Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1920 — CAUSE AND EFFECT [ARTICLE]

CAUSE AND EFFECT

We note that Mike Duffy has been explaining to the Indianapolis Star that the trouble with prices is that the .Federal Reserve bank refused to extend credit to the farmers to enable them to make a profit. What the Federal Reserve bank claims it did was that when the expansion of loans had reached the point where the gold reserve had almost been reached, it suggested to the bankers that the first loans to be called should be those of a speculative nature. We believe almost any farmer in the country will agree that between loaning money to the grain elevators to handle the agricultural crops and to speculators in sugar, or to buying luxuries, such as a new automobile because the old one looked shabby, that the farmers should have the money. It is true, however, that fanners who were determined to have $2.00 for corn were speculating. Just as much as the sugar men, and that they were causing just as much of the money shortage as the sugar speculators. Both could have sold at a great profit, but they re fused to do so. The sugar .men seem to have taken their loss and let it go at that, but the farmers have not. In view of the fact that the first break in prices occurred within a few days after the Maine election indicated a Republican victory, and completely collapsed when the November returns confirmed it, the real

reason for the present prices Is that exporters quit buying because the new administration offered no hope of saving the treaty and opening the European market# to our grain and cotton. Mr. Duffy ought to understand by this time that the losses he is complaining of are the price he is paying for fighting the league of nations and voting to isolate the United States from co-operation with the rest of the world, and he ought to take his medicine without making up such a face about it. —Benton Review.