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80 oleomargarine and other taxes on consumption; reduction of railway rates (in France), namely, on vegetables and fresh fish, with increase of rates on fodder for export (the idea being to keep fodder at home and make meat cheaper), and certain encouragements to importation of cattle from Algeria, Tunis, and elsewhere; encouragement (in Switzerland) of import of frozen meats from Uruguay; municipal selling of potatoes, fish, and certain other foods at cost; laws against speculation and monopoly; price fixing; regulation of cold storage plants (in the United States); granting of subsidies to cold storage plants (in France); general food control by the Government; publicity as to prices and profits ; trade unionism ; the destruction of trade unions; inflation; elastic currency; bimetallism; sliding scale of wages based on cost of living; disarmament.

Much as I should like to, I shall not take space to discuss these proposals in detail. Some of them have already been mentioned as evils rather than remedies. Others, though most excellent in themselves, are irrelevant to the problem of this book; that is, they would not tend in the least to stabilize the price level and the purchasing power of money. They would help us to endure the high cost of living but would not reduce or prevent it. Some of them may even be more important to the sum of human happiness than the remedy about to be proposed. That remedy is not in the least in conflict with such measures but supplementary to them.

The above list of proposals is given, therefore, not for indiscriminate condemnation, but as showing in what direction people tend to think when the problem