labor ought not to make the period of transition long or the amount of suffering considerable.  After all, the vast majority of the people of the United States are connected with farming, with the manufacture or production of the very things for which there will most likely be a great demand, or with the transportation and distribution of both imports and exports to the rest of the community.  In certain industries, like the manufacture of cotton cloth, which is localized in New England to such an extent that whole districts are dependent upon it for a livelihood, the distress will be great, for the factories closed upon the declaration of war and the workers are a long distance from the Western fields, where laborers are only too scarce.  The cheapening of transportation, the rapidity of communication, the superior mobility of the population today over ten years ago, make it probable that these people will soon find new places.

Concomitant with the war came a rise of prices.  Foodstuffs especially advanced sharply and will certainly continue to rise until some material increase of the supply is assured beyond a peradventure.  The tendency in England and above all on the Continent for the cities to buy great supplies to guard against possible want will increase this tendency.  But, without question, should the war last, a rise in the whole level of prices of everything, including labor, will take place in the United States.  It will affect some individuals adversely, but for most will be in the long run almost negligible.  For those who actually produce or handle goods which advance in price the result will be a profit, because the price of the commodity they have to sell will almost certainly advance sooner and faster than the prices of the commodities they themselves are compelled to buy.  In time the two will equalize and they will be precisely where they were before the war; they will pay out with one hand what they take in with the other.  In nearly all cases where the individual produces or shares in the production of an actual commodity a general rise in prices, even to the extent which this war threatens to produce, will be to him only a temporary advantage or disadvantage.  True, wages and salaries in industrial pursuits will not quite keep pace with the rise in foodstuffs, and factory workers and clerks will not benefit to the same extent nor as soon as the farmers will.  People whose incomes are derived from stocks in the businesses which prosper will probably receive much more than they pay by reason of the increased prices of other commodities, and certainly cannot be worse off than before.

America’s Real Sufferers.