CHEAP BREAD AND WAR ECONOMY.
[To TICE EDITOR or THE Secession."] SIR, —In your last issue you criticise the Food Controller for reducing the price of bread from the standpoint that higher prices tend to economy in use. It is not often the Spectator is caught napping, 'but the actual truth is (paradoxical as it may appear) that the higher the price of bread, the larger the consumption, and rice-vend, and this is the case quite irrespective of the cur- rent prices of other commodities. The generally accepted reason i, this. Having ascertained the total sum Which can be spent on food for the week, the housewife first of all allocates the sum necessary to purchase the normal quantity of the staple article— bread. If the price, is high, there is correspondingly less to lay out on the more luxurious foods, and, this being so, a proportion of the balance has to go on the cheapest form of food obtainable. which is—bread. If bread is cheap, the whole balance goes in meat, cakes, and no forth. I will not trouble you with statistics. but you may accept it that these bear out my remarks.—I am,
Sir, &c., Fromm [We will not trouble our correspondent with our own statistics. but they do not bear out his paradox.—Ea. Spectator.)
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