No Shortage of Surplus

While housewives and economists worry about shortages of foods, the Agricultural Marketing Administration maintains its favorite fiction--the surplus commodities list. Army and Lend-Lease needs leave only wheat as a real surplus, but the surplus buying and food-stamp plan devised in the depression to keep up prices still persist.

Families on relief can buy a dollar's worth of orange stamps, good for any food, get free a 50% dividend in blue stamps good only for "surplus" foods. This month the foods on the free list include pancake and whole wheat flour, corn meal and hominy grits, dry beans, potatoes, fresh vegetables, apples--all plentiful but hardly surplus. Also included: eggs--obviously not a surplus commodity to customers who pay 60-c- to 80-c- a dozen for them in big cities.

Last week Washington turned its hat around, said the stamp plan was now a relief and nutrition measure.

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