Williams news., 1919-03-28
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DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
 ADVISES BUILDING NOW (Contuined from page one)


 For this reason statement
 bv Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale
 authority on price and market conditions, in which he says
 the United States has reached
 a new price level and is doubt
 full if prices ever again will go
 back to the pre-war level, was read with interest. Prof. Fish
 CT says that one certain way to
 bring about business stagna- tion is for everybody to wait for
 business to get better. Prof.
 Fisher states it this way:
 "The fundamental practical
 question confronting business
 men is whether the general level of prices is going to fall. In my opinion, it is not going tc fall. much if at all. We are on permanently higher price level and the sooner the busi- ness men of the country take this view and adjust themselves to it, the sooner will they save themselves and the nation from the misfortune which will come if we persist in our false hope"
 This international authority on prices shows that there have been times in history when the price levels were established. He says:
 "The general level of prices depends upon the volume and rapidity of turnover of the cir culating medium in relation to the business to be transacted thereby thereby. If the number of dollars circulated by cash and by check doubles while the number of goods and services exchanged thereby re- main constant, prices will double.
 ''The great price changes in history have come about in just this manner. The Price revolution of the sixteenth cen tury came upon Europe as a re- suit of the great influx of gold and silver from the mines of the New World. Europe was flooded with new money.
 More counters were used than before in effecting exchanges and prices became high. People talked then of temporary infla- ton just as they talk of it now But it was not temporary; it was new price level. A simi- lar increase in prices all over the world occurred between 1896 and 1914 following the discovery of the rich gold field of South Africa, Cripple Creek and Alaska, the invention of the cyanide process in mining and the vast extension of the use of bank credit.
 After analyzing our gold supply and credits and point ing out that prices in Europe are higher than in America. Prof, Fisher arrives at this con- clusion:
 Business men should face the fact. To talk reverently of | 1913-14 prices is to speak a | dead language today. The 1 buyers of the country, since the 1 armistice, have made an unex- ampled attack on prices thru ] their waiting attitude, and yet price recessions have been insignificant. The reason is that we are on a new high | price level, which will be found a stubborn reality. Busi- ness men are going to find out that the clever man is not the man who waits, but the one who finds out the new price facts, and acts accordingly.
 At the same time Prof. Fishers conclusions were made known there came from the Division of Public Works and the U. s. Department of Labor a resume of the work of ten or twelve experts on price and market conditions. Here again it was made plain there is no evidence justifying the expecta tion of a general, material re. duction in the price level. This report makes these statments. "The fact is that cost of con struction is not high today. It. is low compared with food in general. Although some re. adjustment in the wages of in- dlvidual classes of building materials may take place, the cost of construction will moi