WHY THE COST OF LIVING IS INCREASING
Why the Cost of Living is Increasing JUST WHY the cost of food, fuel and clothing has bees steadily increasing has been to many, including President Taft, an unexplained phenomenon. In the...
...By reason of this same increase of rates the market value of Southern Pacific securities rose nearly $100,000,000...
...Let us see...
...From the householder a million pumps pumping dollars...
...How do we pay this tribute...
...Says Mr...
...71,000,000 piled upon the private fortune at the other end...
...Let him also remember that they are merely typical of the general railroad condition and need only to be multiplied into the number of 'systems' to furnish much of the stupendous sum represented in the augmented e«st of living...
...That, in 1877, and eighteen years after the completion of the Central Pacific, the road was taxing shippers $3,000,000 yearly on the watered part of its capital, and that since then, with increased traffic, multiplied lines and more diluted stock, the company has many times increased this annual tribute, are amazing facts clearly set forth...
...Twenty-five dollars taken yearly from each family in CaK-fomia...
...This means an average increase of $25 a family...
...By reason of this increase of market values the estate of the late E, H. Harriman, at first appraised at $149,000,000, was found on examination to be worth $220,000,000...
...In the concluding installment of his series of exposures of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Hampton's Magazine for October, Charles Edward Russell casts a searchlight upon one of the chief causes...
...For in ten years the railroad capitalization of this country, now eighteen and one half billion dollars, has increased seven billion dollars—being in effect a National debt, the interest of which is levied upon us as tribute...
...On January 1, 1909, the transcontinental railroad lines increased the freight rates 18 per cent, on east-bound traffic and a little more on west-bound traffic...
...Accomplished by merely one increase of rates...
...California estimated that this increase of rates meant an increase of $10,000,000 a year in the living expenses of the people of California...
...Conservative authorities in...
...Russell: "If the American householder, puzzling over the 60 per cent, increase of his living expenses in fifteen years, wants a solution of his problem, let him for a time contemplate these facts...
...California has probably 400,000 families...
Vol. 2 • October 1910 • No. 39
