The New York herald., 1922-10-23
If Our Inflated Prices Go On.

III OuI Auu0lCO I IlCCS NO Ous
If the Harvard Committee on Eco
nomic Research were an absolutely
infallible prophet its prediction about
the future of American prices would
be gloomy message for this coun-
try. The committee accepts, and the
committee believes we all must ac-
cept, "the present price level as SUBJ
stantially that around which the
fluctuations Of the business cycle
must play" for the next ten years.
What the present price level means
may be expressed in relative terms
by the tables of the Bureau of Sta
tistics of the United States Depart
ment Of Labor on living costs in New
York city on the one hand, and on
the other hand by the tables of the
National Industrial Conference on
living costs in average American
communities.
For September the National Indus
trial Conference Board marks food
in average communities at 80 per
cent higher than in July, 1914, just
before the war; shelter, 65 per cent.
higher; clothing, SO per cent. higher;
fuel and light, 81 per cent. higher,
and sundries, 70 per cent. higher.
The whole family budget. with all
items figured in the proportion gen.
orally used, is placed at 55.6 per cent.
higher than in the month before the
war began. This means that in the
average American community out
side New York in September Of this
year it took $1.551a to do the work
81 did in July, 1914.
AS against these costs for average
communities the Department of
Labor rates New York city in the
cost of living scale at: Food, ,SS.S
per cent. higher than in 1914; cloth
ing, 9S.1 per cent. higher; rent, 56.2
per cent. higher; fuel and light, 97.7
per cent. higher; furniture, 117.9 per
cent. higher, and miscellaneous, 1874
per cent. higher. The consolidated
family budget for all items taken to-
gether is 69.7 higher than in the year
before the war.
New York city, contrary to popular
belief, is not the highest living cost
spot In the country. There are large
cities in the Middle West and West
that equal New York in respect of
living costs, and there are smaller
cities in the Far West that surpass
New York's living costs. A fair av-
erage for the whole country, then, or
for the active industrial part of the
country, may be taken at somewhere
between so and 65 per cent. higher
now than the year before the war.
But II American prices, as reflected
by American living costs, are to con-
tinue for ten years at about 65 per
cent. above what was normal eight
years ago, or even above normal. for
prices were not low in 1914--if we
are going to stay lacked up in our
costs while Europe gradually recov-
ers its economic powers and resumes
its industrial and commercial func-
tions nationally and internationally,
then two things are bound to happen
to this country.
The first is that while our costs
stay up in the air we cannot hope
to sell exports abroad in the measure
to which our productive machinery
is now geared for foreign as we'll as
domestic trade.
The second is that il our costs
stay up in the air while foreign costs
readjust themselves downward, as
compared with ours, not even a tariff
that is grotesquely high can keep
out the low cost foreign products that
will press upon our market of ex-
cesslvely high prices.
And IL American producers be-
cause OF their high costs cannot sell
abroad what they need TO sell abroad
W ulSDOot VI tHtll OutDut,
and IL at the same time American
producers because of those same high
costs must lose even some of their
home market to lower cost foreign
exporters, they will indeed find them
selves between the devil and the deep
blue sea.
Not to be able to sell abroad and
at the same time to be compelled by
the irresistible economic forces of
competitive prices to buy from abroad
would wreck any industrial and trad
ing country on the face of the earth
And il the manufacturing plants Of
the United States began to put up
their shutters far and wide under
such conditions, with bread lines and
soup houses becoming permanent fix
lures IN every industrial community
Of the land, how long could the in