CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 219, 23 February 1915, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE COST OF LIVING. Wo are all troubled, more or less, witll the cost of living. Th e prices of bread, and meat, and sugar, and the rest of the household economy, have made such a desperate upward rush that our wages, and salaries, and business profits do not leave us a great deal with which to make merry. The Social Democratic Party have issued a circular dealing with the situation, in which it says:—"Whatever may be in doubt, the fact is clear that a section of the exploiting class has taken advantage of the present war crisis to extract increased profits for themselves out of the people's most essential needs. During the ordinary times of peace exploitation of this description is reprehensible enough. In war time it is particularly dastardly. Every feeling of decency and human sympathy is shocked .anil outraged by such actions. Only the socially undeveloped or degenerate, whose highest instinct is to prey on their kind, could practice or palliate such unscrupulous rapacity. The people's food is too important to be left to their unchecked manipulation." We sympathise, with the workers in the unhappy position in which they find themselves. But we should like the. Social Democrats to revert from the general to the specific. If they will show us a specific case in which advantage has been taken of the war crisis to extract increased profits, we shall insist upon the law being rigidly enforced, without respect to persons. —Wairarapa Age.