peak of the postwar inflation in May, 1920, it rose
140 per cent.

In all these cases of wartime inflation, govern-
mental authorities and the intelligent public realized
that financing by means of heavy inflation was a bad
public policy and strove to prevent it, but their ef-
forts were of little avail.

Since August, 1939, the month before Germany's
invasion of Poland and the formal declaration of
war by Great Britain and France, the tendency of
prices in the United States has been upward. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics' comprehensive index
number of wholesale prices, covering about 900 com-
modities, rose 31 per cent from August, 1939, to
July, 1942, and the bureau's index number of the
prices of 28 basic commodities ¹ --prices that are
much more sensitive to inflationary forces than the
general run of commodity prices--rose 67 per cent.
According to the figures of the National Indus-
trial Conference Board, the cost of living increased
during the period August, 1939, to June, 1942, by
16 per cent.

To most people figures like these mean that infla-
tion is already well on its way.

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