Talk About the High Cost of Clothing; Fig Leaves Up in Price

1920

Talk About the H. C. of Clothing!
Even Fig Leaves Up 300 Per Cent

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The St. Paul housewives and business men bemoaning the high cost of living and the concomitant depreciation in the purchasing power of money, are, if they only knew it, much more fortunately situated financially than the jungle dweller, as is shown by the letters of a Baptist foreign missionary received here recently.

Whereas, the monetary experts of our Nation will tell us that the buying power of a dollar has only descended to 40 cents, the modest inhabitant of the jungle's fastness must pay four monkey tails for a palm leaf to cover his nakedness, where formerly one simian appendage sufficed.

And this proportion holds true for everything the human denizens of the tropical forests might want to buy. In the good old days, any father would sell his most lovely daughter into marriage for a tiger's tooth, and now he is profiteering and wants three tigers' teeth and an American plug hat.

The ways of the flat hunter in St. Paul are hard, but the ways of the head hunter in Borneo are even harder, for the unfortunate savage can no longer establish his rank in society by purchasing a head at a moderate price, but is forced to go out and look for one, unless he has the wealth of a Croesus.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.