LUXURY PRICES FOR NECESSARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 26, 1 February 1943, Page 4

LUXURY PRICES FOR NECESSARIES

There appears to be an attempt by apologists for fruit and vegetable shortages and high prices to explain away the grievances as relating only to luxuries. Because reference has been made to grapes at Us a lb and strawberries at 6s and more a box, these references have been made much of, as if they were the whole* or the majoi part, of the complaint. Housewives know better. They know that they are paying more for potatoes than in any year except the last, and that all fruit and vegetables, even the most" ordinary lines, were for many weeks obtainable only at extraordinary prices. The complaints ,do not come from people who expect or desire luxuries, but from sensible housewives who find their purses strained in the provision of necessaries. Whether ah article is a luxury or a necessary, is determined in part by its price, but in part only. Some vegetables and fruit are necessary in a balanced diet, and if all vegetables and fruit are commanding luxui'y prices, they may still be necessaries. The sensible buyer, when fruit of one kind is at too high a price, will leave it alone and substitute something else. But no common sense or ingenuity can grapple with a situation in which all the substitutes are high-priced. This is the position housewives have been faced with; and it adds insult to injury to present them as crying over grapes at lls a lb when all they asked was fruit and vegetables of any kind at a cost within their means. Equally side-tracking is the excuse that, if prices were high, at least the people

had the money to pay for them. Some people had—the people who had the opportunity to Work overtime at attractive rates —but many thousands are not in this position. Indeed, the great majority of salaried workers, small tradespeople, and professional men, find their means less than in pre-war days (reduced by taxation)' and from these lessened means they must meet normal war increases. They have no< margin for the abnormal.