Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/156

102 if all the combined effort of all the statesmen and moralists of the world could possibly, in a whole year, increase production by two or three per cent beyond what it would otherwise be.

Another sort of remedy, and the most popular one at the present time, is price control. During the war legal price control had its maximum effect which, while great on a few commodities, probably did not, as statistics can be adduced to show, affect the general price level as much as five per cent. That now in times of peace the effect could be half that much is almost unthinkable.

The job is too big for any man or any government. If our Government tries to fix retail prices to protect the customer it must then go further and fix wholesale prices to protect the retailer and then, likewise, fix the prices of jobber, manufacturer, and producer of raw materials. Thousands and millions of dealers will have to be watched, controlled, penalized, by a mighty host of government officials, sure to be circumvented as soon as their backs are turned.

I do not hesitate to predict that the present attempt to fix individual prices will end like all previous attempts, even those of autocratic Germany, in disappointment.

Is it not a little ludicrous to use so much force without much effect when the desired effect without any force at all could be secured through stabilizing the dollar? If we had tried to secure "daylight saving" by force, compelling each factory, store, school, church, to begin an hour earlier and each individual to eat his breakfast an hour earlier than before, the Attorney General would certainly have had his hands full!