( 172 ) 



spent for rationed and unrationed food. Since the family can- 

 not get along on its food ration, it purchases the remainder 

 on the open market, where farmers sell their produce after 

 having sold a given proportion to the government at fixed 

 prices. This family found that its monthly rationed food 

 lasted from fourteen to twenty days. About one third to one 

 half of the food had to be purchased on the open market at 

 competitive market prices. 



A comparison of the prices of rationed and market foods 

 indicates that market prices are 15 to 150 times the rationed 

 prices (table 3). A loaf of "rationed" bread costs about 10 

 cents, but "market" bread costs $12. 



Joseph Stalin may not have solved all the problems, but 

 he has learned possibly the hard way that high prices 

 for food lap up excessive purchasing power, which is in the 

 public interest in time of war. 



We Have Experimented with Many Panaceas 



The price policy of the horse-and-buggy era was to let 

 prices rise and fall ; every man for himself, and the devil take 

 the hindmost. 



Here and there attempts were made to alter the general 

 trends. William Jennings Bryan attempted to counteract the 

 deadening effects of the price decline during the eighties and 

 nineties by the substitution of the silver for the gold stand- 

 ard. McKinley proposed a tariff on food as the solution to the 

 problem. The Underwood Tariff Act of the Woodrow Wilson 

 days removed the agricultural tariffs to protect the consumer 

 against rising prices. The Emergency Tariff of 1921 was 

 passed to protect the farmers against the post-war deflation. 

 Tariffs cannot change the upward and downward trend of 

 world prices. 



Mr. Hoover's Farm Board was more vigorous but equally 

 ineffective. The Farm Board purchased huge amounts of 



