Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1912 — BOOSTING PRICES AGAIN. [ARTICLE]

BOOSTING PRICES AGAIN.

Face to face with uhe Realization that a democratic administration is coming into power, and well knowing that this will mean the end or Jtt leas* a curtailment of the {tariff protection privilege under which they have plundered the people for years, the tariff trusts are to take one final gouge into the pocket books of the people before they are pushed a way from the troughs of special privilege at which they have grown fat. The leather trust, which is larger ly owned by the beef barons, has announced that the price of leather is to increase 2v per cent. This increase is attributed to the greater demands of the automobile manu-' 1 facturers fur b ather. This demand is no. greater now than it has been for the last three or four years, and those who are familiar with trade conditions say the excuse given by the trust is only a subterfuge. The increase will riiean another boost in the price of shoes, which will mean that hundreds of thousands of people, especially xvomea and children, who are unable to pay more than they are now paying, will have to u e a cheaper quality of footwear. , The cloth manufacturers: —which means the woolen trust—also have announced an increase in the prices of cloth for fall and winter deliveries. The price of woolen cloth, it

is announced, will go up all he way from five to twenty cents a yard. This increase is made necessary, the trust managers say, by the wool shortage here and abroad, and by the increa-ed cost of labor. It will be recalled that immediately after the Lawrence. Mass., strike last winter the woolen trust announced an increase of fifteen per cent in the price of its products. The excuse was that this had to be 1 made in order to meet the demands of the workers. The mill men, women and children who had been working for $5. S 6 and $7 a week were granted an increase of five per cent, which meant only a few cents additional each week to 'them, and to meet this increase the price of Cloth was boosted fifteen per cent. 1 In this way the wool trust owners were able to make the consumers pay, not only the increased cost of labbr, but all the expenses of the strike as well, so that dividends, far from being less on account of the strike, were actually greater as a result thereof. Both of these announced increases are purely arbitrary. There isn’t the slightest excuse for an increase in the prices of either leather or clothing, and the only excuse for either is the inordinate greed of the trust owners. These men know that after next year they will have to climb down from their high perch, from where they have been directing their wholesale robbery of the people. and for that reason they are preparing to get the last dollar possible for themselves before their special privilege graft comes to an end.