sorbed all our advantage. Probably we shall lose
slightly on the whole. But it is not economically impossible that there
will be a net gain. In either case the net effect will, I believe, be
small.

Of more importance will be the various effects on various classes.
Certain people will be greatly benefited by the rise in food prices and
the fall in security prices. The farming classes will profit by the
former; the investing classes by the latter. Those who have the good
fortune to belong to both classes will grow rich. The farmer who is in a
position to save money will both make more money to save and be able to
invest it more advantageously after he has saved it. If he lends to his
neighbors he will find the market rate of interest high. Even if he buys
more land the purchase price will be restrained from the great rise we
might expect from the prosperity of farming by the fact that the "number
of years purchase," as the phrase is in England, will be small, or, in
other words, that the interest basis, which enters into every land
price, will be high.

Labor Will Not Suffer Much.

On the other hand the general consumer of farm products will suffer from
another advance in that part of his cost of living, while the debtor
classes will suffer from the fall in bonds or rise in interest. Many
speculators on the Stock Exchange, those who have speculated for a rise,
are in effect undoubtedly ruined already, and many borrowers at banks on
collateral security will feel the pinch from the depreciation of their
property and the hard terms of renewing their loans.

And the laboring man, who forms the majority, what of him? It seems
improbable that he will be greatly affected, that is, on the average. He
will have to pay more for his food, and food constitutes more than a
third of his budget. But some articles he buys will probably fall and he
may secure higher wages because of the withdrawal of competing laborers.
Some labor may rise, especially in the industries benefited by the war,
such as, for instance, farming and other food industries, canning, flour
mills, sugar, &c., the automobile industry and perhaps ammunition and
steel. In other industries thrown out of gear for lack of foreign
markets or for lack of foreign raw material, the wage earner may lose in
wages and employment. In other words, labor will be dislocated in spots,
like the other parts of our industrial machinery.

Important dislocations will be felt in the