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Show L-.ira r Merchandise n p. By GEORGE S.BENSON jOOfylllCJ President of Harding College (JO J Searcy.Arkansas JlmMM! 1 WHEN just about everybody has spending money in their po'ekets because they can't find enough of the things they .want to buy, that is where inflation begins. The results are quite natural. Automatically Auto-matically people start bidding against each other for such items as they do find, and prices advance ad-vance far beyond real values. Then, no matter what we buy, we are squandering money. In order to cure inflation we need more things to buy. That's all it takes. If I need a hat and can find only one that fits my head and suits my taste, the dealer can (unless restrained by law) charge me whatever he wishes. I may rebel at the price but somebody else will pay it and the merchant will not need to worry about me. What will s-et the matter straight? More hats! Flexing WHEN suitable hats Prices are offered by every haberdasher in town, some competitor is certain to lower his prices to increase sales. Another will try to outdo him, and this competition continues until falling prices get too near cost to go lower. It is that simple. Goods are the scare-crows that frighten away inflation. Whatever interferes with the production of merchandise only makes inflation worse. " Inflation is like hunger. It is a want that has the full force of a need. Hunger includes a craving crav-ing that throws a person's sense of values completely out of plumb. Food is the only satisfactory answer to the hunger question and, just so, goods are the only sound solution to inflation. There are trick ways to hold prices down, when goods have to be scarce, but they are only temporary tem-porary help. Healthy ONCE in a while some-Demand some-Demand body has a strange ailment that makes eating eat-ing impossible, or very dangerous. danger-ous. Physicians cteny such a patient food while they try to adjust the malady. Sometimes they use drugs to make the patient pa-tient sleep and forget his craving; sometimes they flow energizing liquids into the blood-stream, but it's no diet. Nobody can live on it; it. only makes starvation slower. During the war, people in America were rightly denied goods. There were not enough workmen, not enough factories, not enough materials to supply the nation's defenders, our men and their allies. Consumer goods were scarce and a lot of people had extra money. All prices would have skyrocketed but government gov-ernment restrained it by law. It was an emergency drastic remedy; rem-edy; no complaint. Price controls did not contribute contri-bute anything permanent to this country's economic strength, however. how-ever. They simply eased the shock for civilians who had to undergo economic surgery or perish per-ish of dictatorship. Now the ordeal or-deal is over and the patient is wholesomely hungry for merchandise. merchan-dise. Every regulation that retards re-tards production now should be removed or relaxed in the public interest. |