The happy, normal, beautiful life
of the country people has been les
sened by the cheap automobile, the
cheap fashion catalogue, and the
ease of “shopping by mail.” In
themselves all these are benefits, but
they are also detriments for the
reason that we have not raised the
standard of education as to the real
value of the things worth while.
THE JEFFERSONIAN
The wage-earner has always a se
rious task to “make both ends
meet,” if he ig a clerk or holds in
any line a subordinate position. He
depends largely for his livelihood on
the good-will and the business sense
of his employer. A dozen things
may happen to deprive him of his
job, and there are very few wage
earners who can step safely from
one position to another without the
loss of time, and the probable incur
ring of debt.
The wage-earner’s family is usu
ally the one who best exemplifies
the new “standard of living”—near
fur, near-sifk, near-velvet, near Ax
minster, near-mahogany all have
been adopted by them as part of
living—and the results are disas
trous.
If a supreme book of tragedy is
ever to be written, a money lender
in any of the big cities should be
the one ehosen to write it. Scarcely
a £ay passes but one may read in
the public prints of a man or wo
man, desperate, driven to the wall
by the demands of these loan sharks.
And yet—those who have taken
advantage of the offers of loan
“sharks” know at the Outset what
the terms of the loan would be—
and perhaps nothing more essential
than “the payments” on a piano, or
“near-fur” coat had made it neces
sary to borrow.
