Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE CHALLENGE (Continued) The problems confronting the present generation have by no means been exhausted. The high cost of living and the difficulties of distribution clamor for investigation. Take the following simple cases: A crate of fowl in the Fraser Valley before the war cost $6.25; expressage to Vancouver was thirty-five cents; cost to consumer in Vancouver $12.15. In 1918 farmers in Connecticut received six cents per quart for milk, consumers paid nineteen cents. The student can supply similar cases from his own experience. Again, while barrels of peaches, apples, and other fruits rot on the ground in fruit districts the price is maintained at scarcity prices and hundreds of families in nearby cities starve for fruit. Why? Several needs are apparent: elimination of excessive profits of middleman; cooperation in direct buying and selling between producer and consumer; and control of transportation by the people instead of by money-making corporations. Some persons must put their lives into the fight if these changes are to be brought about. | Must we not insist that all who work receive a living wage? A minimum wage, that is, a wage below which no one in each line of work can be paid, is being adopted in some places especially in Britain. Many capitalists oppose it bitterly, saying it will cripple industry. If a student citizen is to help his country solve her problems he should understand this important, contentious question. Girls in stores with poor pay, living miserably, and tempted beyond their strength into ways of sin; men with families not earning enough to provide necessities; men and women in sweat shops working out theirlives for a pittance — how can these things be in a Christian brotherhood? We are not only our brother's keeper now, but w...