The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1922-02-02
The Town and Farmer
Price Problem
BY George E. Roberts

| Il ILL business in the last analysis consists
l7I of an exchange of services. About one
half of the people of this country live
O8 the farms or in towns of less than
$500 people which are chiefly dependent upon
the farmers. These people have lost approxi
mately one-half of their purchasing power, and
it is idle for the people in the other industries to
think that they can 60 as though nothing had
happened Either farm products have got to come
up or other things have got to go down; the
things that come up together have got to come
down together they have got to get together
in some way before we have general state
of prosperity again.
Mere Fiction to "Maintain" Wages
Nobody likes to talk about reducing wages.
The wage-earn naturally opposed to it; it
looks to them like taking the back-track
wouldn't like to see them take the back-track in
any real sense. But they are not taking the back
track if the purchasing power of their wages is
maintained. When they make a stand for the
same wages under present conditions they not
on the defensive; they are trying to gain an ad-
vantage at the expense Of other workers.. If the
farmer feeds the town population at a lower COM
pensation he is entitled to buy what he must have
from the town industries a corresponding
basis.
Moreover, he couldn't go on paying war prices
even if he willing to. 1t is mere fiction to
claim that wages maintained anywhere in
industry when the mills running only half
time and one-half Of the workers are walking the
streets.
The industrial organization is very much like
great machine in that every part is dependent
upon all the other parts. You know if your au
tomobile goes back on you, out on the road
dozen miles from anywhere, that something is
wrong with it; you have got to look over the ma
chine and find what it is 1t doesn't do any good
to swear at it: you have all tried that, you can't
force it; you have got to fix it; you have got to
comply with the conditions under which it runs.
And so it is with this industrial organization, 1t
is highly organized, intricate, delicate machine,
wonderfully efficient when all the industries are
adjusted to each other and working to capacity.
but we have to comply with the conditions under
which it works.
While Waiting for the Sick to Recover
Europe is disorganized an! will not come
back to play it's full part in trade perhaps for
years. We ought to plan to keep our industries
going as well without Europe. We
don't ordinarily export more than about lO per
cent in value of total production, and we
won't lose all Of that. Employment and prosper
ity in this country have always depended largely
upon the amount Of construction work being
DONE and construction work offers the means by
which we can balance industries, afford en-
poyment to our people and tide over this period
of reorganization in Europe. We need to spend
literally billions Of dollars upon the railroads and
public utilities, and billions more upon house
building That is the work should set our
selves to in the next few years, but it cannot
be done on the present level of costs. Farm
products are down, raw materials are down, and
when other things come down to correspond we
will have revival of prosperity.