Bread & Money

Under new Premier Etienne Flandin's energetic drive for a freer French economy, the Chamber before adjourning for the holidays last week passed bills empowering the Government to unpeg the price of wheat in France. Zump!--the price dropped from a fictitious pegged price of $2.01 per bu. to $1.44. In stern orders to prefects all over France, Premier Flandin demanded and largely achieved last week a nationwide cut of about 12% in the price of baker's bread.

Meanwhile rising French unemployment crossed the 400,000 mark for the first time. Admittedly M. Flandin--younger than Roosevelt, Mussolini or Stalin*-- faces a titanic task in attempting to bring French economy back to an even keel without invoking some spectacular "ism." Interviewed last week by the New York Times's smart Anne O'Hare McCormick, the tall, big-boned, broad-browed Premier declared:

"We move toward a greater rather than a lesser degree of liberty than now. . . . But everything waits upon stabilization. ... As things are now nobody will invest when he cannot know what his invested money will be worth when it is returned. . . . The stabilization of currencies is unquestionably the most important step toward world recovery. It is a question for Great Britain and the United States. . . . The franc is stable. France must await the outcome of the fiscal policy of the two great monetary powers."

*M. Flandin is one week older than Herr Hitler.

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