Poor Mr. Thurston

When Congress chopped the frayed mooring cable of OPA a year ago, there was a good deal of screeching around the big balloon of the U.S. economy. Harry Truman had already tossed out the ballast of wage controls. The cable was about to part anyhow. The first flight without controls soon made even 1940 prices look like something out of great-grandmother's album of souvenirs.

Nevertheless, there was general optimism then. The basis for it was the belief that the balloon would soon level off and that it would finally land, on higher ground than it had rested on before the war, but in a stable position nevertheless. But last week, despite all sorts of order-shouting and lever-jerking, prices were still going up like the balloon that carried Aeronaut Ira Thurston out over Lake Erie in 1858 (see cut).

In the past few months there had been nothing particularly spectacular about the day-by-day progress of the ascent. But the cumulative effect was beginning to make a half-dollar look like a quarter, and a quarter like a jukebox slug. By June 15 the cost of living was 58.5% higher than in the period from 1935-39. (The post-World War I rise reached a peak of 105.2% above 1914 prices.) Clothing had risen 101.6%; food, 96.1%; house furnishings, 78%; fuel 19.5%.

Bacon: 85-c-. There was no letup as the summer wore on. In Chicago, eggs were up from 57-c- (in June) to 65-c- a dozen; in St. Louis, butter had crept from 77-c- to 83-c- a pound; in Milwaukee a pound of round steak had jumped from 73-c- in June to 83-c-; in San Francisco, a pound of sliced bacon from 75-c- to 85-c-. Many tenants had just gotten a bill for 15% increase in rent.

Beneath the surface of such miscellaneous increases at consumer outlets there were more basic disturbances: price rises in both coal and steel, and an increase in the price of General Motors automobiles (see BUSINESS).

The country was also being visited by a plague of annoying and unannounced nickel, dime and dollar jumps in the price of all kinds of small goods and services. Restaurant prices were developing a habit of rising as much as 10-c- to 50-c- overnight. Some radio repairmen were charging more to peer into a receiving set than a physician asked for a sick call. It even cost more to go broke--the fee for filing bankruptcy papers in U.S. district courts went up from $30 to $45.

What Next? Clutching his billfold, the average consumer wondered where it would all end. He had more money to spend than ever before; wages had gone up, and that was one of the basic explanations of high prices. But the consumer also harbored a suspicion that many a price this summer would be boosted by vendors who were just out to get what they could while the getting was good.

Economists assured him that, barring the possibility of wholesale strikes, things would be all right, that there might be a little recession first, but it was not likely to turn into a real crash.

The average citizen could only hang on to the balloon as hard as he was able, try to enjoy the ride, and hope fervently for the best. But he was beginning to feel more & more like poor Mr. Thurston.

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