The head of the Federal Farm Commission has just announced that the Commission will discontinue its efforts to stabilize the prices of farm products if the farmers do not comply with its request to reduce their production of wheat considerably. Large production always means lower prices, and, as for wheat, the price is now so low that farmers in the Western States have begun to use it for heating purposes. They find that it is cheaper than selling it in order to get money for coal.

Nobody should be blamed for trying to better himself financially, and, as for the farmer, he has been faced with so many difficulties that he must be forgiven if he employs extraordinary means of meeting them. To a farmer with ordinary sensibilities there must be something repulsive about using perfectly good 2wheat instead of firewood or coal, for it has since the dawn of history been man's staff of life, and it seems like sacrilege to throw it into the fire. This is especially true at this time, when thousands of people in our large cities are at the point of starvation. It is really criminal to use wheat for fuel, but the farmer who is doing it is concerned about his own existence, and since he cannot sell his wheat he has to use it for something that will do him some good. As for the much talked about overproduction of wheat, there is no such thing. It only appears so. There are millions of potential consumers of wheat and other farm products as well as of manufactured goods, but they have no money with which to buy. If there were enough money in circulation, all this talk about overproduction would soon wane. If they had money the masses of workers who are now doing nothing would see to that.

There is only one thing lacking in this country today, and that is money. Most of the press is continually harping on the old song about good times returning as soon as the great public begins to buy. But the trouble is that 3the purchasing power of that public has been much reduced, in millions of cases entirely wiped out, due to unemployment, and there can be no substantial improvement unless the Government and those who control the capital take a hand.

The United States now owns about half of all the gold, that is above ground, in the world, and there is, therefore, no danger of inflation of our monetary system.

It is interesting to note that European economists repeatedly have pointed this out, and consider that the current depression is entirely unnecessary.