The Lovely Future

The shape of things to come in the peacetime U.S. was still forming hazily, like ectoplasm at a spiritualists' meeting. But U.S. citizens, staring with a seance-sitter's skeptical fascination, began to nudge each other last week. Government and industry really seemed to be conjuring a facsimile of normal living.

After 43 months of drawing up blue laws for industry, the War Production Board threw all but two score of its war time restrictions to the winds, giddily told startled U.S. manufacturers to make all the automobiles they wished (see BUSINESS). The same went for washing machines, ironers, pots & pans, electric razors, pottery, Kleenex, toys, radios, suits, dresses, storage batteries and photo graphic film.

Few of these items would be available in any quantity before Christmas, but the words rolled on the tongue like bubble sum. Some U.S. citizens even enjoyed knowing that there were no more restrictions on cotton linters, natural resins, green bone glue, horse mane hair and an insecticide named pyrethrum.

City bus lines, which had been forced to use the skip-stop system, a wartime innovation apparently designed to facilitate passing up passengers, would this week be allowed to halt under virtually every street light if the driver was in the mood.

The Federal Housing Administration resumed its prewar program of insuring mortgage loans on housing. The new houses would come later.

Radio "hams" who were ordered to dismantle their sets and get off the air on Dec. 7, 1941 began putting their sets together again. They were once more free to stay up all night hoarsely calling "CQ CQ CQ" into a microphone, without being suspected of espionage.

President Harry Truman prepared to give Montgomery Ward & Co. back to Sewell Avery and his stockholders, other seized plants back to private management. And with an eye on the clock, he vowed to ask Congress to repeal War Time.

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