Evening star., 1941-06-29
Living Cost Leaps, With Basic
Goods Up 1000 in Four Months
Shipping Shortage and Pressure of Armament
Orders Help to Push Figures
Higher and CHER
By A. F. Hinrichs,
Acting Commissioner of Labor Statistics.

real, as we'll as on a broad range of
agricultural and industrial materials.
Products imported from Central Eu-
rope or Scandinavia-sonle of them not
of widespread USE but essential in cer-
tain fields-have become almost unob-
tainable and their prices are rising very
rapidly Thus the current quotations
for many botanical drugs (e. g., BELLA
donna, chamomile 1owers) and essen
tial oils (e. g., bergamop are selling at
10 to 20 times above their prices of
August 1889.
Olive oil, formerly supplied mostly by
Italy, currently sells at about four times
its pre-war level.
Shipping Shortage Is Felt.
Where supplies have not been cut off
entirely, the shipping shortage is max
ing itself felt with increasing force.
Many products of importance to civilian
producers are hard to obtain; for eX-
ample, stocks of burlap which are
needed to pack farm supplies, such as
fertilizer, and to pack farm products
such as potatoes, have fallen very low
and apparently cannot be replenished
rapidly
The price of burlap today is more than
II cents yard as compared to Sig cents
in August, 1899; the cost of burlap bags
has risen correspondingly, and this, in
turn. means higher prices both for farm
supplies and farm products.
The difficulty of obtaining supple
mentary supplies of fats and oils, such
as palm oil, copra, tung oil and the like,
has increased the demand for domestic
fats and oils, such as cottonseed oil, lard
and tallow and the prices Of these prod
ucts have all gone up from IS to IS per
cent since the beginning of l94l; in ad-
dition, buyers have bid against each
other in an attempt to lay in stocks.
Rising Shipping Rates Have Effect.
Exceedingly sharp increases in shipping
rates have directly affected the prices of
all imported goods. Thus it costs three
times as much to bring sugar to the
United States from Cuba as it did before
the war. Even purely domestic products
have oeen affected. Tanker rates for
shipping fuel oil and gasoline from the
Cult coast to the North Atlantic sea-
board have been increased with conse-
quent curtailed supply and higher prices
for those products on the East Coast
AS regards domestic products, the most
rapid price advances have occurred in
those markets where the effect of ex-
pandlng civilian buying has increased
the strain on facilities caused by defense
orders. In the cotton textile market, for
example. prices both of cotton cloth and
cotton yarn have been raised even more
than the prices of raw cotton. and mill
margins have reached record levels. In
creaSing demand is also reflected in
sharp price increases for many other
domestic products. including building
materials chemicals, petroleum products
and furniture
To Be Felt in Retail Markets.
The advances which have occurred in
wholesale prices are beginning to be felt
increasingly in retail markets. Prices of
food in particular have been rising
steadily since last October until. by
May Is, l94I, tney were per cent Mgner
than their comparatively low level of
August, 1889 Indications are that by
the end of May there had been further
increase of almost l per cent.
An important factor in causing food
prices to rise has been the heavy in
crease in consumer demand and Govern
ment purchases. At the same time sea-
sonal shortages OF some vegetables, and
the recently enacted domestic agricul-
tural program have contributed to the
advance
The significance of this rise in food
prices should be interpreted in the light
of the fact that food ordinarily accounts
for about one-third of the wage earner's
budget.
Prices Of clothing, too, have begun to
rise in the last few months, following
(See LIVING COSTS, Page CD