24 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



income. They have increased wages far less than 

 they have increased costs of food, fuel, clothes, and 

 rent, but they have enriched the privileged classes 

 and the producers of war materials and supplies 

 enormously.^ 



Is there any justification for this increase in the 

 cost of food ? Was there such a shortage as explains 

 the increase of 84 per cent, in dairy and garden prod- 

 ucts and 105 per cent, in foodstuffs between April, 

 1915, and April, 1917, as reported by the New York 

 Times Annalist. 



Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Houston, says that 

 high prices are not due to actual shortage. There is 

 enough food produced. Despite a 33 per cent, in- 

 crease in population between 1899 and 1915, the 

 production of food per capita has remained substan- 

 tially the same in many staple foods. It has in- 

 creased in some and only fallen in a few. His fig- 

 ures of food production for leading articles of food, 

 as stated in a published interview, are given in table 

 on opposite page. 



The per-capita production of sugar has increased 

 threefold in sixteen years; in eggs there is a slight 

 increase reported, but in meats, milk, and cereals 

 there has been a substantial falling off. Yet the 

 price of sugar has risen as have other articles, while 

 those cereals in which there has been an increase in 



* From statement and statistics presented before Senate Com- 

 mittee on Finance by Mr. Amos R. E. Pinchot. 



