sumer of that particular egg to write the original seller telling him the final amount paid for the eggs and the date on which they were bought.

The correspondence that followed showed that these eggs had been sold in Tennessee early in December, 1911, at 17 cents a dozen. Between that sale and the purchase by the final consumer the eggs seemed to have passed through the hands of many middlemen, including one of the great cold storage companies. The total toll earned by these handlers was 33 cents a dozen, or one cent less than twice the amount received by the farmer.

It is such things that have made the question of the cost of living one of the real questions in the minds of the American people to-day. And somebody has to solve it sooner or later.

Statistics gathered from all the world point with more or less certainty to the conclusion that, although in the past fifteen years the rise in the cost of living abroad has been about 13 per cent or a little more, the rise in the United States has been about 40 per cent. Reduced to plain figures this means that whereas the European citizen's dollar has shrunk to about 83 cents the American dollar, measured by purchasing power of necessities, has dwindled to about 71 cents during this period.

What are we going to do about it? The answer to that question will solve all the economic, commercial, and industrial problems of the next few years. There is one thing perfectly obvious in the foreground

which is that our peculiar part of the problem is to discover and correct the causes that have curtailed the buying power of the American dollar so much faster than that of the dollar in Europe.

It is not the problem, nor is it the habit, of the American people to worry much over economic causes that affect all the world equally. The main underlying cause of the shrinking dollar all over the world is the increasing production of gold throughout the world, brought on by the discovery of the Rand and by the improved processes of gold mining. It accounts for the shrinkage of the European dollar to 83 cents but most emphatically it does not account for the additional shrinkage of

our dollar to 71 cents and that is the thing that we want to find out about. As a nation we are willing to take our chances on equal terms with all the other nations of the world in the production and use of wealth, but we are not willing, unless for some good and sufficient reason, to find ourselves handicapped in comparison with all the other nations of the world by an undue tax of 12 cents in the dollar. Yet that is the condition in which we find ourselves.

It is possible, indeed it is very probable, that the undue rise in the cost of living here is due to our failure to adopt corrective methods and new theories of commerce and of barter that have been adopted with greater or less success by the people of other lands. In Germany, for instance, in almost every hamlet there are banks that lend money to the farmer, to the little merchant, and even to the ultimate consumer at rates far below the rates even in our well settled communities. The total of this business runs into the billions every year. Perhaps in these community banks and in the doctrine of thrift and care that they teach that they indeed enforce there is a corrective for our national agricultural extravagance and for a part of the ruinous burden laid upon our poorer community. Again, in the United Kingdom there is in operation a system of coöperative stores that does a business every year of more than $500,000,000, and that saves more than $50,000,000 to its customers, or 9 per cent. on the commodities of life bought through those stores. There may be something in that worth jotting down for comparison with our own ruinous merchandizing system and with the puny and half abortive efforts of our own people to establish in this country a similar system. Perhaps these things are part of the real reason for this great difference in the cost of living; for it is conceivable that commerce in foreign countries has not permitted the growth of the power of the middleman, because that growth was limited automatically by the competition of coöperative merchandise.

In any case, the facts are these: We are in many ways a most inefficient nation and our inefficiency seems to be costing

us about twelve cents on the dollar. This is the fundamental reason for tariff reform, for a better banking system, for coöperative buying and selling-for national thrift. IF WE RAISED WHAT WE EAT Mr. Bradford Knapp, the director of the Farmers' Demonstration Work, tells the following story of the town of Irmo in the Dutch Fork community in South Carolina:

There were about twenty-five farmers gathered together in the forenoon in the schoolhouse to hear Commissioner Watson of South Carolina and myself. I had been talking at other places on diversified farming and the necessity. of producing home supplies as a safe economic basis for farming. After making a brief statement I told the audience that I appreciated that they were doing many of these things in Dutch Fork, and that they would pardon me if I conducted a little quiz to find out just the extent of what I believed to exist there. So I asked them to answer my questions by raising their hands in response to my inquiries.

I first asked them how many of them produced all of the corn that was needed for family use and for feeding the livestock. Every hand was raised. I asked them how many of them grew wheat, and every hand went up. I asked them how many of them took their wheat and corn to the mill there in Dutch Fork and had it ground into corn meal and flour for the use of their families, and every hand was raised. I asked them how many of them produced their own hay, which was a material question in view of the fact that hay was worth about $35 a ton in Columbia at that time, and I found that practically every farmer in that section produced his own hay. I asked them how many of them kept hogs and produced their own meat, and found that this was also the custom of every farmer. They also kept chickens. Finally, one of the farmers from the audience said to me: "Mr. Knapp, we are proud of the fact in this section that we go to Columbia and other market places with our wagons full of produce, and we come back with wagons empty, except for such few things as cannot be produced in this section."

