Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1918-08-29
THE GOVERNMENT
SHOULD ANSWER
From the Philadelphia Public Ledger.

This nation is thoroughly patriotic and
full of win-the-war determination down
to the last Boy Scout. There is nothing
we will not do or endure or pay to make
the tragic sacrifice of our splendid men
at-a7us tell to the last cartridge. We
are not counting our troubles and depriva-
tons over here when over there they
make light of CHASTITY Wounds and face
death daily with the fine, bright eyed
courage of the free born.
But. in spite of the war, we, after all.
remain Americans. It Is nationally impos.
sible for US to stop thinking. There are
questions the best of us will put. And
there is nothing more dangerous to our
complete brotherly cooperation in the
great task of shattering forever the Ger
man sword than to ignore a familiar
series of insistent questions that are
forced to the lips of every housewife.
however loyal, and every purchaser of the
necessities of life, however ardent his
belief in the allied cause.
We Americans will fight to a finish and
we will fight with ar intelligence and
fiXity of purpose which few of the beliig-
erent nations can possibly equal-if we
are permitted to give our intelligence free
play and are not asked to endure In the
dark buffetIngs whose cause we cannot
conceive.
To come right down to brass tacks.
there is one big, pressing and persistent
49, INV WY AAA4AA OAAN SNOAJ
woman-especially every woman-whose
duty 1t is to make frequent purchases of
the necessities of life is constantly ask
ing. and that question is:
why is 1T that our various wal authori-
ties, who intervene dictatorially-and
rightly so-in almost every other activity
of life, cannot protect the domestic pur-
chaser from what seems systematic extor-
tion?"
We regulate very nearly everything in
this country now save and except the
most important thing of all-the cost of
our living expenses. 1t may be conom
ically impossible to regulate that. The
humble housewife who goes forth to buy
the family dinner and finds that every
mortal item on her list has gone up since
last week is quite willing to be shown
that the government can regulate what
the. coal man can charge for coal, what
the munition maker can charge for shells.
what the farmer can charge for wheat,
what the railway can charge for rams
portation. who shall get steel. when we
shan eat beet, what we shall eat in
place of wheat, and a thousand other
delicate points In our daily life, but cannot
regulate what the grocer shall charge her
Tor butter and eggs, or what the butcher
snail ask for lamb. or how much the
fishmonger shall get for fish. She is not
only willing-she asks nothing so vehem-
emily as that she shall be shown.
When the good word comes that we
have met the demand for meat and that
we can now eat it again. does the price
of fish fall? Not SO you'd notice. nee
a price gets up 1t seems utterly unable to
climb down again. 1t goes up joyousy
III a skyrocket, but It makes it danger
ously dizzy ever to look down..
We are going to have a fine opportunity
now to judge the exact relation in these
cases etwee supply and demand. Hoover
ha sent over the happy word that we
need no longer deny ourselves wheat.
While we were saving wheat to feed
Europe-and we did 1t magnificently and
effectively-the price for what little We
were permitted to buy awaited, and the
portions of wheat products served in the
hotels and restaurants approached. the
vanishing point. Bread became a luxury.
Will bread now become cheap? Will the
cost of wheat products go back to the old
figures? Will the portions served return
to the good old wholesome sizes?
The housewife will believe it when she
sees-i
Naturally the housewife asks questions.
The housewife is the purchasing agent of
the home. Men make money come. but
women make 1T go-and they are COM
PEELED to make it go a very, very long way
these days.
The housewife wants to know:
Why prices always go up and never
come down.
Why, when the government commands
her to eat certain foods 1t does not take
any visible steps to prevent the vendors
of these foods from making them so dear
that she simply cannot buy them.
Why foods which are not put on the war
index seem mysterlously to become as
scarce and costly as those which are.
Why the substitutes she is compelled
to take in order to get a small allotment
of what she really wants go up in price
like an American aviator trying to get
above a Hun raider when we are not
shipping a pound OF them to Europe and
arc presumably producing at least as
much as ever.
Why the prices of articles already manu-
featured and in stock go up, though the
merchant would have sold them gladly at
the old price If they had not been men
toned" in some way in a government
order.
Why the government cannot prevent
this when they know they are about to
issue an explosive order.
Why the government can regulate the
things that the government buys but not
buys.
Why the government can regulate the
prices and the distribution Of some things
but not of others-apparently not the
very things she. the noneconomic, the
nonprofiteering. the ~unorganized house
wife wants to buy.
It will be good tactics to answer before
we start another Liberty loan campaign.
For not a few people are feeling that their
incomes are first taxed and then mort
gagged for Liberty loans. but that the
residue on which they must live is not
protected from the profiteer. petty as we'll
as prodigious. who pliers the lean house.
keeping purse of 100000 hardworking
families.
Punishment.
From the Peoples Home Journal.
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