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Rh prewar primacy in this matter and has left the rest of the world out of balance. The basic reason for this lack of balance in the world is obvious.

Central and Western Europe are chaotic. Public finances are disorganized, currency systems have been wrecked, political and military movements have demoralized economic life, current production is low. Having little to sell, they are able to buy little, as they have already largely used up those credit resources with the outside world which enabled them, for six or seven years, to consume without producing and to buy without selling.

With this constraint upon the prices for his products, the only possible salvation for the Western farmer is reduction of his costs. Instead of that happening in any broad way, however, he has experienced but little abatement of costs. He is thoroughly conscious of this and of the need for economies, but in his rage and despair he does not know how to go about effecting them. He is really in the grip of economic forces that are quite beyond his control. He blames primarily the railways, for he is able to see clearly how their rates affect him. He sees that a dollar price for wheat at Chicago in 1923 means much less to him than in 1914, for the charges for carrying the wheat to Chicago have greatly increased, wherefore the net price on the farm has been correspondingly reduced. He does not understand that these increased charges are ascribable to the internal economic unbalance, which has given the wage earners in the form of higher wages a greater share of the produce of industry at the expense of the capitalists to which class he, the farmer, belongs. Having no understanding of this he flirts with the labor unions and contemplates a forcible reduction of railway rates by governmental action, which would be at the expense of other capitalists, viz. the stockholders in the railways. If consummated such an expedient might prove to be practically a confiscation of the property of the railway stockholders. Inasmuch as that would be unconsti-