HIGH COST OF LIVING.
I am going to tell you the story of a public market of Cincinnati,
Ohio, nearly a hundred years ago, or more accurately speaking of
incidents in which the farmer dispensed with the service of middlemen;
where the producer and the consumer met and dealt face to face upon the
sidewalks of that embryo city in the long ago.
I am reminded of the incidents referred to by a stroll through the
public markets of Seattle. The "middleman", those who bought of the
producer and sold to consumers, or those who established a place of
deposit and for a commission would sell the products of producer to the
retail merchants, who in turn would sell to the consumer, have been
berated and charged with the crime of contributing to the high cost
of living, hence the public markets were established to the end that
producers and consumers might meet on common ground and drive their own
bargains. Here is what I found in the Seattle markets:
Eggs from China; grapes from California and Spain; nuts from Brazil,
California, Texas and Italy; lemons from California, and Italy;
bananas from South America; tomatoes from Cuba; peanuts from Japan and
Virginia; oranges from California and Florida; grapefruit from Florida;
beef from Australia; butter from New Zealand; cranberries from New
Jersey; cocoanuts from South America; oysters from Maryland, and so
on down a long list, of various minor products not necessary here to
name, to illustrate the point, or rather two points, first that the
producers and consumers could not come together and must be served by
the "middleman"; and, second, that we are ransacking the world, even
to the antipodes, for the products of the earth, in a great measure to
satisfy the cravings of abnormal appetites incident to high living.
Any one, at a glance, can see this marshaling of products from the
ends of the earth and transporting them for thousands of miles must
increase the cost of living and must of necessity call for the offices
of the hated "middlemen" with their resultant profits. Even the local
products were sold to a great extent by dealers (middlemen) and but few
producers were seen in the market. Things are different now from the
prevailing condition of a hundred years ago, or even eighty-five years
ago, when I was born. The application of steam power for propelling
boats was unknown then, or known only as an experiment, and hence
there were no steamships to cross the ocean and bring their cargoes
of perishable freight; no cables to tap and with a flash to convey an
order to the uttermost corners of the earth; no international postal
service to carry and deliver written messages; in a word, no facilities
to aid in and thus to increase the cost of living; hence, that
generation of a hundred years ago, led the simple life. I am not here
canvassing the question as to which is the better—simply record the
fact. I will venture the opinion, however, the pioneers enjoyed their
living with their keen appetites, incident to their out-of-door life,
as much as the most tempting collection can give to the abnormal hunger
following a gorge of dainties after a day of idleness.
It is well to note, however, the fact that not all the gatherings from
foreign lands tend to increase the price of a particular article.
Sometimes the opposite results and the cost is reduced, but the general
rule is that the imported articles are simply luxuries and should be
chargeable to the cost of high living rather than to the high cost of
living.
When the tariff was recently revised and protection withdrawn or duties
reduced on agricultural articles produced in the United States, with
trumpets from the housetops it was proclaimed the cost of living would
be reduced. No such result has followed, as in fact it has advanced.
Take the article of beef for instance. The duty was removed, the
great packing firms at once established agencies in all foreign meat
producing countries, the foreign markets advanced a notch, the meat
baron of the United States took up the remainder of the duty reduction,
the government lost the revenue, meat at the block continued as high as
ever to the consumer, the meat producing industry of our country was
discouraged and the high cost of living remained. This foreign meat
produced on cheap lands and with cheap labor is a constant menace to
our own meat producing industry and will deter many from increasing
their bands of cattle, so that we may see prices in the future advance
instead of declining, because of the reduced home production.
Take the item of eggs. The duty was removed and immediately shipments
came from China, where labor is twenty cents a day or less, where
eggs can be produced at half the cost as here, but the consumer does
not as yet reap any benefit, for the shipper fixes the price at what
the market will bear; but, and here is the point, there is the menace
to deter our home producers from reaching out to produce more eggs,
knowing there will come a time when prices will seek a common level,
governed by the shipments from China, our producers will be discouraged
and go out of the business and up will go the price of eggs higher than
ever.
The duty was lowered from six cents a pound to two and a half on
butter; foreign canned milk is displacing our home production and the
dairy interest begins to feel the depressing influence of the danger
that hovers over it. Let the prices drop to a point that would cease to
be profitable, our dairies would be depleted and the foreign products
take possession and take all the market would bear. And so we find it
in other agricultural products, to be considered hereafter.
The point bearing on the high cost of living is that we need to
encourage and not discourage home production and labor and to get the
producer and consumer closer together; also with our railroads, we
should insist that they look inward and stop the waste before being
granted an increase of rates, so with our consumers, before they outlaw
the producers and kill the goose that lays the golden egg, they had
better look inward and see if the remedy is not at least in part with
themselves.
Let us now look into the scenes of the Cincinnati market of pioneer
days. I will describe only one phase of it, as handed down to me by my
mother, who was one of the actors. My grandfather Baker was a farmer
and lived twenty-five miles away from Cincinnati as the road ran. He
had settled a few miles east of Hamilton, Ohio, in 1801 or 1802, where
my mother was born and near where I was born. In ten years time he had
his flock of sheep, his cows, pigs, horses, colts and abundance of
pasture on the land he had cleared. I never could understand why in all
these years he didn't have a wagon, but such was the case. He never
would go in debt for anything. When my mother was twelve years old
she began making the trips on horseback with her father to the market
at Cincinnati. They carried everything they had to sell on the horses
they rode, or perhaps a loose horse or a two-year-old colt might be
taken along. They carried butter, eggs, chickens (dressed and sometimes
alive), smoked meat and sometimes fresh. Sometimes they would make lye
hominy and then again sauerkraut; then again when hog killing time came
around, sausage and head cheese would be added, and so we see quite a
variety would make up their stock to offer on the market. Nor was this
all. The family of four children were all girls. They were taught to
card the wool raised on the farm, spin the yarn and weave the cloth
all by hand in the cabin adjoining the living room and sometimes in
the living room. I can remember the hum of the spinning-wheel and the
"slam" of the loom as the filling of cloth was sent "home", also the
rattle of grandmother's knitting-needles to be heard often clear across
the room, which is a precious memory. To the stock of products as
enumerated would often be added a "bolt" of cloth, or perhaps a blanket
or two or a few pairs of stockings and often a large bundle of "cuts"
of yarn which always found a ready purchaser—wanted by the ladies of
the city for their knitting parties.
The youngsters will ask, "What is a 'cut' of yarn?" I will tell you as
near as I know. The yarn when spun was "reeled" off from the spool of
the wheel into skeins of even lengths of yarn that could be used in the
chain or warp for the cloth to be woven or wound off into balls for the
knitting. These "cuts" were the skein, of even length of thread neatly
twisted, doubled into shape as long as your hand and size of your wrist
and securely fastened to remain in this shape. Sometimes the yarn would
be "dyed" a butternut color and again would be taken to market in
natural colors either white or black; sometimes a black sheep's wool
would serve to make up the variety by doubling and twisting a black's
and white's together.
The trip to Cincinnati would often be made by moon-light, so timed as
to arrive at "peep of day" to be ready for the buyers that were sure
to come to meet the country folks, for this was a real country market
where no middlemen appeared, and for that matter were not allowed. My
grandfather's "stuff", as they called it, would be displayed either on
the sidewalk or in the street nearby where his horses were munching
their grain or a bit of hay, and by 9:00 o'clock they would be off on
their road home, to arrive by nightfall, hungry and tired, with the
money safe in his deerskin sack.
It is needless to add that this household was thrifty and accumulated
money. Later in life it was currently reported that he had a barrel
of money (silver), and I can readily believe the story, as he spent
but little and was always accumulating. I know that more than a peck
of this silver came over to Indianapolis to assist in buying the farm
where I received my education in farming on the daily routine of farm
work experience.
And so we can see that the so-called high cost of living is chargeable
to the cost of "high living", to the abandonment of the simple life,
to the change in habits of the later generation, not counting the
extravagant wants now so prevalent that was unknown in pioneer days.