The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-02-24
PROBE OF FOOD PRICES.

The Federal Trade Commission is
about to start an investigation of the
rise in food prices. 1t will ask the
President to approve an appropriation
of 100000 for that purpose. It pro-
poses to cover every side of the food
situation.
Under the caption, Lets Have
Real One" the Chicago Record-Hera1d
editorially endorses the investigation
proposition as follows:
Good Let US hope at last we are
going to have real investigation. The
country has confidence in the Federal
Trade Commission. Now let's have
the facts. Let's go to the bottom
to the NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. really learn
all that can be learned about the sub
ject.
The problem is legal and economic.
The question of whether there are
combinations in restraint of trade
must be decided. That has heretofore
attracted the main attention. Now
it's time to go more into the economic
part-and go into it thoroughly. Are
the people being compelled to pay too
much for what they buy? Nobody
can answer that until he can say with
reasonable approximation what it
costs to produce those things.
In some fields the trade commits
packers, for instance, can tell it ex-
actly what it costs them to turn out
their products. Government attention
has encouraged accurate cost ac-
| counting in their case. But these
| fields are limited In the biggest
| fields of all the work will have to be
done from the ground up. There isn't
a farmer in Illinois who knows what
it costs him to put his product on the
| market today. There isn't one manu-
facturer in ten who has an accurate
idea of what it costs him to run his
| business.
| Let the trade commission start lit
orally from the ground up" Let it
start with the farmer and find what
production of everything, from eggs
| to wheat and cattle, means in terms
| of money and labor expenditure. He
doesn't know, and nobody else knows.
Then let it follow the product to con-
! sumption. Many people assume high
prices don't start until they reach
| some large organization. From the
economic standpoint they are just as
| liable to start at the beginning as any
where else. Prices can not be perma-
nently below the cost of production
under any circumstances.
| The country is in the mood for an
investigation that will be long and
deep and thorough. 1t is tired of these
| continued flurrieS about high prices
| that get nothing except possibly a
| politician into congress or some Other
job or into the newspapers. 1t has
had it's fill of half-baked remedies that
spring from attention to only one
half of the great problem. Let's have
an investigation that will enable the
| country to see it steadily and see it
whole. 1t would be cheap at $4,000
or 100000.
Commenting on the foregoing the
Boston Transcript says:
large contract! 1t would take a
long time to fill it. At the end OF
the time the conditions might have
changed completely, but even at that
it would have been well to accumulate
| the data. We are all certainly in the
dark as to what the actual conditions
| of production and transportation are
1t is altogether a vague proposition
The consumer believes that he is pay
ing too much. The producer is sure
| that he is not getting cent too much
Everybody suspects the twilight zone
between the producer and the con-
sumner, which belongs to the railroads
and that supposedly universal enemy
the "middleman." The fact is that
the whole thing is a twilight zone
1t ought to be dissipated by thoro
impartial and groundwork inquiry.