Steady Driving

At his press conference last week the President was crisp, cool and thoughtful. He had a fresh haircut and his blue double-breasted suit was freshly pressed. He also wore an air of touchiness, as if the thumping criticisms he had taken in the last three weeks had left some soreness.

He had a long statement to read. He wanted to bolster up the optimistic parts of OWMR Boss John R. Steelman's report on the outlook for the second year of reconversion. The President read: "We are driving steadily toward peacetime prosperity." He ticked off high spots of the report:

Employment was at a high: 58,000,000, including 10,000,000 war veterans. Farm income, business profits, dollar volume of industrial production were all at new peaks. So were income payments to individuals: $167,000,000,000 a year. So was consumer spending: $126,000,000,000 a year. The people were getting electric irons, washing machines, radios, tires, etc.

It was a splendid achievement, said the President. But he also wanted to sound a sober note of warning. Said he: "I hope every businessman, worker, farmer and consumer will take to heart this sentence [from the report]: 'An all-out emphasis on production of finished goods and on preventing a further increase in prices is the task immediately before us.'"

Stick to the Facts. Harry Truman seemed a little less bonhomous than usual as he reminded newsmen that those were the facts and he thought that they ought to stick to the facts in their commenting.

The President did not try to bolster the "great danger" warnings in the Steelman report. Among them: zooming living costs (see chart) and the resulting cut in real wages to the lowest point since early in the war; a drop of 8.5% in take-home pay since April 1945; inflationary pressures which could lead to "price collapse" and depression.

In essence, the Steelman report was a plea to businessmen, farmers and organized labor to go easy on price and wage increases. With the political heat turned on for junking Government controls, it was also a plea for retention of controls. Some of John Steelman's facts were open to dispute. He predicted that rising prices would create a wage-price spiral. Commented the New York Times: "[That] implies that it has been price rises that have been forcing wage rises. In the last year the causation has been the other way around. . . . The Administration . . . encouraged and sometimes compelled wage increases that forced corresponding price increases."

Last week the President also:

P: Confirmed the rumor that TVA Chairman David Lilienthal was under consideration as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission (TIME, Sept. 9), thus stirring Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKellar into another conniption in his longstanding scunner against Lilienthal.

P: Welcomed tall, sad-looking W. Averell Harriman to his Cabinet, kidded him about his favorite ball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, losing the pennant to Missourian Truman's favorite, the St. Louis Cardinals.

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