6 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



And one of its primary purposes is the feeding of 

 the people and provision for their wants. 



That which is true of credit is true of many in- 

 dustries as well. The great steel corporations are 

 self-contained industries reaching out to different sec- 

 tions of the country, or even to distant lands, for the 

 more efficient performance of their functions. These 

 corporations own great iron-ore deposits in Minnesota 

 and northern Michigan, in Cuba, and in other for- 

 eign parts. They own their own coal-fields and 

 coking plants. They own natural-gas fields and 

 limestone quarries. They own great fleets of vessels 

 which ply upon the Great Lakes, while thousands 

 of miles of railroad have become integral parts of 

 their industrial processes. The Standard Oil Com- 

 pany is a world-wide agency. It owns oil-fields not 

 only in America and Mexico, but in Russia, Rou- 

 mania, and, in fact, all over the world. It owns 

 fleets of sailing vessels, pipe-lines, and oil-tank cars; 

 it manufactures almost everything that it uses in 

 connection with its activities. It is far more than 

 a self-contained industiy. It owns or indirectly 

 controls banks, trust companies, and hundreds of 

 related industries. The American Tobacco Com- 

 pany reaches from the tobacco plantations of the 

 United States and Turkey to its distributing agency 

 in almost every city in the land. The United States 

 Rubber Company owns rubber-plantations, while 

 the sugar-refineries own sugar-plantations in Cuba, 



