TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI 517 



gance of it all have not the moral courage to combat the movement, but 

 continue to "put up a bluff," Verily, it is a case of too much front and 

 too little backbond. 



To the wide extension of credit on the part of merchants no small 

 share of the blame is due. It is this granting of credit which enables the 

 stenographer who earns $14 a week to wear two or three hundred dollar 

 fur coats, $16 shoes and $3 to $5 silk stockings. 



Only a few people appear to understand that every article manufactured 

 and sold has only a certain set value to the consumer or user. Any mark 

 above this value is inflated, and comes to the tradesman only when a 

 buying public grows reckless and pays any price asked. Unfortunately, 

 in general, it is only people who can best afford to pay, who appear to 

 understand this fact. It is not the wealthy families who are spending 

 money freely; it is mainly people who have but recently tasted com- 

 parative prosperity. 



For example, there is a banker in northern Iowa who, in the course of 

 a recent convention, said that his wife had refused to pay $25 for a hat 

 at the local millinery store. Imagine her surprise when a week later her 

 maid of all work, who received $8 a week, arrived at the house one after- 

 noon with the $25 hat. The banker's wife had bought an $8 hat, feeling 

 that the $25 hat was too expensive. This banker can write a check for 

 $100,000 any day. However, his wife's maid is the only one who can afford 

 a $25 hat in his house. The banker's wife knows that a hat is worth 

 just so much to her, and no more. The maid has yet to learn that 

 lesson. 



Another woman called me on the telephone recently and said that she 

 was the victim of a profiteer. I asked her what she had purchased, and 

 where. She told me she had purchased a silk shirt for $12 and that now 

 the shirt was at her house, and she had inspected it, she felt that'she was 

 a profiteer victim. I asked her if she had priced other shirts in the store 

 In question, and if any were lower in price. She said "yes" to both 

 questions. I asked if the shirt was for her husband. She said, "no, it is 

 for my boy, he's 13." And we talk of the high cost of living. 



Scarcely a man or woman buys clothes today without complaining of 

 their cost, yet, if a casual observer would take note of their purchases, 

 he would discover that, in many cases, they will not even consider low 

 priced merchandise. 



The insistence of the public upon cloth made from fine wools is a 

 large factor in the high prices of clothing,- according to William M. Wood, 

 president of the American Woolen Company, as related by the daily press. 

 "If our people would consent," was his conclusion, "to wear good, sub- 

 stantial, durable clothes made of the coarser wools, clothing could be 

 purchased at considerably lower prices than those which now prevail." 



His statement in part follows: "It is generally thought that the cost 

 of cloth is the controlling factor in the cost of clothing, but the fact is 

 that the cloth cost is less than half the cost of the completed suit, and 

 other factors contribute quite as much to the price of clothing. 



"In the last five years the price of cloth in the ordinary suit of clothes 

 has advanced no more, indeed has advanced a little less, than the cost 

 of labor and other materials that go into the making of the suit. The 



