The toiler. [volume] (Cleveland, Ohio) 1919-1922, 1920-03-05
Our Washington News Letter
BY PAUL HANNA.


benefit frum big export trades What
becomes Of the fruits Of industry
above what wages will buy backf
These and other pertinent questions
fill the minds of honest economists as
they view the industrial and financial
wre:kage caused by war.
At present every days news is filled
with facts which contradict the OH
CLAWS OF sound business At Wash
ington nobody can be found who any
longer attempts to explain the contra
dictions. There is only bewilderment,
and hope that the world may some-
how muddle through its welter Of
high prices, debt, taxation. falling ey-
change and worthless paper money.
Before looking abroad there is ~
condition at home worth mentioning
For a year past business men and
politicians have been telling the work.
ing mar that he must produce more.
Figures we're used to show that the
demand for shorter hours could not
be granted without slowing up pro
duction and further increasing prices
en- account of the shorter supply of
. commodities. All polite people grasped
at that doctrine as an easy explana-
tion Of the high prices mystery.
Within the past fortnight, however,
the drop in foreign exchange has
brought an implied denial of the
above argument. Hopeful leaders,
from cabinet members down, are say
ing that prices will soon come down
because vast stores of food, clothing
and the like, which Europe can no
longer buy, will be dumped on the
home market at almost any hour.
This is taken as confession that
Americans have been paying terribly
high prices because the export gam
bier was taking food out of their
mouths and clothing off the backs
and holding those necessities in stor-
age to sell abroad for more than the
people at home could pay. 1t indi-
Gates that with all the shortening of
working hours in America, our farms
and factories have still turned out q
vast surplus for spectators to hold
Tor safe to Europe.
And hopeful politicians declare high
prices will end as soon as the American
people are allowed to have a bigger
share of their own excess productsl
Crossing to France, we hear Minister
of Commerce Isaac saying: "The only
way to re-establish our credit is to
increase our export trade. We must
not allow the foreign market to be
taken by others. Manufacturers must
reserve large part of their output
for export"
But to that good old gospel so
familiar to Ame leans another con-
servative French faction replies: eff
we export more we will be shorter of
supplies at homo. We cannot be saved
unless we produce more for ourselves
and stop exporting so much"
Arguments, like the above are going
on all over Europe. And the wage
earners, it is reported, are learning
from it all that goods shipped abroad
are goods which labor has produced
but is not permitted to consume. In
"normal" times this process works
smoothly enough; the workers being
eontented with their Giving wage
and not caring what becomes Of the
surplus. But the workers of Europe
have emerged from the war with a
new interest in their work and what
1t is for.
Last summer the American railway
men postponed their wage demands
when the president gave solemn pro-
mise that the government would leave
nothing undone to bring down the cost
Of living. If they have been exerted,
all the powers of the government
have proved useless at that task.
The masses know now. that political
promises do not lower the cost Of
living. The old arguments are all shat.
tered by the facts.