Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1919-08-07
MAKING MATTERS o

The general public Of the United States is embarrassed
by two sets Of conditions. one of which may. in a
measure, be unavoidable. the other being entirely avoid
able il all parties were to unite in good faith in q rea-
sonable effort.
It costs ~ lot more money to live than it did q few
years ago, and, after making all possible allowances for
profiteering and other practices which border on the
criminal. there remains a considerable increase in the
price of commodities which is due.to causes beyond the
reach of legislation, and beyond regulation by any means
Of which we are now aware. In some cases the diminish
ing supply Of natural raw material is an important fac
tor. This is true. for instance. of the lumber industry.
We have been cutting down forests faster than we have
been growing them, and. in addition to the higher price
of labor, it takes more labor to produce a thousand feet
of lumber than It did when timber was moro plentiful
Add to this the tendency to conserve a product whose
exhaustion can plainly be foreseen, and we have a situa-
.ron which necessarily involves higher prices Similar
conditions prevail in a good many other industries.
When everything is remedied which is remediable.
therefore, higher prices will. still remain, SO far as can
be foreseen now. The only thing that can prevent them
VIII be a general scaling down, such as might be brought
about by diminishing the supply Of money. and this
bringing about an appreciation Of the value Of the dol
lar.
During the period Of readjustment, high prices tend
to complicate matters for most of us. And. on top Of all
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have the situation created by the strikes which have come
to be such a common feature Of our life. Necessarily,
strikes which involve many thousands of men, which
withdraw these men from the work of production, tend
to increase prices still further. If all the men in a given
industry remain idle for a considerable time, the consum-
ing public must, sooner or later. pay the price Of that
idleness in increased prices for its goods. That is in ac-
cordance with an economic law whose workings we can
not avoid.
But the trouble does not end here. Let the citizen,
by hook or crook, assemble the funds with which to sup
ply his needs, and he is still at sea. He may be able and
willing to buy and pay for his furnace, or lumber for his
new house, or machinery for his farm, or groceries and
clothing for his family, but he has no assurance that
those goods can be delivered. There may be-, and, as
mines, or in the lumber mills, or in the canning factory,
or in any one of the many lines of industry in which we
must depend. and he is helpless. And, even If the mate
rial which he needs is produced, a railroad strike is likely
to tie up transportation indefinitely, and there he is again.
With a reasonably keen appreciation of how life is
affected by increased costs. we are convinced that the
greatest obstacle in the way of national economic pro-
gress, and the greatest drawback to the comfort and con-
venience of the average individual, is not high prices, but
the utter decentralization which the habit of striking has
brought to the industrial world. We can, if given time,
adjust ourselves to high prices. We cannot adjust our
selves to the uncertainties involved in, the strike habit.