ofits, as in the recent cases of the Sugar Trust and the
beef-packers, they injure the average man without good reason, and they
are guilty of a moral wrong. It does not matter whether the undue profit
comes through stifling competition by rebates or other crooked devices,
through corruption of public officials, or through seizing and
monopolizing resources which belong to the people. 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.
But we must face the truth that monopoly of the sources of production
makes it impossible for vast numbers of men and women to earn a fair
living. Right here the conservation question touches the daily life of
the great body of our people, who pay the cost of special privilege. And
the price is heavy. That price may be the chance to save the boys from
the saloons and the corner gang, and the girls from worse, and to make
good citizens of them instead of bad; for an appalling proportion of the
tragedies of life spring directly from the lack of a little money.
Thousands of daughters of the poor fall into the hands of the
white-slave traders because their poverty leaves them without
protection. Thousands of families, as the Pittsburg survey has shown us,
lead lives of brutalizing overwork in return for the barest living. Is
it fair that these thousands of families should have less than they need
in order that a few familie