We are told that these are good times, the best we ever knew. It is triumphantly announced to us that we have in one year invested nearly seventy millions of dollars in foreign securities, largely in railroad bonds of Russia, in German Treasury bills, and English Exchequer loans. This is very good; it sounds well. As an offset to it one should apologize for offering the simple but multifold statements from the columns of the daily press bearing upon the greater cost of living in Western states. It is seven per cent. greater, says one dealer in statistics. It is twenty-five per cent. greater than it ever was, says another. The housewives of America, the best of all statisticians, say that in 1902 it cost thirty-three per cent. more to live than it did in 1899. These prices of bare commodities in these days of super-excellent transportation go well toward comparing with those we have shown as existing in the far-off mountain communities in the days of pack-horse and ox-team transportation. If this be so, is all well with America? The prices are the results of combinations and monopolies. The monopolies are based largely on non-competitive transportation. The iron trails are built over the hearthfires of America. The iron trails must do otherwise than thus.
We are informed that during the last year the balance of trade in favor of the United States was something like seven hundred millions of dollars. "Figures up to March twenty-first (1902), just finished," says a careful report, "are so stupendous as to be staggering. * * * Nations have generally measured their prosperity by their foreign trade."
There might perhaps be other ways of measuring that prosperity. As against the above imposing aggregation of figures, I offer a simple newspaper paragraph printed in 1902, which sounds like Kaskaskia, or Alder Gulch, or the end of the Santa Fé Trail: "Potatoes have been selling for a dollar and seventy-five cents a bushel in Chicago this week," says the item. "A year ago the price was about forty cents. This enormous advance, coupled with the corresponding rise in the prices of nearly all vegetables, presents a serious economic problem for large families with small incomes." The same paper goes on to say: "The greatest sufferers from the high price of potatoes are the small wage-earners. They have learned to depend upon potatoes almost as much as upon bread. Yet, at a dollar and seventy-five cents a bushel, this staple food is out of the reach of many. The best thing they can do is to fall back on rice, which is an excellent substitute for potatoes and is still reasonable in price. Unfortunately, large numbers of wage-earners are incapable of making a sudden change in their diet. Many women that have depended upon potatoes all their lives do not know how to cook rice or hominy. They are as helpless with these substitutes as were many of the Irish people with the corn meal that was sent to them from America during the potato famine, or as Hindus, who are accustomed to rice, would be when they were given wheat flour to cook. This scarcity of potatoes is likely to cause a good deal of hardship before the proper use of the cheaper staples is learned."
