Toward Peace

As Congress went home--perhaps to stay until January--a sudden quiet fell in Washington. The industrial and labor fronts were quiet, too, except for lingering disturbances like the supplier strikes which were still crippling automobile production.

It was not a state of peace already attained. The nation still had vast problems, and some of them Congress had left for the next session. For the most pressing of them it had put up a structure to control prices which was a compromise between Harry Truman's hopes and those of the anti-price-controllers. There were still countless other Government controls of varying stringency.

But not since Pearl Harbor had there been a climate so favorable for throwing off some of the controls, to let economic fractures knit in the open air of free enterprise.

Chief element in the climate, and beginning to be savored by all, was the fact that the U.S. was producing goods for peace again, and on a vast scale. Industrial output was skyrocketing, bottlenecks were disappearing, employment was at a record 56,740,000. It was possible that there would be an acute labor scarcity by autumn.

The prospects for a period of labor peace seemed excellent. The C.I.O.'s Phil Murray had let it be known that he is against overall strikes during the period of rising prices; A.F.L. leaders, too, were following a policy of extreme caution.

Harry Truman, who had had plenty of rough sailing, set his course to the prevailing winds. The word from the White House last week was that the President would try to stay out of political controversy, try to keep out of the news, make few trips, do little campaigning. He would also make efforts to choke off unseemly intra-administration rows, once more allow the nation to feel that it was moving in peace & calm.

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