One of the plans to prevent the discontent arising from food speculation promoted by retailers and profiteers, was the preparation of fair price lists to protect the consumer. Every week new price lists were prepared so as to cover new fluctuation of cost to the retailer. These lists were given to the newspapers so that the consumer might be steadily informed and advised as to what he ought to pay the retailers in his city or town. It was shown how the patriotic retailer gained by the protection that this list offorded afforded him against the danger of unpatriotic profiteering. The United States Food Administration explained in a public statement the significance of the fair price lists. "They were nothing more," it said, "than bulletins to inform the public of the prices the retailer has to pay for certain foods, and the price he has to sell them to the consumer.
"Such a bulletin at one stroke does away with all the obscurity which too often veils the price increase which takes place at the hands of the retailer.
"To give an example, it shows at just what price a retailer is able to buy oatmeal and at just what price he is entitled to sell it. If any retailer decides to set upon the food he has for sale a higher price than that which brings him a fair profit, he is labeling himself 'Profiteer.' And thereafter it depends upon the public's own choice whether they shall trade with him or not.
"In accordance with the plans of the Food Administration such a system of fair price lists is now in operation throughout the country. Every week new price lists are prepared so as to cover new fluctuations of cost to the retailer. And these up-to-the-minute fair price lists are given to the newspapers to print so that the consumer may be steadily informed and advised as to what he ought to pay the retailers in his city or town."
HOW FAIR PRICE LISTS ARE MADE UP
"In theory the plan is the simplest imaginable. But it is complicated by the size of this country and by the variety of local food conditions which are bound to affect the price at which the retailer can buy and sell his foodstuffs. It would be utterly impossible to set forth one fair price list which would be fair for every spot in this country at any one time. A grocer in Calais, Maine, may be able to buy potatoes at a lower rate than a grocer in Snohomish, Washington. And the grocers of Red Oak, Iowa, may have to pay a different price from either. Obviously, each locality must determine its own fair price list.
"This is done by establishing in every community or county where fair price lists are to be put out a Price Interpreting Board, consisting of representatives of wholesale grocers, retailers, and consumers. The County Food Administration or his representative should act as chairman of this board. Such boards include representatives of both 'Cash and Carry' stores and 'Credit and Delivery' stores. These boards secure from wholesale representatives the prices charged to the retailer for various staple foods. With this as a basis, plus their knowledge of local conditions, and guided by a schedule of maximum margins submitted to them by the Food Administration at Washington, they determine what is a reasonable profit at which the retailer may sell to the consumer. Thus the retailer does not have a scale of selling prices arbitrarily thrust upon him; he helps determine them himself."
PROFITEERING
The natural and inevitable results of war on living conditions with food shortage and high prices were an unfamiliar factor in American experience for two generations. The artificial product of war time industry, "profiteering," was hard to be evoluted and caused resentment against those responsible for the practice. To deal with profiteers was no easy matter. How can profiteering be discriminated from legitimate profit-taking? How, too, can its existence be proved, for high fixed prices are not always an evidence of profiteering methods. The complexities of the various trade practices lumped together under the term profiteering are illustrated in the pamphlet on Profiteering, issued by W. B. Colver, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, in the form of a letter submitted on request to the U.S. Senate: