OUR AMERICAN LETTER

Otago Witness, Issue 2921, 9 March 1910, Page 15

OUR AMERICAN LETTER

(From Oue Own Co&respcndent.) NEW YORK, January 8. While a variety of national problems —the tariff, the Government revenues and disbursements, conservation, and the like —have been engrossing the attention of legislators and of the newspapers, the average man has had one of his own that was far more important to him. The price of food-stuffs in this country has gone beyond all records—even beyond the pinnacled heights reached during the stress of our civil war a half century ago. This has been an individual problem; it is now beginning to be one of national importance, ftt really begins to look like a hard winter for the average man —some of the political writers discuss &im as the ultimate consumer. He is prosperous and hard up at the same time. He does not lack for work, and he is getting better wages than the men of any other country engaged in the same class of work, but the very high cost of Hving keeps him strained to maintain his income level with the outgo. The high and increasing cost of all the necessities of life is "a household and an economic problem just now. It won't be long before it will be a political problem of the first importance. Far-sighted men in the Administration and in the two Houses of Congress already recognise this. Even now they are wondering what they are going to say when the average man in the guise of a voter and party follower asks them what they are going to do to relieve his lot. If you will remember the protracted arguments that preceded the making of the troublesome Tariff Bill last summer, you may also remember that I told you how the average man asked that his burdens to be lightened.. He was laughed off.- His demands for cheaper food, clothing, and shelter were not granted. President Taft contends that the new tariff law is not a cause of- high prices. But it is quite as true that it is not a preventative of high prices, nor has it in any way been helpful in securing low prices. That, after all, is one of the great indictments against it. Everywhere men are talking about high prices and the increasd cost of living. On the great mass of staple commodities present prices bear no relation whatsoever to value. Lafe Young, of lowa, is a distinguished country journalist, and as such feels the public pulse pretty accurately. He was in Washington last week, and made this prediction : " Before our young men are grandfathers they will see corn selling like coffee is sold to-day—by'the pound. Corn is selling for 90 cents a bushel in some parts of the West, and it promises to go higher. Why is this high price ? Because the American people are living too extravagantly, and have been for years. We don't wear the same kind of clothes that we did even 10 years ago. A 15-dollar suit of clothes used to be good enough for any of us, but to-day we are paying 35 dollars for our clothes. T remember a State Senator of lowa who . went into his district with a 15-dollar suit of clothes on, and it precipitated an

attack upon him, charging extravagance. The farmers are prosperous, of course, and in my corner of the country they don't want any tinkering with the tariff and will not so long as they are getting

8 dollars 50 cents for their stock."

If Mr Young had gone a little deeper into his illustration he might have discovered that the reason why a man who

used to pay 15 dollars for a suit of clothes now pays 35 dollars, is that the suit which formerly sold for 15 dollars now sells for 35 dollars. Sometimes the

average man is inclined to think that he cannot get as good a suit of clothes for 35 dollars as he used to get for 15

■dollars. In other days the average man iwho earned 20 dollars a week could more easily afford 15 dollars for a suit of clothes then he can afford 35 dollars today, when he is earning 27 dollars 50 ijcents a week. The price of labour has gone up, but it has far, failed to keep pace with the price of .the necessities of labour.

'■;.■■ The average man knows the sordid 'details of his problem, but he is not apt ? to know whether it is a tariff problem, I an anti-trust problem, a currency problem, i: or, as Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot said I iiere last week, a conservation problem. I To find the answer to that question is

I the task that he will presently ask the ' rulers of the country to solve for him. /The average man knows that Mr Pinchot . is on solid ground when he says : " The income of the average family in the i United States is less than 600 dollars a I year. To increase the cost of living to I such a family beyond the reasonable "profits of legitimate business is wrong. Ipt is not merely a question of a few cents •more a day £pr the necessaries I of Jife, or a few cents less I a day for wages. Far more is at intake—the. health or sickness of little (babies, tKe education or ignorance of children, virtue or vice in young daughters, honesty or criminality in young sons, the working power of breadwinners, the integrity of families, the provision for old age, in a word, the wel- : fare and happiness or the misery and j itjegredatdon of the plain people are inI .volved in the cost of living. To the I special interests an unjust rise in the cost k| living means simply higher profit, but Hsb those who pay it, that profit is feim«asured in schooling, warm clothing, Hg res , e rve to meet emergencies, a fair llchanee to make the fight for comfort, latency, and right living." f jfo satisfactory explanation has yet aiven to the average man of the real pmJL for the prevailing high prices. WVhen he asks about beef, wool, milk, or "tiofcton, he is not given any clear-cut and Mtlifaetofy reply. Dealers and producers i*y that their profits are no larger than they should be, and deny that they are responsible for the burdens of the consular. Such investigations as have been

attempted show odd things. For instance, in beef; the lower the grade of the meat the greater is the percentage of gross pr6ht. In Boston, for instance, the rate of gross profit is nearly twice as great for beef costing 8 cents at wholesale, as for beef costing 11 cents and cents: Low-priced beef * is ' marked up nearly twice as much relatively as high-priced beef. In other words," it is a safe inference that the poor people pay nearly twice as much profit as the well-to-do. Some retail dealers here nave confessed to me that they always try to make at least 30 per cent, profit in meats, but apologise by saying that the cost of distribution to their customers, is high and the retail business overdone. The multiplication of small shops is a burden to consumers, and no source of riches to their keepers, they say. Thus it goes. Everybody passes his burden along to the shoulders of the ultimate consumer. He, luckless wight, is paid a fixed salary or wage. There is nobody to carry his load. But he is beginning to grow restless under the burdens he is carrying for others. sooner or later something will have to be done for him. It depends upon himself how long it will be before that time comes.

