The purpose of this paper is to give a fairly elementary method to prove that the function (The equation is abbreviated), α≠0, 1, u(0)=I, u(1)=L, is strictly increasing, and to give a simple proof of the inequalities x<H<xy/I<xy/L<G<L<I<A<y, where 0<x<y and A, G, H, I, L are the arithmetic, the geometric, the harmonic, the identric and logarithmic means of x and y, respectively.