three tons per hour. Each of them did an honest days’ work, but nothing extraordinary in so far as physical capacity is concerned.
It was one of the same class of workers as Mr. Lanker and Mr. Rancher who was addressed by a newspaper correspondent when in the act of buying a new, expensive automobile, and being congratulated upon his prosperity and being interrogated about his unfortunate, or fortunate, obligation to pay income tax, replied contemptuously: “What ya givin’ me? I don’t pay no income tax. I’m a workin’ man, I am.”
Among the pictures that we can see in this kaleidoscope there are others. I have heard working people in New England deploring that they must now pay $20 per ton for anthracite coal, shivering as they talk about it, for the New England winters are cold, and there was the implication that there would not be very much coal coming to these people at that price.
Such little pictures, which after all illustrate just what the people are talking about, are translatable into economic language and into revelations of the factors that are operating beneath the surface, and that ought to be understood.
The Western farmer gets but low prices, even lower than the pre-war, for his products, owing to the impoverishment of Europe, that curtails the demand for his exportable surplus, which demand makes the market. No tariff on agricultural products and no political formula can alter this condition.
On the other hand, the things that he has to buy are high, at least 1.7 times the pre-war, because town labor, including the railway workers, has been able so far to maintain greatly enhanced wages, refusing to partici-
