Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1919-08-16
Comprehensive Extension of the
Present Food Control Act
Is Recommended.
SITUATION CRITICAL AND DIFFl-
c,uT AND MUST BE MET WITH
COURAGE AND RESOURCE.
r.,r and Deliberate Consideration
Rather Than Hasty Action Is Called
For by the Present situa-
ton OF the Country.

Observation-Disclosures of the pres
ant food control act, both as to it's pc
Rod of operation and to include all
commodities indisputably necessaries
of life regulation of cold storage to
define the limits within which food
sh1ffs can be held; marking of all
goods destined for interstate COM
merce with the price at which they
left the hands of the producer; fed
eral licenses for all corporations and
persons engaged in interstate COM
MERGE. which will provide for COM
petltive selling, and passage of the
pending bill giving the capital issues
committee control of security issues,
are the remedies proposed by Presi-
dent Wilson, in his address to con-
gress to meet the existing high cost
of living
The president said in part:
Gentlemen OF the Congress:
| have sought this opportunity to ad-
dress you because it is clearly my duty
to call your attention to the present cost
of living and to urge upon you with all
the persuasive force of which am capable
the legislative measures which would be
most effective In controlling 1t and bring
ing 1t down.
The prices the people of this country are
paying for everything that 1t Is necessary
for them to use In order to live are not
justified by shortage in supply either
present or prospective, and are in many
cases artifeially and deliberately created
by vicious practices which ought imme-
dlately to be checked by law.
Profiteers lawbreakers.
Some of the methods by which these
prices are produced are already illegal,
some of them criminal, and those who
employ them will be theoretically pro-
ceeded against. But others have not yet
been brought under the law, and should
be dealt with at once by legislation
With the increase in the prices of the
necessaries of life come demands for in
creases in wages-demands which are
justified If there be no other 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 ac-
corded the increase-not proportionate
increase. for the manufacturer does not
content himself with that but an in
crease considerably greater than the
added wage cost and for which the added
wage cost is oftentimes hardly more than
an excuse.
The laborers who do not get an increase
In pay when they demand it are likely
to strike, and the strike only makes mat
ters worse.
1t checks production; If 1t affects the
railways 1t prevents distribution and
strips the markets. SO that there is pres
entity nothing to buy and there Is another
excessive addition to prices resulting from
the scarcity.
Conditions Not Natural"
These are facts and forces with which
We have become only too familiar but
we are not justified because of our famil-
iarity with them or because of any hasty
and shallow conclusion that they are
natural and inevitable, in sitting mac
lively by and letting them work their ia
tai results II there is anything that we
can do to check, correct or reverse them.
We must, ] think. frankly admit that
there rs no complete immediate remedy
to be had from Legislation and executive
action. The free processes of supply and
demand will not operate of themselves,
and no legislative or executive action can
force them into full and natural operation
until there is peace.
Must Know Terms Of Peace.
There can be no confidence in indus
try, no ca1culable basis for credits no
confident buying of systematic selling.
no certain prospect of employment, no
normal restoration of business no
hopeful attempt at reconstruction or a
proper reassembling of the dislocated
elements of enterprise until peace has
be n established. and so far as may be.
guaranteed Our national life has no
doubt been less radically disturbed and
dismembered than the national life of
other peoples whom the war more di :
rectly affected with all it's terrible
ravaging and destructive force. but 1t
has been nevertheless profoundly af-
fected and disarranged and our indus
tries. our credits. our productive ca
pacity, our economic processes are In
extrlcably interviewer with those OF
other nations and peoples-most inti-
mately OF all with the nations and peo-
pies upon whom the chief burden and
confusion of the war fell and who
are now most dependent upon the CO.
operative action of the world.
Exports Greatest In History.
We are Just now shipping more goods
out OF our ports to foreign markets than
We ever shipped before-not foodstuns
merely. but stuffs and materials OF ever,
sort: but this IL no index OF what our
foreign sales will continue to be or OF
the effect the volume OF our exports
VIII have on supplies and prices, IL Is
impossible yet to predict how far OF
how long foreign purchasers will be
able to ind the money or the credit to
pay for or sustain such purchases OF
such scale; how soon or to what extent
foreign manufacturers can resume theii
former production. foreign farmers ge,
their accustomed crops from their owi
fields. foreign mines resume their former
output foreign merchants set up agar
their old machinery OF trade with the
ends of the earth. All these things mus
remain uncertain until peace is estab
llshed and the nations of the world have