The Herald And News

EXTRAVAGANCE AND INFLATION.

Pleasure-Seeking of a Costly Type in General Evidence.

Bradstreet's.

It has been supposed that trade depression exerts a lingering influence on the public mind, and that in post-panic periods expenditures are generally reduced so as to closely accord with income. But unless present signs are misleading, a vast number of our citizens were not chastened by the baneful effects of the depression following the untoward economic happenings of October, 1907. Indeed, there seems to be a spirit of extravagance abroad in the land, and the events of a few years ago also appear to have been disregarded. In the Western and Southern communities there is evidence of inflation, and in the cities pleasure-seeking of a costly type holds high favor. The farmer having enjoyed several years of unparalleled prosperity is bent on enjoying the fat of the land. He did not suffer from the depression, thanks to continuously high prices. In the farming communities money is plentiful and the mode of living is changing. Luxuries that were looked at askance in other days are now demanded. In the surplus crop growing regions, as in the cities, automobiles are in vogue. The Wall Street Journal, in writing on the subject of rural inflation, tells us that 'general borrowing has spread widely among the better-to-do people under forty.'

Our contemporary illustrates its point by stating that a banker in a Western town was asked where people got the means to buy automobiles. He replied that the secret could be found in looking over the list of the bank's commercial paper, which the buyers of automobiles had given in the form of notes to the agents of the manufacturers. Then comes the Iron Age with an editorial in which it tells of a great automobile business in the Middle West sending a representative to the East with authority to purchase outright a machine shop and to assemble 200 tool-makers as its working force. The home plant has found it impossible to turn out its planned production simply because enough workmen are not to be had. Wages are high, $11 a day being paid to tool-makers and especially skilled men command $18 a day. But not nearly enough tenements exist to house the employees, and tents and shanties are occupied as homes by hundreds; therefore the men will not stay. On that account machine tool-makers are being sought in other fields. Finally, we find a leading firm of bond dealers—Fick & Robinson—complaining that high-grade bonds bring lower prices than they did ten years ago, for which increased extravagance as well as the demand that money must earn more are largely responsible. On every hand there is a cry for more money. A good deal of this is due to the high cost of living, but at the same time the craving for luxury is also a very evident cause, to which one may also add the higher standard of living.