"The Dear Life"

Whipped by a determined farmers' lobby the French Chamber spent 20 consecutive hours in anguished debate last week, then passed a bill to raise further the internal price of wheat, already selling in France for roughly twice the world price.

Under the new law, which the Senate was expected to pass this week, the State will collect from millers a progressively increasing tax on flour, proceeds from which will be used in efforts to raise wheat prices from $1.14 per bushel last week in France to $1.54 by July 15 and within the next year to $1.73. (Last week's price in Chicago: 90-c-.)

Already French law compels millers to use 100% French wheat in making flour, and the farmer is further protected by French tariffs and quotas raised against the world's great wheat growing states (see p. 17). With bread prices bound to rise, French papers bristled last week with indignant plaints headed THE DEAR LIFE (La Vie Chere). On the Riviera rich Bruce Bundy of Los Angeles announced a plan to form an island colony "as a refuge from high French prices and the depreciated dollar." Socialite colonists would purchase all their necessary luxuries on a co-operative basis. Reported ready to join the colony were Mme Jacques Balsan, the onetime Consuelo Vanderbilt, and Frank Jay Gould, who was forced last year to rent his famed Riviera casinos to a French syndicate at a reputed loss.

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