Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 45, Number 257, Decatur, Adams County, 31 October 1947 — Page 6

PAGE SIX

WHY DOES FOOD COST SO MUCH?

The crisis of the world at the moment is in the American grocery store. We certainly need to do all we can about it. To do so intelligently, it seems to us that we need to know all we can of what got us into this trouble. We are sure we do not know and understand all thecauses, but here are some observations and suggestions we feel are the ones most likely to be helpful in this disturb* ing situation.

HUNGRY WESTERN EUROPE

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Europe’s bread basket is in the eastern part, beyond the Iron Curtain and useful only to Russia, who is believed by our Government to want only chaos in western Europe. America is the only source of aid to western Europe until North Africa and other new areas can be brought into food production. We have been sending tremendous quantities of foodstuffs to western Europe, and now it appears a great deal more is urgently needed. Whether we meet this crisis is up to the citizens of this country through their Congress. The problem is one of the greatest challenges of our times. But in any event the shipments made to date have been a great drain on our supply here. MORE MOUTHS TO FEED HERE AT HOME

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Since 1939 the population of the United State* alone has increased by twelve and one-half mil lion people —a jump of almost ten per cent. And all of them want to be, and deserve to be, well-fed Americans by our standards. • EVERYONE WANTS TO LIVE BETTER Not only are there more of us, but each of us wants to live better. We already have the highest standard of living ever seen anywhere in the world — even compared to prewar United States — but we still want to eat more and we still want to have the better cuts of meat, the scarce and more pleasant items that are more expensive. And as agnation we are eating more and better food than before the war, despite the high food prices and shortages caused by the high demand. The average American is eating 153 pounds of meat this year, against 133 pounds prewar —and it’s better meat. The packers report that 75 per cent of the less attractive cuts of meat are unwanted on the average American table. • MORE MONEY IN •PEOPLE'S HANDS

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Everybody feels poor after expenses and taxes these days. Yet* he fact remains that people are

DECATUR DAILY DEMOCRAT, DECATUR, INDIANA

' • putting more money in circulation than ever before. They are not only spending their current income, which is at an all-time high; too many are also dipping into their wartime savings because they feel it is necessary to do so, or because they feel it is no longer vital to save against the inevitable rainy day. But savings during the wartime were made out of money that was artificially created and then paid for goods that were shot away or otherwise consumed in war. Ghost goods and empty warehouses are all we have on call against those savings. When, in a sellers’ market such as this, we add some or all of those savings to our present income, and try to use the total to buy goods, what do we do? We, as a nation, simply insist □n paying that much more for w hat w'e could buy with our current income alone, if we would restrain ourselves and act as prudently in our own individual interests as we do in ordinary, rather than flush, times. We as a nation ought to be able to buy our current output with our current income and we can if we only will. AFTERMATH OF WAR—MORE NON-PRODUCERS

The last war has left us in a bad world with bad neighbors bent on our ruin, and with many other bad consequences of five years of destruction. It has left the world in two armed camps, with the United States the principal support of one whole camp. We are required to maintain large military forces scattered all over the world. These essential military forces are non-producers of food but they • consume great quantities of agricultural products, as do those who help them and those whom they support. Also, as an aftermath of the war, there are the millions of veterans in schools and hospitals and there are still more than a million extra civilian employees on the Government payroll than there were prewar. OTHER PRODUCTS SCARCE

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Goods made of metals and other ingredients used in war have been scarce for seven years — and during that time the dollar income of individuals has reached the highest level of all times. Because these goods have been scarce — and still are — too many of us have developed the habit of spending a greater portion of income in an effort to get more and better food. This was certainly a worthy objective, and it worked up to a certain point. But the pressures of the extra money supply were finally concentrated on foods to such an extent that black markets developed disgracefully and rationing and price controls broke down completely. You will recall that President Truman voluntarily removed almost the whole of the remaining controls in November, 1946, when he felt the elecjon that month had indicated the public had become convinced the controls were hindering supply and making real prices worse all the time, despite what any official prices were.

