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WILBUR JOHNSON, a friendly cook for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, spends a part of every week in a round-table discussion of economics.

So do other Midwesterners: Gordon Sundman, a photoengraver; Pearson Elledge, an airline employe; Peter McMinds, a telephone company engineer; Robert Sutherland and Harold Bermingham, engineers; and Herschel Robertson, a shop foreman.

They talk about family budgets, natural resources, production, distribution and the European Economic Community (Common Market). They weigh what the President says about taxes. They check each other on the precise meaning of such terms as wealth, land, capital, rent, wages, interest. And they ask themselves why it is important to understand concepts.

They ask about free enterprise and trace its roots. They worry about excesses in business, government and labor. They ponder public apathy about basic economics, about matters which to them, thanks to their discussions, have become vital, bread-and-butter issues.

Providing the opportunity, encouragement and setting for these unique gatherings is Chicago's Institute for Economic Inquiry. IEI has been doing this for years, but rarely before has interest in grass-roots discussions of economics reached the peak noticeable in Chicago, its home, and in a dozen nearby communities.

IEI, in fact, appears to be taking a lead which other communities may soon emulate as they realize the need to stir citizen interest in economic affairs.

Jogging the thoughts of executives, clerks and hourly workers is an old love of IEI; and its long-time director, John Lawrence Monroe, pursues it with unflickering ardor.

This year, IEI records a 172% increase in its ten-session, round-table economic study courses. Manufacturers, an airline, a steelmaker, a number of electric and electronics shops, publishers, schools and PTA groups are among the 24 companies now sponsoring courses in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

Mr. Monroe guides every phase of IEI's operation almost singlehandedly, working out of orderly, compact and efficient headquarters in downtown Chicago. He is constantly on the move, asking companies to invite their employes to take part in discussion sessions which IEI will outline and for which it will train group leaders without charge.

As director of the Henry George School of Social Science in Chicago (IEI's organizational forebear), Mr. Monroe was equally tireless. His drive easily spans three decades.

"The goal of it all," he observes quietly, "is the simple seeing by people of how much there is to do and how much there is to do with."

IEI's courses are for those who take nothing for granted, for those who believe, as John Monroe puts it, "in the power of clear thinking to bring right action," and for people ready to get things done.

This study method, as he explains it, "utilizes in the realm of economic inquiry the same laboratory means of establishing principles and arriving at conclusions as have opened storehouses of knowledge in the physical sciences and harnessed for mankind the physical forces of nature."

Observation and Test

Men like Wilbur Johnson and the nearly 1000 others (men and women) in the 101 current Midwest study groups, are told at the outset to accept only those conclusions which they can verify by observation and test by reason. They are urged toward a new wariness of narrow thinking, where evidence is slender and facts are few.

IEI trains the study-group leaders, supplies a minimum of course outlines and study materials, then puts the meetings on their own.

Wilbur Johnson's views are these: "Some people say our big problem is war; some say poverty; others say it is apathy. I think our big problem is lack of information that people can depend on.

"When I was a boy," he recalled recently, "we lived on the edge of town. Wealthy people lived on one side; poor on the other. One of my playmates happened to be wealthy. He had a beautiful home on the hill; my family lived in a shack by comparison.

"I wondered then why some people had a whole lot and others didn't. Was it a question of knowledge, ability or luck?

"When going to school one summer, I had to wear a pair of patched pants. For some reason, I just couldn't bear to appear in those pants -- and so, I wore an overcoat to school, even on the warmest days.

"I promised myself that if there was any knowledge that I could gain to prevent some other child from undergoing that experience, I must find it." He feels that IEI sessions constitute "finding" it.

So ever-new are these discussions that some secretaries, machinists, clerks -- and even company presidents -- sign up for them over and over again. They cost participants nothing. If this spurs enrollment, it also freights John Monroe's mission with the extra responsibility of raising money to pay IEI's way.

While there apparently is boundless acclaim for and interest in the IEI mission, the voluntary contributions that support this non-profit institute invariably lag behind costs. Fortunately for the discussion groups, however, this fact has never diluted John Monroe's inspiration nor dimmed his economic and philosophical conviction that supply and demand inexorably meet.

Monroe's father, Frederick, a well-known lecturer on economic affairs at the turn of the century, once wrote to John, "The biggest work one can do in life is to use every power at one's command in advancing the human race."

It is obvious that these words of parental wisdom and inspiration still imbue John Monroe today. And it is by example as much as by word that he passes the message along through IEI to men like Wilbur Johnson and his round-table friends.