INFLATION: What Price Prices?

"Today we stand, as we did in the closing months of 1915, at the beginning of an upward sweep of the whole price structure. ... By April 1917, the wholesale price index had jumped 63%; by June 1917, 74%, and by June 1920, it was nearly 140% over the October 1915 mark.

The facts today are frighteningly similar." So said Franklin Roosevelt last week in a special message to Congress, admitting that he had at last found something that frightened him: inflation.

What was to be done? There was only one way out, said the President—set a ceiling on prices. Said...

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