Week of Decision

The President was out of town and so was Congress. In the nation's capital last week the Price Decontrol Board was the focal point of U.S. Government.

Its job was thorny and thankless. Its immediate problem, to be settled this week, was whether to restore price ceilings on meat, grain, dairy products, cottonseed and soybeans or let prices range in a free market.

Whatever it did, it would inevitably set a pattern. If it kept the five ceilings off, U.S. businessmen could be reasonably certain that other ceilings still on would soon disappear; it would be a chance to prove that in a free economy prices can be driven down by production and competition. If it put all ceilings back, U.S. labor could well feel that most price controls would stay on for a while--barring a Republican victory in November. Labor had already seen wage raises wiped out by rising prices; its economic thesis was that without ceilings, prices would spiral and ruin would be the result.

The board--two bankers and a businessman--was well aware of its responsibility. It held hearings in the same room where the Pearl Harbor Committee had staged its noisy inquisition and where the Mead Committee had gone loudly after the Garssons. This time there was no demonstration, no circus atmosphere.

Grey-haired Chairman Roy Thompson presided with a judicial, courteous air. On his right, paper manufacturer George Mead kept his head bowed, listened in silent attention. Most of the questioning was left to the third member, smiling, perky Banker Daniel W. Bell. The board was straining mightily to hear its witnesses with an open mind.

"You'll Be Sorry." Midwestern grainmen, Texas cattlemen, Chicago meat packers took the stand to testify once more that price controls were unworkable and unenforceable and wiped out their profits. Armed with charts and briefs they recounted how the black market disappeared and food began to flow when OPA restrictions were lifted. Said the American Farm Bureau Federation's lobbyist Ed O'Neal: if the board chose recontrol "you'll never be sorrier in your life."

The food producers' ranks held solid until the appearance of Morris Cohn, representing 18 small Eastern slaughterhouses. He pleaded for putting controls back on meat. "Nobody has been put out of business by OPA controls," he cried. "Why should they be with these prices?" Dismayed meatmen followed the turncoat from the witness chair, questioning his credentials.

There were no breaks among consumers. A Washington housewife complained: "My husband is making $75 a week and we cannot have meat more than twice a week." If the board chose decontrol, said Brooklyn's Frances Silverman, the country would see the "biggest mass buyers' strike in history." Cried Mrs. Tillie Greenstein: "Coney Island is up in arms."

Up & Up. The hearing went on. But in another part of Washington the U.S. price structure was being changed while the board sat. When Congress gave the Decontrol Board its great responsibility, it also gave OPA 30 days in which to revise many of its ceilings. OPAdministrator Paul Porter hastened to explain that the recent rash of price boosts were all mandatory under the OPA extension act.

Last week, as time ran out on the 30-day deadline, beer went up a penny a glass, coffee 10 to 13-c- a pound. Then OPA announced percentage increases on 20 more consumer items. Up went electric ranges (9%), box springs (12%), vacuum cleaners (7%), chinaware (7%), radios & phonographs (3%). Estimated cost to the public: $150,000,000 a year.

The rise in food prices moved Wage Stabilization Board Chairman Willard Wirtz to sound a warning: "Unless the prices of essential foods . . . are recontrolled and rolled back . . . the wage problems cannot be met thereafter."

Labor's Fires. C.I.O. President Philip Murray underlined labor's intentions. Labor's average take-home pay, said Murray, had dipped 8.5% from wartime levels despite strike-won raises in hourly rates; living costs had already risen 10.4% in the same period. Said he: "Labor is being squeezed between rising prices and shrinking earnings."

In a third corner of the capital, labor began to build its fires. With one eye on the Decontrol Board hearings, 300 top C.I.O. leaders staged a strategy meeting, agreed to make a show of suffering patience before blowing the lid again on U.S. industry.

The policy: 1) press the fight for price control for another 30 days, 2) if prices continued to rise, reopen wage clauses on a national scale. Then Walter Reuther, obviously hoping that the Decontrol Board was listening, threatened to reopen the Chrysler contract.

As the Price Board closeted itself for the big decision the U.S. waited, wondered if the seesaw of wages and prices would ever stop.

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