No Painless Way

As usual everybody wanted a scapegoat --the villain who was to blame for inflation. Leaders of both parties were more interested in nailing down the blame for high prices than in deciding what to do about them. But inflation's effects could not be concealed by any amount of campaign oratory.

U.S. housewives read the bad news in their store windows every day. A sirloin steak which cost 79-c- a pound in Denver last fall now sold for $1.15. In Atlanta, a $60 suit now cost $65. Across the nation, cigarettes were up 1-c-a pack.

Could anything be done about it? Something could be; but probably nothing would be. Republicans were determined to sit tight while accusing the President of failing to use the anti-inflation powers he already had. The President's own program was a far cry from his fighting speech in Philadelphia. In the frigid atmosphere of Capitol Hill, his subdued tones and cautious suggestions were like the speech of a small boy who is ordered to repeat in court the bold words he had used in the alley.

The President's program, in effect, was: let's have a little deflation and keep quite a bit of inflation. He wanted to control prices without attacking the causes of high prices.

But there was no such painless way to deflate the boom. There was one way, however. It was to recognize that expenditures for rearmament and foreign relief were pumping the U.S. economy up to a wartime basis--and to act accordingly.

That would mean air-tight controls on all wages and prices; across-the-board rationing; higher taxes for everyone; no Government spending on such luxuries as social legislation. That would bring lower prices at the corner grocery. It would also mean lower wages, lower profits, and lower farm income. Whether or not the U.S. people were willing to swallow such bitter medicine, neither political party would'dare prescribe it in an election year.

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