p. 12 | A Cause of Hard Times

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 1, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 13.

A Cause of Hard Times

One of the items which the World’s Work puts down as a cause of hard times at the present time is the amount of speculation and investments there is in land bought purely for speculation instead of for useful purposes. It says: “Much of this activity is as much a game of chance as the buying of lottery tickets, for the buyers have never seen the property that they have invested in. Any man who buys land or an interest in land that he has never seen is (to use language of great self-restraint) a fool. Yet these purchases put prices high, and for a time keep them high, and add to the cost of living and of dying. It is a rise in apparent or temporary values that is not any real increase of wealth, but only a speculative increase.”