The Farm Home

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder, Rocky Ridge Farm

“Isn’t it awful, the prices we have to pay for things!” exclaimed my neighbor to me. “Just look at these shoes! I paid $10 for them! Something ought to be done to these profiteers; poor people can’t afford to live any more.”

My neighbor’s shoes were new, of course, and the heels were extremely high, too high to be really good style, but she seemed very proud of them and proud also in a rather shamefaced way that she had paid $10 for them.

“You need not have paid so much,” I replied, “thru all these high prices for shoes I never have paid quite $4 for a pair and my shoes always have been correct in style and have worn well.”

“Oh!” said my neighbor, “It’s too much trouble to hunt bargains and my foot is not easily fitted. Besides you order your shoes, do you not.”

“Sometimes,” I answered, but never when I think the home retailer is asking only a fair profit. When I think he is profiteering, I protect myself without calling on the government at Washington. I do for myself at least as much as I can.”

I think most of us imagined our war troubles were over when the fighting has stopped and Germany had signed the peace terms, in the famous Hall of Mirrors, but we are sadly disappointed. The whole world is in a state of unrest and disturbance caused by the after effects of the war and chief among the disturbing causes is the high cost of everything one has to buy.

In articles on the subject and in political speeches the consumer is put in a separate and distinct class by himself as opposed to the producer. Farmers think of themselves as consumers and condemn the producers and profiteers when they have to buy the high priced farm implements and other necessities of life, while the people who make these good or sell them say that farmers are profiteering producers. And so we go on wasting our time in recriminations, just as congress, as a body, has spent its time in investigation of things that are past and gone and in oratory about the mistakes some one made, instead of citizens and congress both bending every thought and energy to the future, to the rebuilding of what has been destroyed by war and the reforming of the abuses still existing.

There are problems that should be handled for us all collectively but as in so many other things of our national life, it is also a matter for each of us to attend to. If each one of a crowd acting independently does the same things, it produces a mass action that is powerful, and we can handle this problem of high costs for ourselves much better than we have been doing if we try.

We all did seemingly impossible things in conserving and producing during the war. We can still do them until the effects of the war have passed away so far as prices are concerned, and it is as much a patriotic duty. Experts in economics say that the reason for the high prices is that the rate of productions has not kept up with the inflation of currency due to war conditions and that the remedy for the evils of high prices is increased production.

According to them, prices and production work like a see-saw—when one goes up, the other goes down. When money is scarce and products plentiful, a little money buys a large amount of products, but when money is plentiful and products scarce, then it takes a great deal of money to buy a small amount of products, which is where we are today.

Just now to help arrive at that balance we must practice economy and produce as much as possible. This is where every one of us can help. For instance, if by caring for a garment we can make that garment last twice as long, we have not only saved money but helped to increase the volume of products by leaving them on the market. It acts in the same way as the schoolboy described in his essay on pins—“Pins has saved many lives by not swallering of ‘em.”

Another way to help ourselves thru the pinch of these unsettled times and to make it harder for the actual profiteers is to buy as carefully and economically as possible even tho it is some trouble, for it is surely worth the effort.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "The Farm Home." Missouri Ruralist (November 5, 1919): 17.

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