Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1920-05-30
JOKE PROSECUTIONS.

The prosecution of profiteering in the United States, both by state and federal prosecutors, is nothing more than a joke.
 With sounding of trumpets and much verbal accompaniment Attorney General Palmer announced some time ago that the profieers would be jailed. Throughout the country with sound- ing of trumpets and verbal outbursts but little smaller in volume or milder in intensity, the federal and state at torneys took up the cry.
 Today-six months later-Palmer is pointing with pride to his record and the various federal and state dis trict attorneys more or less are doing the same thing.
 What have they done?
 In some cities a retail shoe dealer, grocer, a small fry wholesaler has been arrested. Perhaps he has been indicted. In many cases the charges against him have been dismissed. They have been dropped almost as soon as they were brought.
 These scattered and ineffective prosecutions, often unjust, have not had the effect of reducing prices one penny We have had more prosecu- tions in the sugar business than in any other. Yet the price of sugar con- tinues to mount.
 The prosecutors have not gone after a single manufacturer of a product that is used nationally, so far as We know. There should be one exception to this statement-the American Moolen company case, and that has 2 been brought only during the past 8week, and already is being discounted Friday the papers carried the news of the conviction in New York of a Binghamton clothing firm on a charge <4f profiteering. This firm, it seems, charged $40 for suit of clothing that cost $2O. 1t sold another suit that cost $12.50 for $40. Another was sold for $45 which cost $23.5O. When a merchant sells suit of clothes that cost $2O for $40, the chances are that with his overhead expense not includ- ed the merchant is not eXacting an un- reasonable profit.
 ' Be that as it may and granting that he is profiteering.
 At the same time that the merchant was being found guilty and fine of $l31,00O was being assessed against him, paper jobbers were being permit ted, unmolested, to sell for $7,000 a carload of paper of which the mill price to large papers is $2,OO0.
 It is one thing to arrest and prose cute petty thief. It is something else again to arrest and prosecute a highwayman who steals in big fig ures.
 . At the same time that the Bing- hampton merchant was being fined for selling $20 suit for $40, dealers in oil, in sugar, in coal and score For more of other commodities were wanted for it. They are not being seeking and receiving what they bothered
 2 The figures in the paper situation are given because this newspaper IS more familiar with them than 1t IS with the condition in other lines.
 The larger newspapers, protected by contracts, pay about 5 cents a \ pound for their paper. The smaller newspapers, not protected by contract are compelled to pay a dealer It alcents pound.
 We are informed that this same con- dition prevails with regard to other supplies. As yet there have been no prosecutions.
 The department of justice and the federal and state prosecutors who are ' hammering hard at S5,000 retail mer- { chants and doing nothing to halt or hamper the profiteers are infamously prostituting their offices.
 Their claims that they are helping < in the fight to reduce the high cost of { lifing by so doing are an insult to every honest man.