Food: Why Prices Are Going Up

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The U.S. housewife is beginning to stew about food prices. "We ate better four years ago, when my husband was still a student," says Mrs. Roberta Pearson, wife of a junior bank executive in Chicago. "These prices are robbery. The Government seems more interested in the price of rice in Saigon than in food costs in New York," says Manhattan-dwelling Mrs. Joan Lester. Says Boston's Mrs. Irene Krutt: "If I were younger, I'd grab a placard and picket."

When housewives grumble, politicians tremble. Thus the Federal Trade Com mission has launched a full-scale investigation into milk and bread price increases. A House subcommittee has held hearings about bread costs. In New York City, the city council has undertaken an all-out probe of food prices; and State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz has filed suit seeking a court injunction against further milk price hikes. In Pennsylvania, where dairymen recently posted a 2¢-per-qt. milk price raise, Lieutenant Governor Raymond P. Shafer, the G.O.P. candidate for Governor, persuaded them to roll back to the old 28¢-qt. line until such time as the State Milk Control Commission could hold hearings to determine "a fair price." Last week the commission started its hearings—whereupon some 200 dairymen stomped out and set up picket lines to agitate for higher milk prices.

Seeking a Scapegoat. No investigation is needed to establish the major point: for the first time since the inflationary Korean War period, food prices are climbing faster than overall retail prices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food has gone up by 3½% in the past year; meat, fish and poultry 7½%, dairy products 5½%. Local situations dramatize the difficulty. In Chicago last week the retail price of butter was 93¢ per lb., up 12½¢ from last year. In Detroit, lettuce has gone from 20¢ a head to 29¢, cabbage from 10¢ to 15¢ a head, carrots from 19¢ to 25¢ per lb. At Boston's Stop & Shop supermarkets, bacon has soared from 39¢ to 98¢ per lb. within the past four years.

In seeking explanations for the food-price leap, everyone seems to have a scapegoat. Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman puts at least part of the blame on the housewife. After all, Freeman notes, she insists on buying such processed meals as TV dinners, when the same ingredients would cost her one-third as much if she were willing to cook for herself. The housewife tends to castigate the retail groceryman. Says New York City Markets Commissioner Samuel J. Kearing Jr.: "When the housewife finds that she has to pay 2¢ more for bread, her immediate reaction is that the store owner must be making more. That's unfair." Grocers agree: they in their turn point a finger at the so-called middlemen—the wholesalers, packagers and transportation types. These are indeed charging more for their services, but at the same time they themselves are paying higher labor and tax tabs.