Anatomy of Suffering

Our national standard of living must be reduced to the level which prevailed in 1932.--Leon Henderson.

As for the inconveniences, discomforts and hardships that you and I will have to endure--why, we haven't even got to the foothills yet. . . . We'll do without a lot of things until it really hurts every single one of us.--Don Nelson.

Our civilian economy is fast going on a minimum subsistence standard.--Bill Batt.

In such words, and many more, too many people have been telling too many other people that the U.S. citizen is going to have to "suffer." Everyone tells him that something nebulous and horrible is going to hit him any minute, exhorts him to be ready and brave. The average citizen, in fact, is beginning to feel that it is hardly decent for him not to "suffer." But what does this nebulous "suffering" amount to?

Leon Henderson has defined it in dollars. The U.S. this year, he says, will have at least $15,000,000,000 more income to spend for $9,000,000,000 less goods and services than it bought last year. Next year the spread will be even bigger. That is indeed inflationary, but is it suffering? Something like two-thirds of the $9 billion cut just means that there will be practically no new consumer durable goods to buy: no automobiles, upon which the U.S. last year lavished $4 billion; no refrigerators ($550.000.000); no radios ($520,000,000), etc. But this is akin to "deferred maintenance." The U.S. will have to get along with its old cars; more people will have to wear their old clothes until they get a bit threadbare. Once the present enormous inventories of new goods are sold out, people won't be able to raise their standard of living with all sorts of new household gadgets. But, except where shipping bottlenecks or military conquest have restricted seaborne supplies (like rubber), nothing has happened yet to indicate any cut worth speaking of in goods for daily (or nondurable) consumption. There is talk of rationing in a total of 15 items, but none of the added rationing will bring real hardship. In fact, far from going back to 1932, the U.S. will have on balance more goods to enjoy in the year of "suffering" 1943 than it had in riotous 1929. Specifically:

The U.S. Will Be Fed. It has, and will have, more wheat than it knows what to do with (TIME, June 22), more vegetables, more meat and milk and fruit than it has ever had before. Despite Lend-Lease, the Agriculture Department of late has been so bothered with more milk, cheese and eggs than it had dared to hope for, for example, that it is urging people to eat more abundantly. The U.S. will have less sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, tapioca, bananas and other imported foods to which it has become attached; and domestic transportation troubles may mean doing without some delicacies from distant states. But from the standpoint of a balanced diet the U.S. will be as well fed in 1943--if not better--than ever before.

The U.S. Will Be Clad. There will be fewer frills, narrower skirts, cuffless pants, less wool, no silk, less rayon, perhaps even less cotton--which is to say, fewer new clothes for everyone. But if last year's suit becomes everyone's new suit, the biggest selling point for either men's or women's clothing is automatically removed, because last year's suit automatically becomes all that is necessary to keep up with the Joneses. Most worrisome possible shortage (perhaps necessitating rationing next year) is shoes, but shoe stocks now are comfortably high. To the extent that the U.S. has ever been well clad, it will continue to be well clad.

The U.S. Will Be Housed. The 27,000,000 non-farm homes in which approximately the same number of non-farm families managed to live last year will still be around next year, a little bit shabbier, but otherwise not much more of a disgrace to the high-cost building industry than they have been for a generation. Acute regional shortages have developed where war plants have boomed new population centers. To meet them the U.S. expects that some doubling-up of families will be necessary, but it has also issued 1942 priorities for 670,000 new dwellings--more than have been built in any year since 1928, except last year's 715,000. The Government hopes to provide another 650,000 units in existing structures by converting business properties and by remodeling old housing.

Despite all this activity, housing is one spot where 1943 conditions will definitely be worse than 1932. But the main reason is that it has been getting worse steadily each year since 1929. The decline in the coming year actually will be much less than the customary deterioration.

As to durable goods for U.S. homes: there will soon be no new refrigerators, radios, toasters, vacuum cleaners; there will be less choice in cooking utensils, carpets, furniture. But at the end of 1941 there were over 19,000,000 electric refrigerators in the U.S. v. fewer than 4,000,000 in 1932; there were 57,400,000 radios v. 18,000,000; there were 19,000,000 washers and ironers, 16,000,000 toasters, 16,000,000 vacuum cleaners. The U.S. may hanker for shiny new ones, but most of these existing adjuncts to graceful living can and will endure for the duration. The same is true of household services: though Government men talk darkly of some regional rationing of power for home use, it would take a 40% cut in kilowatt-hours per household to push the U.S. back to its 1932 average (602 k.w.h. per year v. about 1,000 now); though long-distance telephone calls may be a bit slower for the ordinary call, there are 23,890,000 installed telephones in the U.S. now v. 19,363,000 in the 1932 to whose discomforts the U.S. is alleged to be returning.

Luxuries that are near-necessities will take some beatings, but there is still no sign that most of them will disappear, or even become seriously scarce. Among the least-threatened peacetime pleasures is cinema; the paper shortage has blown up (TIME, June 1), so newspapers and magazines will continue, unless advertising is taxed to death--in fact, in most cases they are officially regarded as strategic morale-builders. Cigarets are being produced in the most enormous, quantities in history (though they are also being taxed at record levels); cigars and pipe tobacco are booming, too. WPB has gone on record as considering that basic cosmetics (powder, rouge, lipstick, cold cream) are "essential"--though favorite brands and esoteric colors and concoctions may disappear. Because distilleries are making alcohol for munitions and synthetic rubber, gin will get scarce; so will some whiskeys. But U.S. liquor stocks on the whole add up to perhaps a sober four-year supply. Most seriously threatened U.S. pastime is travel; most seriously threatened U.S. comfort is servants, handymen, and repairmen (because of the draft and war jobs for women); to the extent that it is real "suffering" for the citizen to have to stay at home more and to do his own house and yard work, the citizen will suffer.

Transportation is one habit which, the public may have to modify. The railroads are carrying more passengers than in any year since 1930 and are still looking for more (except on Washington trains and a few others). But motor transport is another story, because of the rubber shortage. For civilians, who have already cut their driving on the rationed East Coast by 55-65%. Dow Chemical's Thiokol (TIME, June 29) is the great white hope, with serious talk of enough by fall to retread 1,000,000 tires a month (out of 150,000,000 in use). Nonetheless, people who ought to know (like the Petroleum Industry War Council) were still talking last week of a reduction of cars in use--for lack of rubber--from 27,000,000 now (v. 20,886.000 in 1932) to 23,700,000 at year's end, to 9,000.000 at the end of 1943 and to none by 1945. If that dire prediction comes true, whatever the civilian may suffer in loss of convenience will pale beside the terrific consequences to the war effort itself.

The 1932 Standard of Living, it is important to note, is the 1942 standard in reverse. Then there was too little money for too many goods; now the specter of inflation stalks the land because there is (or will be, when the present enormous inventories melt away) too much money to buy too few goods. Ironically, the manner in which that money will be distributed magnifies the problem. For the plain fact is that (outside of military casualties) there are only two major kinds of "suffering" in prospect for consumers: 1) The newly well-paid will not be able to use their pay to buy many of the goods that they have always wanted and never before could afford. 2) The accustomed-to-be-well-paid will be taxed to the point of having to get on with wrhat they have--which, in most cases, should be more than enough for comfort.

If this be suffering it would appear to be more of the mind than of the flesh. As WPB's Joe Weiner put it last month: ". . . Basic requirements of living can be met in this country to a degree which in all other countries would be so satisfactory that most of them did not even experience it in peace."

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