Vernon Parish Democrat. (Leesville, La.) 1917-193?, 1919-08-23
Comprehensive Extension Of the
Present Food Control Act
Is Recommended.
SITUATION CRITICAL AND Diff
CULT AND MUST BE MET WITH
COURAGE AND RESOURCE.
Calm and Deliberate Consideration
Rather Than Hasty Action Is Called
For by the Present stua-
ton of the Country.

Washington.-E Extension of the pres
ent food control act, both as to its pc
riod of operation and to include all
commodities indisputably necessaries
of life, regulation of cold storage to
define the limits within which food
stuffs 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
merce, which will provide for com
petitiye selling, and passage of the
pending bin 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 adj
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
Ln6 persuasive IOTCG OF WHICH i diAl CdpdDA6
the legislative measures which would be
most effective in controlling it and bring
| ing 1t down
The prices the people of this country are
| paying for everything that it 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 artihcially and deliberately created
by vicious practices which ought imme-
diately 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 energetically 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 &C
corded the increRse-not a 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 1t are likely
to strike, and the strike only makes mat
ters worse.
1t checks productions; If it affects the
railways It prevents distribution and
strips the markets; so that there is pres
emily nothing to buy, and there is another
excessive addition to prices resulting from
the scarcity.
Conditions Not mNatursIW
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 If there Is anything that we
can do to check, correct or reverse them
We must l think frankly admit thai
there is no complete immediate remedy
to be had from legislation and executive
action. The free processes of supply anC
demand will not operate of themselves
and no legislative or executive action car
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 calculable basis for credits nj
confident buying of systematic selling
normal restoration of business M
hopeful attempt at reconstruction or
proper reassembling OF the dislocatet
elements of enterprise until peace hal
been established. and. so far as may be
guaranteed. Our national life has M
doubt been less radically disturbed anC
dismembered than the national life o
other peoples whom the war more di
rectly affected, with all its terrible
ravaging and destructive force. but 1
has been nevertheless profoundly at
feeted and disarranged. and our indus
tries, our credits, our productive ca
pacity, our economic processes are in
extricably interviewer with those o
other nations and peoples-most init
mately of all with the nations and PEG
pies upon whom the chief burden an
2 confusion of the war fell and VIII
! are now most dependent upon the co
operative action Of the world.
Exports Greatest In History.
We are just now shipping more good
out OF our ports to foreign markets tina
4 we ever shipped before-not foodstuff
. merely. but stufrs and materials Of ever
sort but this Is no index OF what GU
a foreign sales will continue to be or G
( the effect the volume OF our export
! viii have on supplies and prices 1t
= impossible yet to predict how far G
: how long foreign purchasers will b
able to find the money or the credit [
pay for or sustain such purchases o
+ such SCALE how soon or to what exteT
G foreign manufacturers can resume the
\ former production, foreign farmers g,
their accustomed crops from their ow
! fields; foreign mines resume their formS
K output. foreign merchants set up agal
+ their old machinery Of trade with Il
: ends OF the earth. All these things nui
Z remain uncertain Until peace Is estal
llshed and the nations Of the world haN