T
ft VOLUME XLI. . O'NEILL, NEBRASKA, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1921. NO. 29.
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I People pay $40.00 for a suit of clothes and claim that
the price is unreasonable because the suit contains only
$5.00 worth of raw wool.
The clothing manufacturer answers by stating that it
is the high cost of labor which makes the cost of the suit.
But a great many people are not satisfied with this
answer. They still want to be shown. They feel that
there must be a nigger in the woodpile somewhere.
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I Have they, however, ever stopped to think—
that six egg plants at 35 cents each, in season, can be produced from one seed which cost 1-100 of a cent,
that several tons of apples can be raised on an apple tree which cost but 50 cents,
that an acre of oats, worth $12.00, comes from forty-five cents worth of seed.
that a $5,000.00 automobile is manufactured out of iron worth $50.00,
0
that $2,000.00 worth of finished silk goods can be made from four dollars and fifty cents worth of silk
worms. "v
that a piece of fine furniture which sells for a thousand is made from a mahogany log which a native of
the tropics floated down stream and sold to a trader for a plug of tobacco.
that a Rembrandt painting which is priceless consumed but a dollar’s worth of paint,
that $5.00 worth of note paper can be manufactured out of 5 cents worth of rags,
that the hand-worked tray-cloth which serves a king may be fashioned out of a quarter’s worth of flax,
that most of the misunderstandings which confuse us, would disappear if we could but master facts,
which cost nothing but a little mental effort,
I Labor brings the egg plant, the apple tree and the oat
field to maturity.
Iron, without labor, is as useless as clay. With long
days of labor it becomes the twelve-cylinder engine.
The strand of silk in the cocoon is as worthless as a
blade of grass until it becomes joined to man’s inventive
ability.
I And so it is with wool—it must be washed and scoured,
carded or combed on expensive machinery, made into yarns,
woven into fabrics, shrunk, finished, tailored/labored with
through a hundred operations—literally millions of haz
ards being encountered—until the little handful of wool
from the sheep’s back, with which the operation started,
turns out to be the most insignificant part of the whole
process.
And so it is with a thousand other products whether
made of wool, cotton, iron, copper, leather or cocoons.
Of course, if any man still thinks that there is not
much of anything in a suit of clothes but some raw wool,
the thing for him to do is to make his own cloth, tailor it
✓
into a suit and thus get the laugh on the clothier and the
manufacturer.
Let’s be fair! Let every honest American look into
his own labor costs before he accuses his neighbor of be
ing a profiteer.
Respectfully submitted to all fair-minded people by