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Just before he leaves home in the morning, the average working-class husband in Mexico City gives his wife el gasto (expense money). Depending on his income, he doles out 5 to 25 pesos ($1 to $5). Then his wife starts on what used to be a pleasant round of spending.

First she gets milk from one street vendor, tortillas from another. Then she sets out for the market--La Merced, San Juan, Portales or San Lucas. In the days before inflation, she wandered happily up & down the aisles, stopping to buy 1.50 pesos of meat, 16 centavos of rice, 5 centavos of garlic, 40 centavos of tomatoes. There was a lot of good-natured bargaining, and a smart haggler could stretch el gasto to include a movie.

Less Fun. Inflation has spoiled the fun. Bargaining has become shrill, bitter, desperate. When the housewife asks why tomatoes have jumped 10% overnight, why beans which cost 50 centavos a kilo in 1940 now cost 1.65 pesos, the stall-keeper glibly blames la situation Rusa or la inundation de Florida. Unconvinced that the Russians or the Florida hurricane has any connection, the housewife calls for witnesses to behold how she is being robbed; she may shout the top-drawer insult hambreador (hunger-maker), wind up with a call for el paredon (wall used as a backstop for firing squads).

Last week things got rougher. When Government price control officials caved in to the pressure of soaring prices of imported grain and took ceilings off flour, bread prices promptly tripled. Mexico City bakery workers walked out. Bands of 20 to 25 men roamed the streets, smashed bakery windows, dumped bread, painted hambreador on store fronts; 250 of the city's 850 small bakeries were damaged.

Strikers jammed the Zocalo under the office of District Governor Fernando Casas Aleman to protest the arrest of three union leaders, and told the Governor that "functionaries who ordered these arrests don't know the humble pot of beans." The men were released, the strikers went back to work. Bread prices stayed up, but bakers agreed to put 75% of their production in the small, 5 centavo loaf, only 25% in more expensive sizes.

More Work? That settled the price of bread. It did not settle the question of where Mexican husbands were going to get more money for the increased gasto that their wives demanded. More & more Mexicans blamed their Government for high prices. Less & less were they inclined to listen calmly to the advice of President Aleman: "Prices will not come down until you work harder and produce more."

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