Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1933-02-01
A HOME PROBLEM

n HUME ROohGu
We have now travelled far enough into 1888 to be able
to see that there will be no radical change in c%ondltions
during the first part of the year at least. Business IN the
early months of the year is going to be considerably be-
low business in the corresponding months of 1881. Last
year, beginning in midsummer, there was a decided pick
up. 1t is to be hoped that there will be a similar pickup
this wear and that, with no national election to interrupt
it, .he improvement will be of more permanent character.
One of the phenomena of this stage of the depression is
the continuing of the belief in the minds of a great many
people that somehow or other our return to prosperity de-
ponds on Europe. This belief is of course fostered by the
internationalists who are anxious to have the war debts
cancelled and imports into the United States increased.
But these internationalists have as yet been unable to
bring forth any convincing argument to show that debt
cancellation will make things easier in the United States.
They say that the cancellation of the debts will give the
people of Europe more money with which to buy our pro-
ducts. There might be some benefit there If cancellation
were really cancellation. But if we let Europe off about
these debts the people of the United States will have to
pay the debts. So, for every million dollars which Europ-
can purchasing power might be increased by cancellation,
a million will be taken from the purchasing power Of the
American people by increased taxation. So, assuming
that Europe would spend in our country all OF the money
saved by cancellation, which of course she wouldn't, we
would be no better off so far as our commerce IS con-
cerned. The European taxpayer would simply be relieved
at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Europe, except insofar as she started the World war,
did not cause our depression and cannot cure it. The de-
preston was caused by over-expansion and extreme de-
flation. Now the value of our raw materials is pretty
thoroughly Debated and prices of finished goods are rap
idly being Debated too as are our wage scales.
What then remains to be done to insure economic con-
valescence? What remains to be done is to debate taxes,
and this can only be done by debating the expenses OF
our governments, national, state and local. When this is
done, when budgets are balanced in nation, state, city and
village, and economic deflation is entirely completed, we
will be ready for recovery.
What we must concentrate on now, therefore, is not Eu-
ropes problems but our own problems of the high cost OF
government.
So many of our financial writer's are lined up with the
internationalists that it is comforting from time to time
to quote from one who can see clearly. For instance, a re-
cent article by R. w. McNeel says, in touching on this
phase of our economic situation:
"In 1888 the people of this country or their representa-
tive will have to decide whether they want fewer holes in
their clothes, and more holes IN the street p%avements, or
the reverse; whether they want more comforts in the
home, or whether they prefer to spend their money to sup
port obsolete Washington bureaus, and have their waste
baskets cluttered up with useless reports and statistics
whether they prefer to pay the interest on the mortgages
on their homes, or prefer to lose their homes in order that
governments may continue expensive frills on our educa-
tional system, which a previous generation got along
without.
"The chief solution Of our troubles lies in our own back
yard, not in France, or England, or Latvia, or In the King
dom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes."