Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/501

Rh "cooperation" into monopoly, and the simultaneous exchange of the ideal of efficiency in production for the slogan of ability in acquisition.

Economically considered, America has, until recently, been thoroughly democratic; that is to say, despite tendencies to social class and caste, the population has shared without essential discrimination in industry and production. But in late years possessors of the great fortunes which have been in the building for a half-century have begun seriously to devote themselves to leisure. In so doing, they have not only subtracted their own energies from the productive forces of the country, but they have increased their sumptuary demands and have alienated a host of laborers and a vast capital from the production of the necessities and comforts of plain living in order that a few may indulge an epicurean taste for the costly objects of vain and selfish desire. This tendency to luxury is leading students of market and industrial conditions to characterize the high bidding of wealthy and profligate spenders and of their improvident imitators as a significant cause of high prices; but a deeper analysis reveals the more vital phenomenon of intensified social costs attendant upon a relative reduction of the effective labor power of society and the subversion of a considerable part of the nation's capital. In this very dynamic aspect of modern life, one observes a tremendous increase in demand for the costly and enervating indulgencies of conspicuous expenditure and a more than proportionate decrease in the productive powers which contribute to the synchronous supply of the staples of life. Here, indeed, resides a fundamental problem in national cost accounting. The passing of the millionaire captains of exploitation and industry is imminent, and there is no more disconcerting contingency in the nation's future than the probable succession of a less hardy and energetic generation to their proprietary trusteeship of the country's wealth.

Price changes, which may be traced to an increased gold supply and the consequent depreciation of the dollar, react upon the cost of living only as certain reciprocal advantages and disadvantages are shifted among persons whose money incomes rest upon actual or implied contracturalcontractual [sic] relations extending over the period of price change. For this reason, advancing prices are peculiarly advantageous to the debtor class, composed mainly of bonded business corporations, virtually discounting their obligations at an annual rate commensurate with the increase in prices. It is likewise obvious that expected returns to creditors and investors on securities bearing fixed rates of income are proportionately reduced. Wage earners and salaried persons are subject to a like disadvantage. Wage and salary scales are not readily readjusted and, especially, in their upward movements, show a considerable "lag" behind prices. Because of the prevalence of a customary