The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-02-04
LESSON NO. S5

We took occasion last time to point i out to you that you can't subscribe a 1 farm or a factory or a railroad to a Liberty Loan. The government must have money to buy the vast quanti- ties of supplies needed for war.
 Many a person has wondered to himself and a good many have even asked the question out loud, 'fWhy doesn't the government make money? If it wants it so badly let it engrave some bills and do away with all this Liberty Bond nuisance!"
 1t is a tempting thought, but it is like the Song of the Siren that lured the mariners of old onto the rocks.
 Money isn't just printed off by the | government regardless. The bills that you carry in your pocket and that you accept so cheerfully in your pay envelope all have gold or silver coin back of them in the United States Treasury or else they are secured by deposit of government bonds or by other instruments of credit. Under any other circumstances your, bills would soon cease to have any value just as Confederate money became practically worthless during the Civil War because the printing presses of the South kept grinding out so much of it.
 | But let us just examine the sugges- tions carefully and see what would happen if the government should un- dertake to supply it's war money needs from its own printing presses.
 You know, of course, that everybody is busy these days. Anybody who really wants work can get it. In fact, there probably was never a time when the country was as near to 100 per cent. of employment as right now.
 We'll, then, under those conditions we enter big war The nation needs millions of tons of extra supplies. But every factory is already working to capacity. New ones are therefore built and equipped. Then the work CTS must be found. They are all busy. But a thousand are needed immedi- ately in a certain plant.
 Now the only way you can get a man to leave one good job for an other is to offer him more pay. So let us suppose that the government prints lot of money and offers a thousand men higher wages than they are getting. They accept. Their for mer employer must now find a thou sand men to take their places. He does it by paying higher wages to an- other thousand in some other indus try And the vacancies they leave must be filled in the same wage-rais- ing way, and so on down the line till sooner or later the holes that are made must either be filled by getting more work out of those that are left and paying them accordingly, or ekse the vacancies remain and production falls off.
 Prices of goods will then go up for three reasons: smaller supply, higher cost of production, and equal or greater demand induced by the great CT ability to pay. A man doesn't mind "a higher price if he has more money to pay it
 But what is the net result of all this? Why, three hings again: a higher price schedule on everything, harder work for some who must fill the gaps by longer hours, and real suffering and hardship for a large class whom the wage increase does not affect enough to offset the in creased cost of things.
 Suppose now, however, that instead of raising it's war money by just printing it the government decides ito sell bonds and urges the people to Ibuy them on the installment plan out of their wages that are yet to be earned What happens and how is the goverument to get those three thou sand workmen under this plan?