The result is always
the same--a toll levied on the cost of living through special privilege.
The income of the average family in the United States is less than $600
a year. To increase the cost of living to such a family beyond the
reasonable profits of legitimate business is wrong. It is not merely a
question of a few cents more a day for the necessaries of life, or of a
few cents less a day for wages. Far more is at stake--the health or
sickness of little babies, the education or ignorance of children,
virtue or vice in young daughters, honesty or criminality in young sons,
the working power of bread-winners, the integrity of families, the
provision for old age--in a word, the welfare and happiness or the
misery and degradation of the plain people are involved in the cost of
living.
To the special interest an unjust rise in the cost of living means
simply higher profit, but to those who pay it, that profit is measured
in schooling, warm clothing, a reserve to meet emergencies, a fair
chance to make the fight for comfort, decency, and right living.
I believe in our form of government and I believe in the Golden Rule.
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