Manila Market

Said the Manila Chronicle : "One of the most lucrative trades in Manila today is selling Army goods, obtained by hook or crook, at black-market prices. Eating places sell bread, butter and coffee with condensed milk, pies and other delicacies made of materials that can be obtained only from the Army. Small boys roam the streets everyday, peddling candy, cigarets and whatnot bought from G.I.s needing ready cash."

Last week the U.S. Army went diligently to work to stamp out this lucrative trade. But its curative measures were no match for the economic pressure which caused it. Like most other recently liberated lands, the Philippines are in the grip of a wild inflation; stolen Army goods bring the same sky-high prices they had brought in France.

One Scoop, One Dollar. Along Manila's streets, the stratospheric prices have already sprouted rows of cheap wood and tin shops amid the ruins. There, Filipinos and free-spending U.S. soldiers & sailors can buy a scoop of ice cream for $1 ; a pair of U.S.-made shoes for $120; a woman's dress of sleazy material for $35; or a Jap-made bicycle, which sold for $20 before the war, for $250.

U.S. bicycles, when obtainable, cost $400. A 1941 Ford sedan sells for $5,000. Nor are the prices in the restaurants and honky-tonk nightclubs any lower: $5 for a small drink of U.S. whiskey.

Only on rationed foods, chiefly rice and canned fish, are prices reasonable, and then only at the 545 stores run by the Philippine Government's Economic Control Administration. In the public markets, prices are ten times the EGA ceilings. Actually, the black market has become the normal market in the Islands.

The Mickey Mouse Era. Cause of the inflation was no mystery. The Islands were picked clean by the Japs and goods are scarce. Souvenir-hunting G.I.s and well-heeled Filipinos snap up the thin leavings at any price. Moreover, the Filipinos themselves became accustomed to fantastic prices when the Japs flooded the Islands with their "Mickey Mouse" paper money. At one time, five pounds of rice cost 1,000 pesos in Jap printing-press currency.

The cure for inflation is no mystery either. It is goods--plenty of them. The Foreign Economic Administration has started to give the cure. From a West Coast port, a ship loaded with food, clothing and medicine left for the Islands, the first cargo of private consumers' goods to sail since the liberation.

Most of the cargo was for private traders, who have every reason to expect a fast, profitable turnover. Soon FEA hopes to ship 30,000 tons a month, hopes that this will check the inflation until the Islands' economy can be started toward restoration. But it will take hundreds of ships and many more thousands of tons before the Islands can really be started on the road back. Until the war is over and ships are freed for peacetime traffic, the Philippines will get only a few drops of the medicine they direly need.

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