p. 9 | Higher Prices by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 22, 1910

Higher Prices

By Editor

THE matter of higher prices is agitating the nation. In all parts, in all the large cities, men are boycotting the butchers. The Anti-Food Trust League, organized in Washington, has grown by great leaps and bounds. Two weeks ago in Cleveland it numbered 25,000, representing at least 100,000 persons. In and near Pittsburg there were 75,000 signers; in Baltimore 50,000 buttons bearing the words, "I don't buy meat. Do you?" have been sold. Boston has 60,000 signers. In New York City there have been 200,000 applications to the Anti-Food Trust League for membership. Endless chains of postals are being used against the high prices of meat, while the stock drovers and cattle raisers are indignant.

It would be a blessed thing if people during this time of agitation could learn that there is a better diet than the flesh diet. Some will, probably; but the great mass will not. The New York Independent truly says, "Yet this is not a vegetarian campaign, for the boycotters love their meat." The boycott is not against beef, but against butchers. "When the butchers come down, they will go back to their old diet, except in so far as they have learned that with less meat they have fewer pimples and boils and more strength." It is to be hoped that they will learn, as The Independent suggests, that people "spend quite too much money on expensive food which is no more nourishing than that which grows out of the ground, and that their health is better than when they sat by the flesh-pots."

But high prices are not in meats alone. A great many of the necessaries of life are also affected. For instance, the National Shoe Wholesalers Association in convention the past week states that the existing high prices of leather and materials make it necessary that the price of shoes shall be raised; but when higher wages are asked, the workman is told that this can not be afforded. In the face of this a great railway strike is threatened. That is, railway employees in different positions to the number of one million or more, are threatening to strike. Such a thing as that would be indeed a calamity. It would paralyze the business of the whole country. The contention of the railways is that the demand of the men for more wages is a just one, but they can not afford to pay more wages with the profits which they now secure. Congress has taken the matter up, and investigating committees have been appointed. Whether anything of real benefit to the poorer classes will come out of it, is exceedingly uncertain.