The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-08-09

the OiHt session Of congress tOuay, President Wilson said:
 Gentlemen of the Congress-:
 l 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 upon you with all the persuasive force of which I am capable the legislative measures which would be most eff fective in controlling it and bringing 1t down.
 The prices the people of this coun- try are paying for everything that i is necessary for them to use in order to live are not justified by short age in supply, either present or pros pective, and are in many cases artt- fcially 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 be- cause we know that it Is wtlfully i'm posed 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 by which these prices are produced are already illegal, some Of them criminal, and those who em- ploy them will be encrgetically pro- ceeded against; but others have not yet been brought under the law and should be dealt with at once by leg islation.
 I need not recite the particulars of this critical matter. The prices de- manded and paid at the sources of supply, at the factory, in the food markets, at the shops, in the restaur- ants and hotels, are alike in the city and in the village. They are familiar to you. They are the talk of every domestic circle and of every group of casual .acquaintances even.
 It is matter of familiar knowledge, also that a process has set in which is likely, unless something is done, to p1sh prices and rents and the whole cost of living higher and yet higher in a vicious circle to which there is no logical or natural end.
 With the increase in the prices of the necessar.es of life come 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 accorded the increase-not a pro- 'portionate increase for the manufac- turer does not content himself with that-but an increase considerably greater than the added wage cost, and for which the added wage cost s oftsntimes hardly more than an ex- cuse.
 The Iaborers who do not get an in crease in pay when they demand it are likely to strike, and the strike only makes matters worse. It cheeks vr off Y9I lxxy2 xyS it prevents distribution and strips 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 become only too fam1- liar; but we are not Justified, because of our familiarity with them or be- cause of any nasty and shallow con- clusion 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 Execu- tive is doing by way of remedy and control, and to suggest where effec- lively legal remedies are lacking and may be supplied.
 We must I think, frankly admit that there is no complete, immediate remedy to be had from legislation and executive action. The free processes of supply and demand will not oper- ate of themselves and no legislative or 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 comesl a peace in which each nation shall make shift for itself as it can, or a peace but tressed and supported by the will and concert of the nations 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 ad- minister any anaesthetic. It is con- scious. It even watches the capital operation upon which it knows that it's hope of healthful life depends. It c>nnot think its business out or make plans or give intelligent and provi- dent direction to it's affairs while in such a case. Where there is no peace of mind there can be no ener- gv in endeavor There can be no confidence in industry. no calculable basis for credits, no confident buy ing or systematic selling, no certain prospect of employment, no normal restoration of business. no hopeful attempt at reconstruction or the proper reassembling of the dislocated clements of enterprise until peace has been established and, so far as may be guaranteed.
 Our national life has no doubt been less radically distr~bed and dis membered than the national life of other peoples whom the war more directly affected, with all it's terrible rayaging and destructive force, but it has been, nevertheless. profoundly af- fected and disarranged and our in dus- tries, our credits, our productive ca pacity, our economic processes are inextricably interwoven with those of other nations and peoples-most in- tirnately of all with the nations and peoples upon whom the chief burden and confusion or the war fell, and who are now most dependent upon