67 



Where we are adding one to our rural population, we are adding three 

 to our city population, and this city population is spreading rapidly in all 

 our states. By furthering seUing at home, therefore, national forces will 

 be put to work that will bring sooner or later a shorter route from 

 producer to consumer. 



VIII. Stable Business through Stable Costs. 



In the last fifteen years the retail prices of the fifteen main food 

 articles for which the average workingman's family spends two-thirds of 

 its income increased 57 per cent. During this time agricultural wages 

 have increased not over one-third, railroad wages perhaps one-fourth, 

 wages in the manufacturing industry from one-fifth to one-fourth. In 

 other words, the purchasing wage of the laborer is rapidly decreasing. 

 If the money wage continue to increase from one-fifth to one-third, while 

 food costs increase from tw^o-fifths to two-thirds, does it take a mathemati- 

 cian to tell that the American laborer will soon be on the poverty line? 



This situation has ominous meaning to every business man in the city 

 especially. Just so long as this situation exists there must be a discon- 

 tent — a discontent justified by facts. The discontent, as all observers 

 know, is already to the breaking point. While it exists business stability 

 is simply unthinkable. 



And yet the business man seems indifferent to a programme for 

 lowering living costs. Were it not so tragic, if written to music this 

 indifference would make good comic opera. Only through lower or at 

 least stable living costs can there possibly be business stabiUty or urban 

 prosperity. In such a situation the worst radical is the one who urges 

 that nothing be done lest it ''disturb business." In such a situation only 

 the one who does something is the conservative. 



Is it not worth the business man's while to support staunchly a 

 movement that will make possible urban welfare and country welfare? 

 That will make possible the increasing of purchasing powder in the country 

 round about? That wdll unquestionably have its effect on living costs 

 and the wage-earner within the city? 



The establishment of a virile, competently manned city market 

 bureau is a good first step in such a movement. 



Mr. Felix Albright: We hear a lot about the high cost of living. 

 Why, those men don't know anything about the high cost of living. These 

 old white-haired men who took part in the Civil War know that wheat 

 sold for $3.40 a bushel; corn $1.60; rye $1.50; poultry about twenty 

 dollars a hundred; sugar twenty-five cents a pound, and all the rest. 

 Now, today, we have wheat at ninety cents. The great trouble is, they 

 talk about educating the farmer. The farmer knows more than the city 

 man does. The city people don't know how to pick out an apple. They 

 can't pick out an apple to eat. 



