Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-06-15
CONTROLLING THE NATIONS FOOD.
BY Frederic j. .HaSkin

xASHINGTON, d. c., June There is one
w thing which every consumer do
right keep prices down, and that
is refrain from buying than he usually buys
of staple food articles The present high price of
staples is In small part to the sudden alarm
about food shortage, which has sent house
keepers into the market to buy far beyond their
immediate needs For example, in a certain
suburb the people have dubbed together to buy
flour by the barrel certain clerk makes it
practice to buy ten pounds of sugar every day.
All over the country these things being done.
One of the results is that millers have orders for
about twice what their mills produce. The
inevitable effect is to force prices upward, to en-
courage speculation.
Food boarding is not necessary. To buy veg
etables that will keep and store them in your
cellar, to preserve fruits and put them the
pantry shelf genuine food economies because
in these ways you may save foods which are
abundant in the summer, and large quantities of
which will rot. BY such expedients these you
are adding your mite to the nations food supply.
But by boarding flour and sugar you forcing
up the price of these articles and you are rot in
creasing the supply.
The question of prices seems to be badly mis-
understood. Thus general impression seems to
have gotten abroad that congress is to give the
president power to fix prices so that he can arbi-
trarly lower the retail price of food articles AS
a matter of fact, although the BILL reported by
the committee does give him this power, there is
little LIKELIHOOD that he Will exercise 1t.
The primary purpose of price-1xing is to as
sure the farmer of good price for his products,
that he will raise all that he possibly 1t
has been the invariable experience Of the farmer
that a small crop pays better than a large
For example, a man could make more money last
year of half crop of potatoes than he could
two years ago out of bumper crop. The south
gets more for a moderate cotton crop than it does
for big Every farmer knows this And
every farmer for that reason, is extremely suspi-
cious of the propaganda the part of the govern
ment and the press for him to plant more and
produce more. He is asked to spend his money
for seed and in developing new lands when his
entire experience teaches him that big national
crop of any staple will mean low prices for that
staple. And his costs of production high
that he cannot risk low.price.
For example right now a big potato crop is
needed badly. But it costs $35 to plant
in potatoes. Unless prices stay at a very high
level the farmer cannot afford to plant many po-
tatoes DR.. A. T. Russell of the Wisconsin State
Agricultural college told the house committee on
agriculture that for this he had advised
students of that institution not to plant potatoes
plant crop of beans this year for
about four dollars, and beans are a much better
risk, therefore, than potatoes.
So the need for the food administration to
have power to fix minimum price is clear. I'm
less he has assurance of a good return the
farmer. will not enthuse this bumper crop
idea.
Price-fxing will not be resorted to at all until
the need for it is certain. The first price fixed if
any price is fixed will be a minimum price for
certain staples. This price will be high enough to
the farmer of liberal profit over all costs
of production. If then, a staple becomes
abundant that it's market value is less than the
price which the government had guaranteed 30 the
producer, the government will make up the diff
ference This is the working of the minimum
price as 1t explained to the house committee
agriculture.