Business & Finance: Costly Bread

While the wheat farmers in the Middle West are rejoicing over foreign crop failures and higher prices for wheat, the same news is creating an almost proportionate alarm abroad through the sharp rise in the price of flour.

In England, flour has been marked up in price four times in a single week. A sack of flour now costs $3.25 more than before the rise in wheat started. Roughly every 75¢ advance on the flour sack means a penny more for a loaf of bread. Already the four-pound loaf has jumped from 16¢ to 19¢. First and last, it is estimated that the present increase in British bread will call for the payment by England of about $90,000,000 to foreign wheat-exporting countries.

The anxiety of the British over the future price of breadstuffs is aggravated by the fact that already there are over 1,000,000 unemployed, and that exports stand a third below the pre-War rate. Some hunger may be felt in Great Britain as a result.

The effect in Central Europe will be even more serious. In Europe there are 300,000,000 bread-eaters, consuming about 550,000,000 bushels of wheat each year. France this year has a bumper crop and can feed herself.