought to be clear to any one except al ignorant and immature bull pup.
 What is the price of an article anyhow? The price of an article is the amount of money given in ex change therefor. It is regulated b! the supply of, and demand for tho article. It oscillates aDove and below the actual labor values in the ar ticle. Sometimes it is above, al when the demand overtakes th' supply, and sometimes it is below and that is wh en the supply over takes the demand If the demand is just equal to the supply, the ac tual value of the article is realized
 These are elementary econmi facts that every workingman knO~ but which every employer and ever. employers lackey in the universitie and the schools, pretends not t' know.
 How then are we to account 10 the great increase in price, the stea dy ascension of practically all ar ticles in the market?
 Turn back to our definition o price. Therein we find it tn amount of money given in exchang for another comodity. That is tn equivalent in gold, for gold is tn standard here.
 , When gold was scarce and har' to get, just as when silver wa scarce and hard to get, prices wer : relatively very low. But within tn past twenty years gold production has been greatly increasing. It : ease of production has been greatl forwarded. ChSmical and technica inventions have wonderfully in creased the supply of the yellow me tai Month by month the Rand i South Africa has been producing i : the neighborhood eighteen million : for over twenty years. flask mines are handling ores of so smal , per centage that vast quantities ar , being produced from low grad rock. Refining and especially cleo } trolytic refining has increased tn gold production enormously whil