We should have escaped the billions of dollars' worth of injury from falling prices between 1879 and 1896, to farmers, independent producers, debtors, stockholders, and enterprisers generally. There were bankruptcies, foreclosures and reorganizations, and a resultant shift of control from the natural captains of industry,—often bankrupted, as we have seen, through no fault of theirs,—to the holders of mortgage bonds and the other silent partners not fitted by temperament or training to conduct industrial enterprises.
We should also have escaped the consequent convulsions of business: the crises of 1884 and 1893; the throwing out of work of armies of men; the recruiting of "Coxey's army"; the bitter feeling of the debtor-West toward the creditor-East; the growth of "populism"; the hatred of the "bloated bondholders" and the "gold bugs of Wall Street"; the futile, costly, business-depressing, free-silver agitation; and the peril of the political campaign of 1896 which, for a time, threatened us with a remedy worse than the disease.
In like manner, we should have escaped the opposite evils—those that have occurred since 1896: the rising cost of living; the loss (concealed but real) of the interest on the savings of the poor and of the real income of bondholders. We should have escaped the failure of the wage earner to secure a share of our increasing wealth; for instance, the net loss of 33% of real wages (as measured in food) between 1907 and 1917, the year we entered the war. We should have escaped the food riots all over the world. We should have escaped much of the speculation which has been so widespread; much of the muckraking agitation; much of the "I. W. W." affliction; much of the class
