New Britain herald., 1919-08-09

day, embodying recommendations de- signed to reduce the cost of living follows:
 Gentlemen of the Congress:
 II have sought this opportunity to address you because it is clearly my duty to call your attention to the present cost of living and to urge up- on you with all the persuasive force Of which l am capable the legislative measures which would be most effec- tive in controlling it and bringing it down.
 The prices the people of this country are paying for everything that it is necessary for them to use in or der to live are, not justified by a shortage in supply either present or prospective, and are in many cases artificially and deliberately created by vicious practices which ought imme- diately to be checked by law. They constitute a burden upon us which is the more unbearable because we know that it is wilfully imposed by those who have the power and that it can, by vigorous public action, be greatly frightened and made to square with the actual conditions of supply and demand. Some of the methods
 
 are already illegal, some of them criminal and those who employ them will be energetically proceeded against; but others have not yet been brought under the law, and should be dealt with at once by legislation.
 Prices Demanded.
 "I need not recite the particulars of this critical matter; the prices de- In1 ot 1,n of supply, at the factory in the food markets at the shops, in the restaur- ants and hotels, alike in the city and in the village. They are familiar to you. They are the talk of every do- mestic circle and of every group of casual acquaintances even. It is matter of familiar knowledge, also, that a process has set in which is like ly unless som ething is done, to push prices and rents and the whole cost of living higher and yet higher in vicious cycle to which there is no log ical or natural end.
 Demands For Wage Increase.
 With the increases in the prices of necessa ries of life come demands for increases in wages-demands which are justified if there be no oth- CT means of enabling men to live. Upon the increase of wages there fol- lows close an increase in the price of the products whose producers have been accorded the increase-nOt a proportionate increase, for the man. ufacturer does not content himself with that, but an increase consider ably greater than the added wage cost is oftentimes hardly more than an excuse. The laborers who do not v1,o f1,or In mand it are likely to strike, and the strike only makes matters worse. It checks production, it affects the rail- ways. it prevents distribution and stops the markets, so that there is presently nothing to buy, and there is another excessive addition to prices resulting from the scarcity.
 'These are facts and forces with which we have hecome only too fla miliar; but we are not justified be- cause of our familiarity with them or because of any nasty and shallow conclusion that they are natural and inevitable in sitting inactively by and letting them work their fatal results if there is anything that we can do to check, correct or reverse them. l have sought this opportunity to in form the congress what the executive is doing by way of remedy and con- trol, and to suggest where effective le- gal remedies are lacking and may be supplied.
 No Immediate Remedy.
 we must, I think, frankly admit that there is no complete immediate remedy be had from legislation and executive action. The free processes of supply and demand will not operate
 T ,c,1N executive action can force them into full and natural operation until there is peace.
 There is now neither peace nor war All the world is waiting with what unnerving fears and haunting doubts who can adequately say |. waiting to know when it comes a peace in which each na- tion shall makeshift for itself as it can or a peace buttressed and supported by the will and concert of the nation, that have the purpose and the power to do and to enforce what is right Politically economically, socially, the world is on the operating table, and it has not been possible to administer any anaesthetic. It is conspicuous. It even watches the capital operation upon which it knows that it's hope of healthful lire depen0S u cannot think it's business out or make plans or give intelligent and provident di- recton to it's affairs while in such a case. Where there is no peace of mind, there can be no energy in en- deayOr There can be no confidence in industry. no calculab1e basis for cred it's, no confident buying or systematic selling, no certain prospect of em- ployment, no normal restoration of business, no hopeful attempt at recon struction or the proper reassembling g of the dislocated elements of enter prise until peace has been establish ed and so far as may be, guaranteed. "Our national life has no doubt been