Norwich bulletin., 1921-05-06
TIME FoR,REDEDIcAT1oN TO SERVICE

tailed in Chicago at the rate of $200 per ton. The detectives found that the Texas onion growers were receiving just S42 a ton for them and that the freight from Texas to Chicago came to little over S29 a ton more. That is, the on ions cost, laid down in Chicago, a tri1e over s71 a ton. The other s129 which Chicago consumers paid went, not for onion-juice or even onion smell, but into the Inaws of various Chicago sharks
 Up to the time these facts were brought out and published, Chicago con- sumers with characteristic lucidity and visor, had been denouncing the farmers for the high cost of onions. Since that time. those who are able to read and capable of understanding what they read have changed their tune.
 There used to be such thing as the law of supply and demand. It was sup posed to govern prices and, more or less, affect the rate of production. l have, once or twice ventured to express my modest opinion that this law wasn't as effective, nowadays, as it used to be. The L. S. controller of the currency who is in position to know whereof he speaks, is less restrained in his state ments In a recent address before the District of Columbia bankers, the con troller declared that Manufacturers. | iobbers, wholesalers, retailers, laborers are all in some sort of combination to l frustrate this one-time fundamental law of economics. Each is out to get his first" The result is that prices have been driven to a point where there is
 no relation between them and actual values
 The law of supply and demand"
 said he, is as dead as a New England salt mackerel."
 This is emphatic It is also clear.
 No one can fail to understand it.
 The controller of the currency is not, necessarily, either inspired or infallible. But his holding that position is prima facie evidence that he has some inan- cial acurnen and the position itself gives him large scope for observation. When the fat-footed assertion of such an au- thority confirms our more or less hesl- tating suggestion we can. at least, take the comfort of knowing that we are not
 absolutely ignorant cranks, isolltad in
 our unreason.
 If the old law of supply and demand
 is no longer the decisive factor in bus
 mess, what has taken or is to take its Il place? That is a rather serious dues-
 tion It cannot be that the present orgy
 and saturnaliat of proiteering Is to con-
 tinue unchecked. To assume even the
 possibility of such thing would be tc surrender all the moral gains the wcr'5 has made in six thousand years II woulj be retrogression to primeval .ahuman.
 ties.
 For there Is really small moral dis \ tinction between the modern profitee' [ and the "robber- baron" of the Darl Ages. That brigand took what he coul' get. right or wrong, by virtue of super ior strength The profteer takes wha he can, get, right or wrong, by virtue 0 | superior craft and cunning. And botl act in accordance with the same pfin . ciple of utter selfshness and unmoralit, , which governs the relations of thos' whom we are pleased to term "the lowe t animals" This is something which on ! timists hoped the human race had out grown. But has it?
 / That is q question which this genera