Arizona republican., 1909-04-17
PHOENIX, ARIZ., APRIL r, 1908
THE LOAF OF BREAD.

This talk of reducing the weight oi
 the loaf of bread or increasing the price of it, is very likely to result in a healthful movement against the prac- tices at Chicago which many think have brought about an unnatural con- dition. We believe this is the first time that an agitation of this kind has followed a manipulation of wheat, for never before was the effect so marked and widespread.
 Bakers have frequently found it necessary or advisable to change the size of the loaf to meet variations in the price of flour but in this country such changes have been local and generally so unostentatious that their patrons were unaware that any change had been effected. But now the bakers are widely advertising people are made to understand or believe that they are to be taxed a few more cents each day through the manipulations of a small band of Chicago spectators there will be a protesting storm which will almost certainly shake congress into ac- tion.
 As a matter of fact we have in this country the old English laws against forestalling, though they were repealed in England early in the reign of Victoria, but they have never been enforced here. They were re- pealed in England for the reason that modrn conditions of trade had rem dered the practices they were designed to prevent, legitimate. There were, of course, afterward corners and manipulators but the spectators con- trolling them usually stopped short of oppression.
 MT. Patten and his friends are now charged with bringing about a con- dition of affairs similar to those which gave birth to the Statute of Bakers of the reign of Henry III. for the punishment of him who fore stalled the market and who was de- poor people and of all the common aIty and an enemy of the whole shire and country"
 That the Chicago board of trade as well as the New York stock ex- change, has its uses is clear to all. The former enlarges the mar ket, gives wheat a breadth of distri- button which it would not otherwise have, and tends to an equalization of price throughout the country and so benefits producer and consumer The flurries which have attended the formation and breaking of corners have seldom disturbed the people at large so that nobody suffered but the gamblers themselves.
 The stock exchange. too, has been a useful means for the collection of large amounts of capital for great enterprises, for which funds would | have been difficult to procure. Even | the abuses which prevailed there from l time to time did not affect those ! who kept out of the market until | two years ago when it was devel- | Oped that the exchange was attract ing the finances of the country Then | a demand was presented for a reg | ulation of the transactions of the | exchange. In anticipation that this | demand will become a law, and in- deed, it has been engrafted to some extent upon the statutes of New York, the exchange has since kept within bounds.
 The demand for the restraint of the wheat manipulators will natur- ally be much louder more insistent and is likely to be more quickly ef- fective. Bread. though not so nearly l. a luxury as meat, is something al most sacred.