The Alaska citizen., 1917-05-07
B|C PRICES
 PREVAIL ON
 THE OUTSIDE

PORTLAND Ore, Apr 14.-It will cost the average family about iv per cent more to live this week than 1t did last week
 Food prices have gone up all along the line. They continue 10 go up. and promise to remain up TOT long time to come.
 Flour and products of flour are the leaders in the aviation move ment. All other commodities are following. respectfully, in the imme- dIate rear.
 Flour went up another io cents a barrel yesterday. making 1t slo2O the highest it has been since the Civil war.
 And this advance is considered more or less modest in view of the u-cent jump in the price Of wheat yesterday It is almost certain that flour will take another jump this week
 Meanwhile housewives are not help ing the situation much by their frenzied rush 10 the flour markets. Many women, fearing an actual flour famine, are buying whole years supply now This naturally creates an artificial scarcity and has gen eral bullish effect on the market
 At the same time grain dealers re port that most of their present de mand for wheat comes from domes- tic millers. People all over the coun- try are buying flour for future use. Mills are running night and day 10 supply the demand.
 Big Margin Demanded.
 If this condition continues to pre- vail it is almost certain that wheat will keep on soaring. The market was firm all day yesterday with one sale of 30,0O0 bushels on the local exchange at $20S. Prices in the country were on an even higher basis
 Spectators and the boys who like to play the stock market are in fearful straits these days. Here tofore the ordinary trading has been done on a five-point margin. Now the brokers are requiring them to post a margin of 25 cents and in some cases as much as 35 cents. While bread is not advancing in price the size of the loaf is grad uaIly growing smaller. The 10-cent loaf now is no bigger than the 5- | cent loaf was before the war
 Bakers are beginning to complain, 4 too, of the cost of the oiled paper \ in which they wrap their bread these days Some of them, maybe, z are tullIIS NONI lIlt o4Ec O4 NAi' 4 loaf to save paper
 All other classes of bakery goods will go up tomorrow. The Pacific 8 Coast Biscuit company yesterday de cided to jump all their products up l 20 per cent. Packages that former I ly sold for 10 cents now will go at Il two for 25 cents, and 5-cent packag- II es will be sold at two for 15 cents. Macaroni Joins Procession. Macaroni that ordinarily sells at 10 cents a box will be Is cents be- ginning this week.
 All kinds of fancy cakes, confec- tioneries and candies will go up in like proportions.
 Sugar prices have as much to do with the skyward tendencies of con- fectionery goods as has the prices of flour. Sugar went up another 25 cents yesterday. It Is s910 for each 100 pounds now At the be- ginning of the war 1t was s5.25. Groc- CTS expect to see the latter figure doubled before the war IS over.
 But the European war, it is said, has less to do with the recent ad- vance in sugar than the insignifi- cant little revolution enjoyed by the people of Cuba few months ago. It is reported that fully 500,000 tons of sugar were destroyed by the revo- lutionists during that outbreak. The entire crop of the island is estmat- ed at only 3,0O0,000 tons. so the volume destroyed represents large proportion of the total.
 All other cereal products, such as rolled oats and breakfast foods, are bound to go up soon, as the grains from which they are produced are following the lead of wheat. Oats sold at Seattle yesterday for $48 ton, which is a record for this coast. lDealers here predict $50 oats before