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Rh American people on the whole has deteriorated during the last 10 years; that when there are appearances to the contrary it is in frivolous things at the expense of the really needful ones; that much of the quasi-improvement is at the expense of the principal of the very people who are having a good time; that only a relatively small class of wage earners has really improved its scale of living, and that even with respect to them this has been more or less at the expense of the national principal, although not perhaps of their individual savings.

The statistics of commodity consumption will be very illuminating if they be thoughtfully considered. They bring out clearly how it is not dollars that we have to divide, but rather pounds of goods. The exchange of dollars for them is merely a means to effect the division. If the number of dollars that we use be increased or decreased the quantity of divisible goods is not necessarily changed. Simply we exchange $2 for the same number of pounds of a thing for which $1 formerly sufficed; or oppositely. At least that is what would happen if the new dollar were allocated in the same proportion as the old ones. If not, and if, as unfortunately happens, one class of workers gets proportionately more dollars than formerly they therewith grab more pounds of goods and correspondingly less remains for division among other people. It does not matter materially how much the rich get in dollars, for they can not use for their own consumption much more pounds of cotton, meat, and other commodities per person than other people. Their surplus of dollars in the main is saved in the form of capital goods from which all people benefit. Economic unhealthfulness results from the wasting of surplus, either by rich or poor.