The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-05-12
is not explained at all.

Now there is an actual shortage; there is an actual scarcity. It is not all speculation that drives wheat up to three seventeen and a half. It is because those who sold short cannot get wheat to deliver and have to force up the price among rival shorts to do so.
 Mind you in the same issue of editorial above quoted we find the following news item:
 Louisville, Ky.-Food conditions in Louisville are identical with these in large centers, in point ot steady advancing prices. Substitu- tion of rice, lima beans and dried peas has been resorted to in large measure because of the high prices of potatoes, navy beans and various canned goods, meat and eggs. Stocks of potatoes, onions and sweet potatoes are very small in | local warehouses. Local restaurants and hotels have been securing the country for isolated lots of white and sweet potatoes and onions. All restaurants and hotels have ceased serving meat orders and make an extra charge for potato orders"
 Again another report from Toledo says that potatoes cannot be had here" A Milwaukee report says This city although in the heart of the porato territory is short ot potatoes. Commission men say that there arc not enough potatoes to last three days"
 The fact of the matter is that the condition now obtaining is such that any one who cares can blame almost any factor he has mind to: ono can blame the producer, the speculator. the middleman, the dis tributor or the consumer. Indeed that is exactly what everyone Is doing Some saddle responsibility on the poor old rancher. others upon the railroads with their cars, others on the food combines and gamblers, others upon the consum- ing allies who are buying up for export.
 AS the case presents itself just now is that there is a handsome profit in the game of buying and selling almost anything. If you buy and get delivery and you hold, you get an increase in price and a ready sale is assured. Beans are higher than ever before in the his tory of San Francisco. But accord ing to Chamber of Commerce fi- gures, when navy beans went to their highest figure last March, there were 280,900 sacks of navy
 beans in stock and unsold in ware
 houses compared with 80,000 at a similar period last year. It was not shortage that forced up the price
 there, but a gentlemen's agreement to hold out for bigger price.
 The tremendous consuming power of the Allies is not all to be figured out in the food furnished their armies, but in the imported food
 furnished the armies plus the aver age tonnage destroyed by German ,U boats, when that tonage contain
 ed food supplies from this country That tremendously increased con suming power is also to be. added to the consuming power of an Am erican working population which i' paid in money which has . greatl, { decreased purchasing power, but ;
 working population which must b' : fed. More men are steadily em
 ployed today in America than il years. Hence the consump tive capacity of the work CTS is much greater than il dollars and cnts. and thus we cal : easily sec that the demand beini
 greater than the supply. proportion ately than ever before, the short age is merely another name 10
 a very high price.
 Any intelligent person know B full well that if this war continues the prices today are only frac ton of what they will. be on al average another six months iron I today.
 When Unclc Sam lent the Allie' : nations five billion dollars. he mad } lthat inevitable. He handed hi foster children that much goot