The Kill

The nylon lines, the "no-butter-today" signs, the creeping national scandal of the black market were signs of the times. They were also OPA's Achilles' heel. What was the use of price control when there were no goods under the price tags? The U.S. consumer craved a thousand things, but the race for scarce items went to the swift and knowing--not always the same as the honest or the deserving--citizen.

OPA's harshest critics conceded that it had done a creditable job of holding the line in wartime. Its best friends admitted that ever since the Administration had blithely abandoned most rationing and wage controls after war's end, OPA had been left hanging on a long and wobbly limb.

Farmers and businessmen unable to produce at a profit, housewives with unsettled squawks against their butchers, had made OPA a national whipping boy. The dilemma was twice dramatized last week. In Manhattan, veterans unable to get shirts marched naked-to-the-waist into the OPA office. In Chicago, a young waitress, shamelessly overcharged for a shameful room, had to run to the Administration-hating Tribune, instead of to the OPA, for a hearing (see Housing).

Last week the House took its turn at exploring the public mind on the subject. The Administration, putting up a bold front, had asked a year's extension of OPA's complete powers. Congressmen, whose political careers depend on their ability to gauge the temper of constituents, made a violent response.

Gripes & Lobbyists. In a wild and tumultuous session the House fell upon the Administration proposal with cries of outrage. Spurred on by local gripes and lobbyists roaming the corridors, the legislators stumbled over each other to strike out offending passages and to offer a shower of crippling amendments.

Representatives from hog districts, textile states, cattle regions, automobile centers, oil country, cotton belts and dairy lands logrolled pet peeves into law. In the crush, Connecticut's Herman P. Kopplemann offered an amendment of "sympathy to the American people," heard it voted down by a whacking majority.

When, after 10 p.m., the Speaker's gavel wearily rapped adjournment, OPA was a crimson corpse on the green-carpeted floor.

The House-passed bill technically maintained the breath of life in OPA for another nine months. Actually it had preserved the shell but extinguished the soul. Unless drastic alterations were made in the Senate, OPA would soon be required to lift the price lid on nearly every cost-of-living item except rent.

Cried OPAdministrator Paul Porter: "Impossible. . . ." Economic Stabilizer Chester Bowles, rushing to the radio, predicted a "wild orgy of speculation ... a joy ride to disaster."

Newspaper consensus agreed that the House had gone too far, that the sudden collapse of controls would usher in a period of violent and costly price fluctuations for hard-pressed consumers. But some placed at least part of the blame on OPA's reluctant retirement back to a free economy and its failure to wipe out inequities and obstacles to production.

There was still a chance that the Senate would restore to OPA the opportunity to liquidate itself gracefully, retire speedily but in good order from inflexible control--a compromise between rout and a last-ditch stand.

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