The Winslow mail., 1925-01-16

yield and poor quality of his crop,
but the cotton and potato growers
took very much lower prices for their
largely increased output. The factory
hand and the coal miner certainly did
not do very well-witness the idleness
of the cotton and other textile mill
operatives and the low price with re-
duced output of bituminous coal. The
reduction in the volume of employ
ment was worst at mid-year, but evil
dences of it were found late in De-
cember in smaller pay rolls and re-
duced opportunity to labor.
The year closed with optimism rul
ing, with a stock market unapproach-
ed for breadth and strength since the
boom days of 1901, when the industries
of the country, as the saying was,
entered the Stock Exchange" with
industries getting back to approx
mately full time, and with the farmers
return, again collectively speaking,
the best since 1919. A statement of
the moving causes and an apportion-
ment of the credit for these improve
ments seem to deserve at least pass
ing notice.
Three really big favorable develop
ments of the year stand we'll out in
any review of 1924 These were the
report and subsequent adoption Of the
plans of the Reparations Oawes)
committee, the fortuitous combination
of large American grain crops (cOrn
excepted), with short yields in prac
tically all other countries, and the
election of November, which set the
seal of popular approval upon con-
servative ideas of government and
wrote off so-called progressivism as
doubtful political asset The first
named of these three causes may be
said to have hurried forward the
formerly slow healing of the wounds
suffered by the worlds currencies, the
second demonstrated that the coun-
try's basic industry. farming, was not
yet played out, while the third SEEM
ed to have fired the charge that shook
the stock market out of it's deliberate
forward pace, awakened the spirit of
speculation and of Enterprise, and
made safe for while the position
of the country's business interests,
which now apparently do not dread,
as they did while ago, legislative
assaults of congressional witch doc
tors" and medicine men,"
With every disposition to give credit
to our countrymen who worked to
bring about the stabiliZation of the
exchange market, or those who at
election time set their faces firmly
toward conservative men and methods,
we think it only fair to say that some
European countries previous to 1924
had already taken stands in favor Of
betterment of the exchange markets.
Great Britain never did pander to the
permanently cheap money idea; Aus
tria, with foreign aid, it is true. ante
dated Germany's efforts to emerge
from the mOrasS of cheap money,
while Italy two years ago chose con-
servatism in preference to the Soviet
doctrine of treating your neighbor's
property as your own. AS regards
the rise in wheat prices and the big
exports to which many give chief
credit for the great rally, one feels
inclined to thank nature and the
proverbial luck of the United States
for the enhancement of our crops at
time when foreign crops were heavi-
ly reduced In 1891 a similar dis
pensation favored America, that time
mainly at the expense of Russia, which
today, as then, suffers from famine,
not entirely, as then, a work of ma
ture, but partly of hare-brained men
led by designing knaves masquerading
as administrators of so-called super
adUanood cfafp