CHAPTER II
THE CAUSES
1. False Scents
We have answered the first of the four questions and have seen that the price level is always changing, that is, that the dollar is not a constant unit of purchasing power or value in exchange.
We are now ready for the second of the questions, i.e. "Why is it not constant?"
In recent popular discussions a great variety of reasons have been assigned for the "high cost of living," e.g., "profiteering"; speculation; hoarding; the middleman; foreign demand; the war; labor unions; short hours of labor and limitation of output; trusts; patent monopolies; the tariff; cold storage; longer hauls on railroads; marketing by telephone; the free delivery system; the individual package; the enforcement of sanitary laws; the tuberculin testing of cattle; the destruction of tainted meat; sanitary milk; the elimination of renovated butter and of "rots" and "spots" in eggs; food adulteration; advertising; unscientific management; extravagance; higher standards of living; the increasing cost of government; the increasing cost of old-age pensions, and of better pauper institutions, hospitals, insane asylums, reformatories, jails and other public institutions; the increasing cost of insurance against accident and disease; the increas-
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