New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-10-28
By CARL SNYDER

of living must have brought
a deadly pinch to millions of
people. The average price of COM
nodities was nearly doubled in eigh-
ieen months. This means that per-
sons of more or less fixed income, as
school teachers and clerks, most peo-
pie on salary and all Of those of
small investment income, have now
only half as much to live on as they
had two years ago. The purchasing
power Of the dollar has declined to
about so cents.
OF course this is not absolute, be-
cause a great many things like rents
and theatre tickets and ;arfare and
hotel rooms and gas and electric rates
have not yet doubled, because it is
very difficult to raise the price Of
these things quickly. But they will
have TO go up sooner OF. later or the
gas and electric traction companies
and all the like will be bankrupted,
II the present high prices have come
10 stay. And it may be stated at
once that it is as sure as any human
event that these high prices have
come to stay for some years at least,
end that there is every prospect that
they will continue to rise
There is a still chillier prospect
now that the present Administra-
ton has undertaken a policy of ex-
pansion which, if carried out, will
again double prices, in spite of all
the governmental edicts and price
fixing and food administering that
can be devised.
One would think that a question so
serious to tens Of millions of people
would arouse a profound interest
and inquiry as to its cause. 1t has
not. More than SO per cent Of all
that you may read about the matter
vaguely ascribes this rise to 'the
war" without apparently the faint
est idea as to how the war might
cause such an increase, and still less
hat the war might have come and
gone without rise of prices of more
than 10 or 20 per cent at the outside
if a sane and intelligent financial
policy had been carried out,
Everybody Seems
Indifferent
No one knows, and no one seems
much to care. There is no evidence,
for example, that the present Execu-
tive of the nation is aware of any of
these things, nor his Cabinet, nor
even the Secretary Of the Treasury,
or the Controller of the Currency,
nor the little coup Of serious think
ers which surround him and these.
No Senator nor member of Congress
has risen up TO expound the simple
economies of the question, nor to
point out the grotesque folly of try
ing to keep prices down by price fixing
commissions and the like, and at the
same time put the equivalent of a
S0,000-ton hydraulic jack under
meath them. There is not, 50 far as
| know, a single influential journal
or newspaper in America to under
take this task.
Yet the simple relation between
money and prices, and the cause of
the rise and fall Of prices, were all
set out clearly and upon the firmest
foundation more than thirty years
ago, independently, by two Of the
most distinguished writers upon
finance of that generation. The one
was our own Simon Newcomb
mathematician and astronomer, anC
in his spare hours writing the ablest
and most original work upon politi
cal economy yet penned by an Amer
ican, and taken all in all perhaps
the finest and keenest mind of hi:
generation. The other was ProfeS
sor j. Shield Nicholson, of Edin
burgh, now one of the foremost econ.
omists in the land which produced
Adam Smith.
The Missing
Link Discovered
These two men, almost in the same
year, worked out the theory and
found the missing link, the lack OF
which had SO deeply puzzled and con.
fused all writer's upon the subject
up TO that time, and ignorance OF
which still puzzles and confuses
many Of our most conspicuous teach.
ers and writers upon political econ.
omy even at the present day.
Simon Newcomb was not a pro,
fessional teacher of economics anc
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