The important effort, as seen by the Economist, was to back up the armies at the front by a policy of self-sacrifce sacrifice at home, and it spoke in drastice drastic terms of the constant evidence of profiteering among certain classes in England. The contrast in the attitudes of those at the front and those active in business life is set forth in the following words:

"One of the most curious and interesting psychological facts of the war is the manner in which one man goes to the front and becomes a hero and a preux chevalier, while another, just like him in training and blood and outlook, stays at home and works for spoils, whether in wages or profits, resenting taxation, grumbling about his food, and seeming to think that this war for justice was invented to increase his wealth and comfort."

PRICE CONTROL IN UNITED STATES

Although price control is a measure disapproved of by economists, experience has shown that for certain products, such as wheat and flour, it produced good results. In the case of bituminous coal, Professor Anderson of Harvard said that it had probably done much harm and little good, because the cut in price was too drastic. One good feature of the price control system was the ability to apply it to draft labor from non-essential industries to the production of munitions and necessities of life. It was possible to do this by refusing coal, copper, steel and freight cars to the non-essential industries. How the Food Administration came to be a general price fixing body is explained in the following article by a member of the Food Administration:

WHEAT AT $2.20 A BUSHEL

"There are many evidences that price fixing has come to lodge itself as an unwelcome factor in the program of the Food Administration. Price fixing came to be a fact even while avoided as a theory, and eventually it has become necessary to face it, if not to accept it, even as a theory. What are the evidences that price fixing is essentially involved in the program of the Food Administration? One piece of evidence lies in the fact that when once you have fixed the price of one commodity the condition is bound to be reflected in other commodities. In fixing the price of wheat Congress fixed as well, though not so explicitly, the price of corn, and hogs, and sugar beets. The determining and administering of these prices it left to the Food Administration.

"A further evidence that the Food Administration could not avoid the onus of price fixing lies in the reasons for which the Administration was brought into existence and the services it was created to perform. The Food Administration is a war agency. Its chief purpose is the feeding of warring nations, our own nation and the Allies. All its other activities, its conservation, its stabilization of trade processes, its encouragement of production, are tributary to the one purpose of segregating stocks of food for the effective prosecution of the war. This latter purpose, in fact, takes the Food Administration directly or indirectly into the market.... By Section 14 of the Lever Bill, which became the Food Control Law, the President is authorized from time to time to determine and fix a reasonable guaranteed price for wheat and this section itself fixed the price for the crop of 1918 at not less than $2 per bushel at the principal interior primary markets. Pursuant to this section the President has, by two separate decrees, set the price of 1917 wheat and of the 1918 crop at $2.20 per bushel. Section 11 of the law authorizes the President to purchase and store and sell wheat and flour, meal, beans, and potatoes. Manifestly any purchase so made by the government would in effect fix the price. Aside from these delegations of power no authority is given by the Food Control Law to fix prices. And yet a study of the operations of these provisions as well as a regard for the implications of other functions of the Food Administration carry the conviction that price fixing is a necessary and inescapable corollary of the effective prosecution of the Food Administration program."

PRICE LEVEL, NOVEMBER, 1918

With the close of military operations there was noted a slight decline in commodity prices; how far the downward tendency would reach was considered a moot point. The apparent zenith point in prices was attained in July, 1918, but Bradstreet's prudently thought it unwise to indulge in any prophecies regarding low prices. The increased demand for food products among the stricken peoples of Europe would, it was believed, prevent any considerable fall in prices. There was not much to encourage consumers in the study of the index numbers of food commodities. The writer in Bradstreet's shows a wide range of price movements in the following table, in which are given the index numbers based on the prices per pound of ninety-six articles:

1912191319141915191619171918
January8.94939.49358.88579.143110.916313.727717.9636
February8.95789.45928.86199.662111.141513.942718.0776
March8.90199.40528.83209.619711.376014.136018.0732
April9.09789.29768.75629.775311.759814.576918.4656
May9.26969.13948.62249.797811.748515.120818.9133
June9.10179.07218.62209.742811.688715.468019.0091
July9.11198.95228.65669.869811.529416.068019.1849
August9.15959.01158.70879.821311.441416.398519.1162
August 159.8495
September9.21579.10069.75729.803411.780316.644119.0485
October9.45159.15269.24169.977412.069916.913519.0167
November9.47819.22528.862010.376812.799217.070118.9110
December9.54629.22909.035410.647313.662817.5966