PRODUCTION UP, BUTThe farmers did a heroic job during the war, aided by new mechanization to free manpower for the armed forces. Since the war, production has continued to rise some, but not enough to cover our needs and the needs of those we are trying to help. It must be kept in mind that our food supply here is more than ample to satisfy far more than any reasonable needs and desires; it’s the foreign aid that makes our supply seem short. There is still need for every garden and every othe*r bit of help from everyone in increasing the food supply. PRICES DEPEND ON ALL OF US I”-''”— “ »" /\Z The inescapable conclusion we gather from all this is that present prices are the result of supply

WHAT WE ALL CAN DO Here are some of the all-too-few things we can each do to help others—and ourselves. These suggestions are based on the statements of Democrats and Republicans, of union heads, the clergy, and business leaders, of President Truman and his Citizens Food Committee. URGE REALISTIC ACTION We are asked to urge our Congressman to be extremely realistic in acting on the best information the Government can get and to be sure we give only the foreign aid we sensibly should, and not anything extra that may do us more harm than,good here and abroad. We are asked to urge our Congressman to satisfy himself that the Government’s operations in buying food and subsidizing food prices do not go beyond what is wise and good for all the people. We are asked to urge our Congressman to rid the Government payroll of all non-pro-ducers who are not absolutely essential to the real best interest of the whole public. OPERATE OUR OWN CONSERVATION PROGRAM We are asked to engage in an individual conservation program at home and at each meal; to waste less, clean our plates, watch the garbage can, have only left-overs one day a week. Estimates run to 22 million tons a year as to what we waste — contributing to shortage of supply and high prices here and to lack of sufficient food to starving people abroad. BUY ONLY WHAT WE NEED We are asked to substitute for scarce and expensive foods wherever we can. No meat on Tuesdays. No eggs and poultry on Thursdays. Save a slice of bread a day. A given amount of food value from corn costs about four times as much in the form of meat as when eaten as direct corn products in meal or cereals. And remember to look for the cheaper cuts and to find ways of making them agreeably edible. There is some self-denial being urged on us here, to be sure, but it’s nothing compared with what others are suffering as a result of the war and its aftermath of confused thinking. HELP CHECK INFLATION BY SAVING MONEY We are asked to try to retard the spending of our savings and to try to resume making some new savings both for our own good In <he future and for our own good now in taking the pressure off prices of food and other products. So let’s try to put away in savings the money we don’t spend as a result of our joining in this national food conservation program. Let’s not let the money so saved be added to the pressures already on prices in the non-food field. A little self-denial now will help make prices correct themselves and will make our savings have a greater buying power later. GENERAL ® ELECTRIC

for humans failing to meet human demand under very unusual and unfortunate circumstances. We as a nation have been placed in a position before and during the war where we felt unusual practices were wise and necessary in the purchase of farm products by the Government and in the support of farm prices by the Government. Too many of us, in turn, as individuals have developed care-' less, wasteful, and expensive habits in the food field as well as in other activities—something we apparently always do when we are in a flush sellers’ market for our services and our products. It’s a convenient habit sometimes to blame some of the cause of any price rise on unusual profits, but in the case of food prices this seems particularly not to apply. People tend to set 10 per cent of sales as the expected return that would influence them in investing their savings in a business of their own. They sefcm to feel 10 per cent is a fair average for a business to make with the best usually doing some better and the less able ones usually doing less well — down to the breaking point. General Electric, for instance, made around 7 per cent on its sales during the first nine months of this year, whereas last year the leading food concerns in manufacturing and distribution made less than half that—they actually having averaged 3.4 per cent for 1946 and 2.6 per cent for the ten-year period before that. Accordingly, we may fairly judge that over 96 per cent of the price of food is due to influences other than the profits of leading corporations in the field. The food-price situation seems to have resulted from the war and from our own acts and those of our agents in the Government. The solution in the main seems to depend on how intelligently we act as individuals here at home and how intelligently we help our Government to act here and abroad in food matters.

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