The Committee in view of the fact that the price for 1918 wheat was already guaranteed at $2.00--it was later increased by the President to $2.26--and that any smaller price would undoubtedly lead to a considerable holding over of 1917 wheat for sale at the 1918 price and that a higher price would have been dangerously unfair to the consumers, especially the great body of working men, recommended a "fair price" of $2.20 a bushel for 1917 wheat. It was a price a little higher than that guaranteed by England to its farmers, about the same as that adopted by Germany, and a little less than that guaranteed by France, so desperate that she was ready to pay anything for production, and was already forestalling the complaint of consumers by subsidizing the bread. The President adopted the price as recommended to him by the Committee, but there was no Congressional guarantee to back it up. So, with the fair price thus determined by an independent commission, the Food Administrator proceeded with plans for holding the price of wheat at this level and reflecting it to the farmer. The principal steps taken to effect this were: First, the creation of a government corporation (the U. S. Grain Corporation) which, acting under the provision of the Food Control Law authorizing the government to buy and sell foodstuffs, could deal in wheat and exert its influence in the maintenance of the fair price by acting as a dominant commercial agency for the buying, selling, and distribution of wheat. Second, the licensing of all store handlers and millers of wheat and controlling them both through voluntary agreements and license regulations. Third, the prohibition of trading in futures. As an illustration of the results quickly obtained by these measures we may note that while the farmer was getting in the year just before the war about 27 per cent of the cost of each loaf of bread for the wheat in it, to which the miller added about 6-1/2 per cent and the middlemen and bakers the remaining 66-1/2 per cent, and in 1915, after the war began, the respective proportions were 30 per cent, 11 per cent, and 59 per cent, in 1918, after the Food Administrator's control was in force, the farmer got 40 per cent, the miller 3 per cent, and the others 57 per cent. Or, as another illustration, while in 1917, when there was no food control the difference between the price of the farmers' wheat and the flour made from it was $11.00 per barrel this margin during Food Administration days was about $3.50.