Dollars to Doughnuts

The price of bread zoomed. Last week's removal of all but the last remnants of Canada's wartime* controls sent it up an average of 3-c- a loaf (biggest reported boost: 6-c- for a 24-oz. loaf in Timmins, Ont.). It was no help to eat cake. Bakeries were all set to charge more for cake, and for pie, too.

It was going to cost Canadians more not only to eat, but to dress and to build. Ottawa stores predicted that rising leather prices would raise the price of shoes $2 to $4 a pair. A similar prediction in Winnipeg set off a buying spree. In some Vancouver yards, lumber went up $5 to $8 per thousand feet, to complicate the problem of new housing.

Canadians didn't like it. In Ottawa, a woman paraded on Sparks Street with a sign reading: BREADKNIVES STAB HOUSEWIVES. In Toronto other housewives wired Prime Minister King that decontrol of flour was "an unforgivable crime against the people." An Ottawa councilman cried: "We are losing the peace. ... It is such things as this that give rise to Communism." Labor organizations warned that higher prices would inevitably mean higher wages. Sean Edwin, a Montreal Gazette columnist, cracked: "If the ... trend continues, dollars to doughnuts will be even money."

* Among items decontrolled: flour, bread, peas, beans, canned goods, textiles, leather, clothing, lumber, farm implements, nails, wire, gopher poison. Among the few still controlled: meat, rents, sugar, soap.

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