Oxford eagle. (Oxford, Lafayette Co., Miss.) 1876-current, 1920-12-02
.If YOU WANT ARMY RAInCOATs
MUST PAY TOLL Of PU0FITEERS
Continued from page one.)
necessary, but it ought to be.
A Loss of $4,000.

AASSSAJ ~S -
A Loss Of $4,000.
Let us now pass on to the next
cage and view the animals there.
Just how much profiteers have made
through selling articles to the gov
eminent, buying them back again at
absurd prices and reselling them to
the public at extortionate prices
amounting in some cases to 1000 per
cent, it would be impossible to say.
One concern is said to have bought
1 900, 100000 yards of olive drab
shifting at loss to the government
of IL to II cents yard, because the
peoples money bought the shlrting
in the first place and paid a good
profit at that time. Here was about
$4,000 wiped out in one transac-
ton.
Another instance is that of an army
lieutenant, who, working in the sup
ply base in Brooklyn, N. Y, saw "the
possibilities" promptly applied for
his discharge, got it, and immediate
ly went into the business of dealer
in army supplies. According to pub
lished reports he bought 100000 knit
ted mufflers-you remember the girls
knitting mufflers for the Red Cross
and for the boys who had no mufflers
at so cents each. The government
had bought these mufflers at $3.50
each.
We now pass along to the candy
counter. Candy to the extent of
2,750,000 packages sold to New
York candy broker for one cent each
and resold by him at staggering
profit.
An amazing thing about these
transactions is that many of these
brokers put no cash into the deal.
They merely purchase the goods up
on condition that they are to pay
when they have the goods carted
away. Then they resell the goods
to others at enormous profits, and
these others pay the dealer before he
pays the government. Thus, many
men have CLEANED a rich harvest
with no investment and NO assets.
Instances are reported where a
large fortune in materials of all
sorts and descriptions is being al
lowed to lay in idleness in army store
houses.
In the three huge buildings at the
army supply base in Brooklyn there
are at the present time acres upon
acres of building materials that new
er will be used by the army, and
which. if offered at public sale,
would be of considerable help in the
present HOUSING crisis There are
plumbers supplies in quantities al
together too large for the needs of
the present army.
Miles of Goods Held.
There are in this same warehouse
paints and varnishes enough to sup
ply all of the interior decorators in
this city and enough surplus kegs OF
nails to supply the whole building
trade. There are tools which can
not be purchased on the market and
of which workingmen are in great
need.
Electric supplies of every sort are
| lying about in the greatest abund-
ance and there is little or no likeli-
| hood, according to men at the base,
of the government having any use
for the greater part of them. There
are ladders, chisels. wrepches and
every kind of article the carpenter,
steamftter or other household work
er could want boarded there despite
the fact that the scarcity and cost of
these same things on the general
market are such that it is reflected
in the cost of all household repairs
and improvements.
Employees in these buildings say
that if you walk through every floor
you will have walked twelve miles,
yet floor after foor. is crammed from
end with just the things that the
public needs to meet the conditions
thrust upon it by the war.
The food departments contain can
ned goods of every description in
super-abundance and tons upon tons
of coffee are lying about out of reach
Of the consumer.
At the Brooklyn army supply base
upward of / 100000 tubes of chloride
of lime were burned last month be-
cause they were no longer of any use
to the department, Nand thera still re-