"In articles of food usually classed as luxuries there was also a marked fall. Cheese imported in 1918 amounted to about 9,000,000 pounds against 15,000,000 in 1917, and 64,000,000 in 1914. Of currants the imports of 1918 were over 5,000,000 pounds against 25,000,000 in 1916 and 32,000,000 in 1914, and of dates only 6,000,000 pounds in 1918 against 34,000,000 in 1914; while olives and olive oil showed totals in 1918 of about one-half those of the year before the war." [Illustration: The Nations and Their Wheat Supply Under the Lever Bill, which became the Food Control Law after the United States declared war, the President was authorized to fix a reasonable guaranteed price for wheat.] GOOD EFFECTS OF PRICE CONTROL It became accepted on all sides that price control was the one method to correct the inequalities of war conditions. It was necessary to prevent the poorer classes in the population from having an inadequate consumption of wealth. There was the political side, too. Price control had an effect on the morale of large strata of the population. It acted as a bulwark against the rising tide of discontent and internal dissension incident to warfare on a democratic scale. Mr. Sydney Webb, a well known English student of labor problems, conceded that the British government had by its system of price control been fairly successful in staving off any general fall in the standard of life in its people. How the system worked is summarized by him in the following passage: "What has been successful in Great Britain in economizing supplies has been a widespread appeal to the whole nation to limit its consumption of wheaten bread (4 pounds per week), meat (2½ pounds per week), and sugar (¾ of a pound per week) to a prescribed maximum per person in the household; and to make up the necessary subsistence by the use of substitutes, such as fish, other cereals than wheat, and other vegetables than potatoes, of which the crop throughout all Europe has largely failed. More efficacious still has been the absolute government monopoly of sugar, secured at the very beginning of the war, and the drastic restriction of the total quantity allowed to be issued from store, the aggregate reduction being thus infallibly secured, and the retailers being left to share what sugar they obtained among their customers. It has been found useful, too, to make the wheaten flour go farther by compelling all the millers to include both an increased proportion of bran and a certain proportion of other cereals. More drastic measures are near at hand." STAY-AT-HOMES WHO MADE MONEY