ABUSES OF PROFITEERING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1712, 31 December 1919, Page 6

ABUSES OF PROFITEERING.

Like other countries, America is in the throes of a. profiteering campaign, where prices have .skyrocketted until the scale demanded lor the necessaries of life is almost out ot sight. One Now York enterprising tradesman has (writes Hie San • Francisco correspondent of Hie Press) turned his predicament to useful purpose in hisMiicthods of exposing the Vent priditemv Thousands of-pedestrians on Forty-Second .■ street,, between Fifth and Ma’disoiUavcmte.s, have been entertaint'd. ins true tedand thrilled to . sympathetic mirth' by the -sign painted on the shotr. window of a well: known hat merehaiu,' who. tor .six' years l;Jis;been amiably t and profitably,..supplying<coinmtllet'sover the'river, natives, visiting firemen and foreign guests with modish, rakish, modest, sportive, debonair and snappy chapeaux for moderate sums. Hut tho iron entered into the good hattist’s soul, and irony into his advertisement, with such unexpected public interest that traffic policemen were called off their posts to keep a hilarious crowd of fellow sufferers in tho rent problem stepping lively. The sign on the window read as follows: “Keep this under your hat—Tho reason 1 am moving: From 19L‘i to 1918 I paid 7-300 dollars for this little store, 12 by -0 feet. Last year 1 renewed for SGBO dollars. Last month I was told to get out or pay 13,500 dollars. That’s why I am going to move.

I’ve been fighting the lI.C. of L. for seventeen years,, and T am not going to begin now to rob the public to pay this landlord. \Cait yon beat this for rent, profiteering!?” For the henefit-.of tho inquisitive pithliedho hat merchant gave the name of bis landlord in letters a foot high, tints showing no favouritism in his application of the old adage, “It pays to advertise.”