The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1922-04-07

Some of the really old fellows
may enjoy the Miami Herald's
! little dissertation on the humble
nickel for they can remember
when the nickel was quite a fac
tor in the financial family. The
Herald says:
The nickel used to be nimble and
aristocratic little coin. 1t held its
head high, because it was good ir
trade for large list of useful and
ornamental commodities.
Many people can remember when 6
nickel would buy cake of soap or 6
loaf of bread, big bundle of news
papers of a fat package of chewing
neat, if not ga1dy pocket handker-
chief. Those were the good old days
only the nickel was so coy. 1t took
at least fifteen minutes of perfectly
good time to earn one. You could
buy a shoe shine for a nickel, but by
the time you had acquired the nickel
you didn't care whether you had 6
shine or not.
The hey-day of the nickel came in
when it acquired new and hobby
name. The flivver made the nickel
famous by attaching to it the cogno-
men of the jitney. Of course the
time soon came when jitney was no
longer a jitney, but the name chung
like the fragrance around the broken
vase, and even today jitney means a
nickel when you talk about it, though
it is a dime when you pay it.
Then came the war and the nickel
almost disappeared from view. 1t
became so small that it was hardly
visible to the naked eye. Alone and
unaided it would not buy anything,
except two two-cent stamps. It's
humiliation was complete and it
skunk away in abject shame. The
nickel was in a fair way to replace
the atom as the symbol of the ulti-
mate in smallness.
But you can't keep a good man
down, as Jonah remarked on one his
toric occasion. Lately the nickel has
been attempting, with some small
degree of success, to stage a come
back. With the removal of Uncle
Sans tax there are some mild and
harml IS drinks that can be had in
exchange for a fve-cent piece. Here
and there are rumors of five-cent
loaves of bread, though not much is
said of the size of the loaves. Gum
and cough drops, small parcels of
washing powder, and few other
things which nobody really longs to
buy, can be purchased by our old
friend of by-gone days.
A thirteen percent drop in living
costs gives some hope that the nickel
will resume it's ertswhile place of
power and pomp. But the trouble is
that as he lifts his head in new
access of pride, he becomes again
more difficult to secure. AS soon as
he becomes worth something it takes
little more time and work to get
him. AS prices go down so do wages,
and as soon as the nickel becomes
strong enough to enter into our
financial calculations it becomes
harder to get.
There is something witchlike in the
activities of the nimble jitney. But
in his risings and fallings is the
whole philosophy Of our economic
system. AS long as the things we buy
are made by ourselves, who receive
wages for making. them, there is a
distinct connection between our in
come and our outgo. There cannot
very we'll be large salaries with very
low prices. The financial see-saw
does not go up at both ends at the
same time. Which seems to be the
reason that the coal miners are not
able to enforce their demands for
more money, unless somebody is to
pay more for coal. And everything
like that.