The Price of Food
The Labour Party was undoubtedly expressing a general grievance when it complained of the high prices of food in the House of Commons last Tuesday ; and it was no doubt right when it said that if prices cannot be kept down the demand for higher wages will be irresistible. Mr. W. S. Morrison was able to point out that it is not the wholesale prices, quoted by Mr. John Morgan, but the retail prices, which affect the cost of living, and that the retail cost index in the first six months of the war showed a rise of only 17 per cent. as compared with 22 per cent. in the same period of the last war. None the less the country had believed that for this war the Government was forewarned and fore- armed, and that it started with a system of control which would have kept prices well in hand. Seventeen per cent. in six months is not a small rise, and the figures quoted by Mr. Alexander showed that the prices of some of the most essen- tial foods have risen far beyond this point. Moreover one of the effects of rationing has been to send up the prices of non-rationed and non-controlled food to figures high enough to lend substance to the complaint that profiteering, stopped in one direction, is condoned in another.
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