HIGH PRICES IN U.S.

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25300, 27 September 1947, Page 9

HIGH PRICES IN U.S.

Many People Not Buying Meat WARNING AGAINST INFLATION (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, Sept. 25. Senator Ralph Flanders (Republican, Vermont), chairman of the congressional sub-committee which is investigating the high cost of living, said that one-third of New York City’s population of 7.500,000 was buying no meat because the people could not afford to pay the present prices. Senator Flanders said that testimony before the sub-committee indicated that food was the most serious item -in the cost of living. The subcommittee would recommend an extensive inquiry into the Middle West meat situation. The Episcopalian Bishop of New York (Dr. Charles Gilbert) told the sub-committee that one-third of the infant population was suffering from conditions ranging from mild deficiencies to near starvation. The only solution, he said, was the revival of price control and curbs on excess profits: Warning that a “severe economic storm appears to be threatening," Mr M. S. Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said in an address today that “quite vigorous’’ inflationary forces were at work in the United States.

Mr Eccles coupled this statement with a suggestion that the United States could spend less on its military forces if more were spent on maintaining the conditions on which democracy and peace depended. He declared that the United States was faced with the choice of spending on preparations for the next war or spending to get the democracies back on their feet. “We cannot continue to spend as much as we have on both,” he added. “We cannot be lavish in aid to other countries without suffering the consequences of inflation, heavier taxation and the reimposition of wartime controls.”