Prices Laugh at Board.

What the economist, John Dewey, has called “perhaps the greatest of socialist experiments by the party of individualism” has published some sort of a balance sheet. This organisation, the United States Federal Farm Board, reports that, to support the market, it bought huge quantities of wheat at averagely 81,97 cents, and cotton at 16.3 cents; the market prices at November 24 were 55 cents and 6 cents respectively. Not only did there huge purchases and storages fail to hold prices, prices (it is reported) actually became depressed, because the stored stocks and the uncertainty of their disposal overshadowed the market. Swaps of U.S. surplus wheat for Brazil surplus coffee availed not. Besides the obvious page 54 Josses on purchased stocks, there are undisclosed Farm Board losses on loans based on the former high prices. A couple of years ago President Hoover, that great individualist, warned against “buying, selling, and price-fixing.” His opposition was worn down. The slump did the rest.