There is no high cost of living worth talking about in Dutch Fork. On the contrary it is such communities as Dutch Fork that furnish the inspiration to the Back-to-the-Land Movement.

The problem is to get the food from the farmer to the consumer cheaper than it is done now. The farmer could have more profits on what would cost the consumer less money if we could learn some of the efficiency which is practised in Europe or, if this sounds unbusinesslike to some people, if we could devise a new brand of

our own.

T

A NEW ELEMENT IN STRIKES HE strike at Lawrence, which appeared from a surface view to be like many others, is worthy of more careful attention because it marks the entrance into the East of a new element and a new method in labor disputes. The Industrial Workers of the World promoted it and their aim is not merely to increase wages and to secure better conditions but to own the industries themselves. They hope to gain control of the industries by striking for increases in wages time after time until they get all the profit there is in the business and have thus wrested it from the control of capital. There are no conditions of work or wages which satisfy them so long as employers exist. Their plan is to work when necessity forces them to, merely as a temporary truce.

The thing which the American Federation of Labor works for that is, agreements with employers is directly con

trary to the method of the Industrial Workers of the World. As a body the "I. W. W." is irreconcilable. It refuses to enter into any agreements. It will sign nothing which does not leave its members free to quit work whenever they like or under any conditions.

The Industrial Workers of the World is not a labor union like the unions of the American Federation of Labor. It is a union of socialists and its whole aim is socialism that is, the control of the instruments of production by the labor classes. Its propaganda is as contrary. to that of the Federation of Labor as it is to the interests of the employers; and this explains the hostility to the Lawrence strike that has been shown by President Gompers, and by such union leaders as John Golden of the National Textile

Workers. The demand of the strikers in Lawrence was for certain specific increases in wages, but the motive behind it was to begin a campaign for the ownership of the machinery of production by the Industrial Workers of the World. Whatever were the conditions in Lawrence, therefore, they were not entirely the cause of the strike. "The battle-field," as William

D. Haywood, a moving spirit of the Industrial Workers, called it, might have been selected at almost any other place with equal justification, so far as its propaganda is concerned.

The specific cause of the strike was an act of the Massachusetts legislature which lowered the legal hours of work for women and children from 56 to 54 hours a week. When this law went into effect, the operatives were notified that as the hours. had been reduced two hours a week their wages would be correspondingly reduced. The operatives, who included a large number of non-English speaking people, had assumed that the act of the legislature had raised their rate of pay, and on receiving notice to the contrary struck. There has been a good deal of loose talk about the low rate of wages in Lawrence, and the Tariff Board's report indicates that the average wage is not high. On the other hand, the foreign operatives in Lawrence have been in the habit of sending about $700,000 yearly to European relations and the savings banks of that city have deposits of nearly $21,000,000. But these aspects of the Lawrence strike are not the most important. The main point is that a new, irreconcilable, and militant organization has come among the workers in the East. Its success at Lawrence may be a prophecy of similar strikes elsewhere.

patriotism in battle. The survivors still maintain that high standard, as the following excerpt from their resolutions shows:

Resolved, That the veterans of the 44th N. Y. Vol. Infantry on this the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the regiment are very thankful to our Government for its great generosity in so liberally bestowing pensions on the soldiers and sailors who served in our late Civil War.

Resolved, That we believe the generosity of our Government has been imposed upon by certain dishonest men for selfish purposes, and we therefore respectfully request: That the pension rolls of the Civil War be carefully examined and revised by the proper authorities and made rolls of honor of which no American citizen need be ashamed.

Resolved, That we respectfully request that the names of all pensioners of the Army and Navy who served during the Civil War, with reasons for and amount of pension, be published in suitable volumes and furnished the State. libraries of the various States of the Union where they can be freely examined by the

public.

Resolved, That the Senators and Congressmen of the State of New York be requested to use their influence to have the resolutions carried out by our Government.

The resolutions were read a second time, seconded and after brief discussion unanimously adopted.

The WORLD'S WORK has many letters from other veterans to show that the men who bore the brunt of the fighting in the Civil War do not want a secret pension list, and particularly a secret pension list honeycombed with fraud. And in some ways it seems as if it were a more exceptional courage and patriotism to stand out against the pension lobby and for a clean pension roll than it was to serve in the war, for certainly the members of Congress would not be as supine in War as they are before the pension clamor. And just as certainly many vote for such a bill as the Sherwood Service Pension bill when in their hearts they do not believe in it. Privately many admit its iniquity. Publicly they lack the courage. When they fail it is pleasant to see the real old soldier asking that the list be kept clean of fraudulent names.