54 HOW TO PAY FOR THE WAR

claims on our dollar resources; or it is impossibleto allot enough shipping tonnage to satisfy thecurrent demand for sugar. It is necessary, there-fore, to force people to consume less bacon orless sugar and to buy something else instead;—quite a different problem from reducing theiraggregate expenditure. If the article is not aconventional necessary or one of general consump-tion, the end is reached most easily by allowinga rise in the price of the article, the consumptionof which we wish to restrict, relatively to otherarticles. But if this article is a necessary, anexceptional rise in the price of which is unde-sirable, so that the natural method of restrictionis ruled out, then there is a sound case forrationing.

There is hardly less objection to price fixingand legal restrictions against price increases,unaccompanied by any restriction on the volumeof purchasing power. For this policy has theeffect of positively increasing the pressure of con-sumption and of facilitating the conversion ofmoney income into the use and depletion ofvaluable resources. If the quantity of resourceswhich the authorities are prepared to release forcivilian consumption is strictly limited, pricefixing practices are likely to end in shortages inthe shops and queues of unsatisfied purchasers.

It is, however, undoubtedly the fact that pricefixing and propaganda against price raising aremuch more d la mode to-day than old-fashionedinflation. The political advantages of this policyare obvious. The objection to it is that, unlike