New-York tribune., 1918-02-03

With that tenderness for the
nlanter which is so characteristic
nf all Southern politicians, Senator
Hoke Smith, Of Georgia, enters a
protest against fixing a price for
cotton. IF any effort is made to
interfere in the way of price fix-
ing" says the Senator, "every other
commodity, and certainly every
manufactured product Of cotton,
will be subject to price fixing. Price
fixing also should, if applied to cot
ton, be extended to the pay Of all
lsborers. When price fixing they
should not single out cotton unless
they go all the way down the line.
There has been no caucus to fix the
price of cotton. but there has been
a conference Of determined men to
protect cotton. really believe the
country has been overdosed with
nricc fixing" With the last sem
tence of this more or less states
manlike utterance we heartily
agree. The absurdity of enormous
" initiating the credit currency of
the country and attempting simul-
taneously to hold prices in check by
artificial measures seems obvious.
In the end serious decrease in
production would be inevitable. We
are even inclined to agree that if
prices are fixed control should be
applied to the products of basic
commodities as we'll as the COM
modities themselves. Otherwise we
should have the spectacle Of the
producer sacrificing his profits
merely for the benefit Of the manu-
facturer. AS to extending price fix
ing to labor, that might be theo-
retically desirable if other prices
were fixed, but practically it is an
impossibilty. The price for it might
be fixed, but there is no power
which can compel labor to accept
that price. But if what the Senator
says is true of cotton, why not also
of steel, and copper, and coal and
wheat? We do not recall that there
was any conference of determined
men to protect" these commodities,
but, then, they are not politically
immune. An analysis of the pro-
ceedings of the conference on cot
ton would be thing to see. Proba-
bly, one Of the items in the analysis
would read, unbiased economic
judgment, a trace" There is
material, though not a moral, differ
ence between profteering above and
below the Mason and Dixon line.
A policy Of unlimited imitation to
finance the war appears to have
been adopted, and that in the end
means higher prices all around, un-
less production is to be sacrificed.
But even if price fixing is likely to
prove futile, the government, never
theless, has what is probably the
best agency that could be devised
to control profteering, namely. the
taxing power. Moreover, if there
were no uneconomic restrictions,
imposed by price fixing, it is proba-
bic that taxation, if judiciously ap-
Piled, would tend to speed up pro-
ductive activity, because there
would be an effort to increase the
total of profits, so that the amount
left after the government had taken
its share should be sufficient to yield
capital fair return. This would
also apply to the individual. Assume,
for purposes Of illustration, that an
individual with an income Of $4,000
were compelled to pay, say, quar-
ter Of it in war taxes. That would,
in effect, leave him with a deficiency
of $500. To meet that deficit he
would do two things: First, he
would save, and, second, he would
endeavor to increase his earnings,
and that could be done only by
working more The first would free
labor for essential work, by reduc~
ing the demand for none essentials; (;
the second would increase the out
put of goods. And the governments
need Of goods is unlimited and
presents the greatest problem we
have to face.