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Since the nation will not press labor into slavery, cannot 

 import free food and other materials, and dares not curtail 

 the Lend-Lease policy of supplying instruments of war to 

 our allies, it cannot afford the luxury of a completely regi- 

 mented economy. 



Subsidies Are a Stopgap 



Our national melodrama is now in its third act, subsidies. 

 In acts one and two, Price-fixing and Rationing tried and 

 failed to save the heroine from the inflationary villain. The 

 script now calls for a new hero, and Subsidy makes an en- 

 trance. 



A subsidy for farm products is merely a device whereby 

 the government buys the crop at a price that will ensure high 

 production and sells it to the consumer at a low price. The 

 objective is to bolster the price-fixing policy and pacify ev- 

 erybody. The first cost of the system is borne by that part of 

 the population which pays the taxes. 



The call for subsidies is an admission that low ceiling prices 

 have impeded production and have not protected the con- 

 sumer as it was assumed they would. Rising prices and short- 

 ages are the symptoms of an economy disrupted by war. Sub- 

 sidies, like price-fixing and rationing, are an effort to treat 

 the symptoms rather than to diagnose the malady. Subsidies 

 are as attractive to the imagination as the pot of gold at the 

 end of the rainbow, and are equally elusive. 



Theoretically, a low ceiling price plus a subsidy under a 

 regimented economy would have about the same effect upon 

 food production as would rising prices under a free economy. 

 It might also be contended that a low ceiling price under a 

 subsidy would have about the same effect upon the consumer 

 as would rising prices if the cost of the subsidy system were 

 fully met by equitable taxation. However, these contentions 