J. Pierpont Morgan to-day bids fair to outstrip John D. Rockefeller as the nation's richest man. .He has just succeeded in having his powerful Guaranty Trust Company in this city absorb two other New York institutions—the Fifth Avenue Trust Company and Morton Trust Company. The Guaranty, before the merger, stood fourth in the point of aggregate resources among the trust companies of the United States; the Morton twelfth, and the Fifth Avenue twentyninth. When the merger is finally effected it will show resources that will probably make it stand first in the list of the country's trust companies. Its capital will be 5,000,000 dollars, with the aggregate deposits at 96,000,000 dollars. It is said in Wall street that the Guaranty will have such powerful affiliations through the house of Morgan as to make it share prominently in all of the great national syndicate underwYitings. It will also develop its. foreign •connections, and an effort will be made to have the merged company the largest in America in this class of business, too. Mr Morgan also stands forth in the public light because of his assistance to Mrs E. H. Harriman in giving the State of New York the largest park Tn the world, wholly dedicated to the use of the people. This great gift, which was announced by Governor Hughes in his annual Message to the State Legislature on Monday last, consists in part of the wooded and mountainous west shore of the Hudson for about 40 miles north from this city. This great territory is to be bought by a joint subscription between the State and a score of" its rich citizens —headed . by Mr Morgan and Mr Rockefeller, with subscriptions of 1,250,000 dollars each. In addition, Mrs Harriman, the prime mover in the projects, donates, without cost, a great 10,000-acre tract of primeval forest, adjoining the long, slender park at a ooint about midway of its length. This tract was purchased by the dead railroad, executive to protect the superb country seat that he built on the mountain-top at Arden, six miles back from the Hudson. It was his original intention to present the land to the State as a gift, and his widow's act is simply the execution of his wish. For a number of years there has been constant battle between public-spirited citizens and quarrymen. respite the fact that the mountainous shores of the Hudson contain a low grade of rock, only fit for crushing into . street pavements, their accessibility has rendered them easy prey. When the quarryman began upon the mighty palisades, directly opposite the city, there was a public protest which resulted in their joint purchase by the States of New York and New Jersey as a park reservation. After that the quarrymen .noved a few miles further north and began despoiling the exquisite highlands where the river noses its way through the mountains —the beautiful site of the National Military Academy at West Point. _ The new park will conserve to the public for generations to come the finest park site within many, many miles of this city. Mayor Gaynor, who, you recall, was the only Tammany Hall candidate elected in the recent contest m this city, has dampened the ardour of that organisation of professional politicians by almost ignoring it in his appointments. One Tammany man, Rhinelander Waldo, has been appointed Fire Commissioner. All the rest have been left in the cold, and it vs very chilly sometimes around the headquarters of an organisation, whose rank and file are held in line by a distribution of offices. The new Mayor has picked a remarkably fine cabinet. For instance, his Commissioner of Bridges—in direct charge of four of the world's greatest transpontine structures—is Kingsley L. Martin, son of the designer of the Brooklyn bridge, and a life-long bridge engineer himself. Somehow it has not occurred to many of our Mayors to appoint bridge engineers to this important post. Perhaps' it is because men with a "C.E." to their names have been too busy with their own businesses to tinker with politics. Be that as it may, the average Commissioner of Bridges chosen heretofore has been a lawyer or a merchant —in two conspicuous cases, saloonkeepers with large political followings. Then folk in New York have wondered why things in the bridge departement went wrong, why grievous blunders were made, blunders by the dozen, any one of which would have cost the head of a railway executive. New 1 brooms sweep clean., and perhaps the Mayor will some day show a better allegiance to the crooked machine that placed him in nomination. That is very doubtful. Mayor Gaynor very well knows that Tammany did not place him at the head of its ticket, because it wanted him.

'He was put there to carry through, because of his known honesty and single purpose, a ticket somewhat worse than mediocre. Then Fate, in one of her whimsical ironies, caused him to be elected and the rest of the ticket ingloriously defeated. Worse luck could hardly | have been imagined by the Tammany | leaders. Their sole hojie then rested in j the Mayor's appointments. There was a | chance—the sole Tammany appointment i of Waldo in all the Mayor's long list must ; have been made as repayment of his ! obligation, if obligation ever there was. As I post this letter word comes from j Washington that the President has dismissed Gifford Pinchot, and the curtain seems to be rising mi a great national scandal. It may easily result before it is done in the complete disruption of the strong Republican party. The battle between the Chief Forester and his chief, Secretary of the Interior R. A. Ballinger, have already been explained in these l.eters. Suffice it now to say that in a word they concern Pinchot's charges that Ballinger favoured his friends in the dis- | tribution and sale of certain Government lands. Ballinger reiterated his honesty | in these transactions, and Mr Taft asked I Mr Pinchot to be good and let the matter blow over. Criticisms of superior officers by their subordinates do not add to the l.uctre of administrative discipline. Pinchot refused to let a thing that he believed wrong " blow over." He sought to win the ear of the President, and placed Mr Taft in a position that made dismissal necessary. Now that it has come, the fight between the Roosevelt Radicals—of which Gifford Pinchot is now head and front—and the Conservative wing of the Republican party is on in earnest. Even before the President's letter dismissing Pinchot was given out it had begun in the House of Representatives by the defeat of the Conservative Republicans by the Radicals in combination with the Democrats. The ultraConservative Speaker (Mr Cannon) for once was helpless. The allies took away from him the opportunity to appoint his supporters as members of a joint committee to investigate the entire BallmgerPinchot affair and placed it in the hands of the entire House. This at least ensures a fair fight. That it will be a great fight no one now doubts.