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Show 54B0.B00 NEEDED 1 Report of Commission Not Expected for Six Months, at Least. WASHINGTON, Feb. 12. Approval for a $400,000 appropriation will be asked of President "Wilson by the federal trade commission and the department of agriculture agri-culture for the food price investigation they are about to start at his direction. The inquiry will be begun as soon as the money is available and a plan of organization is worked out. It will go deeply 'into charges of price manipulation manipula-tion and restraints of trade in violation of the anti-trust laws. At least six months will be required, it was said today, before any sort of a report re-port can be made, and a year is the estimate esti-mate of the period necessary for a complete com-plete inquiry into the underlying causes of advancing food costs. Already the department de-partment of agriculture has gathered a mass of detail concerning production, distribution dis-tribution and consumption of foodstuffs. Here its powers have ended and the trade commission, possessing inquisitorial functions, func-tions, will take up the burden of the work. Data gathered by the department of justice in its cost of living Investigation Investi-gation will be turned over to the trade commission for use in the new inquiry. The trade commission's aim will be to cover every side of the food situation. Its observations will include the work of the farmer, the packer, the commission dealer, the wholesaler and the retailer. Experts will go into every detail of food production, distribution and consumption. A new division will be established, the sole dty of which will be to fix the responsibility re-sponsibility for high prices. Under the law creating the trade commission it has powers In that direction possessed by no other agency of the government and ample authority to take any measures found necessary to make the Investigation Investiga-tion successful'. Tables prepared within the last few-days few-days bearing on food prices for 1916 show that during the year there was a general advance in prices of from 10 to 100 per cent. Some of the staple articles and the amount of their price increases are: Sirloin, 11 per cent; ham, 21 per cent; lard, 29 per cent: flour, 11 per cent; egg3, 18 per cent; butter. 14 per cent; potatoes, 100 per cent; sugar, 25 per cent; milk, 4 per cent. |