Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1916 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

Ah, nothing could be sadder than is the "high cost” fake, which stingeth like an adder, and biteth like a snake. The records just examine, and you will understand it was no year of famine in this star-spangled land. The country’s barns are bursting with wheat, and corn and rye, while sufferers are thirsting for bread and pone and pie. And while I write these stanzas, which lack the ’customed smiles, the farmers ou,t in Kansas have wheat shocked up in piles. D|me Nature, in her bounty, has done a kindly turn, and every Western county has wheat and hay to burn. Yet when we seek the grocer, and ask him for some meal, he says, “I s’pose you know, sir, the price is raised one wheel? The war in Asia Minor has shut off the supply, and hence the extra shiner you cough up when you buy.” The wolf is drawing closer, and shorter grows the kale; I slay the nervy grocer, but what does that avail? I seek the floral spieler, to >buy a buttercup; "The war,” remarks the dealer, "has sent the prices up.’’