Cheap Food The price of bread was reduced this week
to 7d. per quartern, and meat at Smithfield was 2d. a pound cheaper, The latest official cost-of-living index is 43 per cent. above that of 1914, and shows a fall of 2 per cent. since last year. The facts are noteworthy at a time when the wheat quota and the prospective Ottawa legislation might have sent food prices up. The heavy Canadian crop has cheapened wheat, and the excessively high tariffs imposed by Germany, France and other European countries have the effect of diverting foodstuffs to our market. In any case, food is cheap in England just now, and this must be remembered_ in relation to the fiscal controversy, to proposed reductions of wages and to the cuts in salaries, pensions and the dole. No purpose is served by ignoring the plain economic facts. On the contrary, we have to be thankful that in this crisis of bad trade, heavy taxation and widespread unemployment the necessaries of life are almost as cheap as they were before the War, and sometimes cheaper.
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