FRAILTY, FRAILTY!

Even editorial writers are prone to draw inadequate conclusions from the data in hand. Yesterday's issue of the Christian Science Monitor, aroused by advances in the price of wheat during the last six months, demands, in the current vogue for cooperation in marketing, the restriction of the profits and charges or conveying goods from producer to consumer. The fact that the price of wheat has been rising results inevitably in the conclusion that "someone s cheating." That "someone" must be found out and chastised.

A report published yesterday by the economic research bureau of Stanford University points to an entirely different cause. The international price of wheat has been higher than the American price. Until December the rates on Canadian and Argentinian wheat shipped to Europe was above the price in the United States. Wheat shortages in Europe have been drawing surplus crops from the rest of the world. If the European crops are heavy next fall, the American price will recede from the present high mark. The explanation of these fluctuations is due to economic factors.

Meanwhile, the earnest editorialists will discover occult influences at work. Diabolic, middlemen are wringing the shekels from the consumer's pocketbook. That demon, Inefficiency, hauntre of conscientious Americans, is implicated in the plot. The credit for the improvement of the market serves even to make a president, for, according to political medicine-men, it was the jargonish singsong of the last campaign which cast the devil of bankruptcy out of the farmer's "innards".