PUNISHING THE PROFITEER.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 15203, 16 October 1919, Page 3

PUNISHING THE PROFITEER.

Americans are up in arms at the profiteer, who has been skinning the hide and drawing the blood of the consuming public so long that the people will not rest until ho lias been suitably punished (writes the San Francisco correspondjeiit of'the Christcnurch "Press"). It : is recognised that mero fines, no matter 1 how large, will not meet the case, for a tine to a profiteer means less than a fine to a rich man driving an automobile while in an intoxicated condition. The drunken autoists, as such, cannot pass the line on to the consumer, whilst the profiteer can, and does, if ho is further permitted. ■ The temper of the American populace has been aroused to sucli a pii.cn that they are demanding drastic measures with the robbers of the consuming public, nothing less than terms of imprisonment are expected to be dealt the ;food hogs and their kidney. The country is urging the Government to put in gaol the i big criminals and not the retailers alone. One newspaper voices the situation from tlie consumer's standpoint succinctly in the following terms: "What America demands is the spectacle of a rumber of big profiteers, and the bigger the better, peering from behind.the bars of Leavenworth or ATjlanta penitentiary, where their money 1 cannot convert the cells into clubrooms. Nothing short ojf that will satisfy us, for nothing else can convince the people that the purpose of the governmental I probe is to punish the guilty and not ' merely to protect them by swatting the small shopkeeper. Wo demand punishment of the primary robber, the big profiteer whose crimes incite the robberies of others." Meanwhile official Washington is selling hundreds of thousands of carloads of prime food, formerly intended for the ! United States Army, should the war have lasted after the armistice of last ■ November. The people all over the United. States have given this whole•pome food a ready welcome, for it has been sold at prices very far below the present-day exorbitant demands of the shopkeepers. The parcels post has been heavily taxed in distributing the mil- ■ lions of small orders of Government food sent in by local postmasters from rural districts.