Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/189

Rh was at the start, whereas in fact he was enjoying automobiles, phonographs, cinematographs and the luxury of leisure. It was not so much the high cost of living that was at fault as it was the cost of high living. We were squandering the gains that we had made out of the necessities and agonies of battling Europe. Out of such false prosperity there grew naturally feelings of dissatisfaction and discontent. There were quarrels over the division of the spoils. Those who had not got anything wanted something. Those who had got something wanted more. The soil became favorable for the sowing of the seeds of socialism and communism. Some people who would have abhorred those names let themselves be deluded by will-o’-the-wisps like the “new freedom.”

When the United States entered the war labor was master. The railway brotherhoods had taught us what labor could do when it controlled something essential. With the nation at war everything was essential. Labor had only to ask for what it wanted in order to get it. If there were any demurral there was the threat of a strike and the cessation of production, whereat the whole nation trembled. In order to avert such troubles peace with labor was bought. Even those good citizens among the workers who subscribed for Liberty bonds could not understand that they did harm to their own cause by exorbitant demands for wages, slackness in their work and extravagance in their mode of life.

Following the armistice was another and worse phase. After a brief period of depression, which produced some idleness but no general readjustment, Europe began to buy from us on credit, bought ex-