They're All Hollering

"I weep for you," the Walrus said: "I deeply sympathize" With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.

Tired of their butchers' sympathetic tears, the nation's housewives put on a limited but bitter uprising last week. Month after month, penny after penny, the rising price of meat had stretched their nerves taut. Meat bills were 25% above last year's, 170% to 200% above 1939. Across the land, women began boycotting their butchers.

In Dallas, a robust lady strode up to a man with a package of meat under his arm, demanded: "Don't you know that no decent-minded citizen should buy meat?" In Utica, N.Y., a "Budget Brigade" of 3,000 women phoned other women, asked them to stop buying meat. In Detroit, housewives set up stands outside the markets and exhorted customers not to enter. A man on stilts teetered through the streets of Boston bearing the legend: "Don't buy any meat for two weeks. You'll live."

Facing the storm, most butchers professed to find no appreciable change in their trade. Said a Kansas City butcher: "They're all hollering, but they're all buying." Others admitted sales had dropped off, in some cases 35% to 50%. In Los Angeles, 34 small butchers were forced to close. But prices did not budge.

The boycotting was local, enthusiastic, uncoordinated, and made no claim to staying power. Even if the drive could be organized on a nationwide scale, housewives were not at all sure that they had the answer. But they were sure that somebody should do something. Last spring a Gallup poll showed the public strongly opposed to the return of controls. Last week Gallup reported that the nation now favored, by an amazing 56% to 35%, restoration of both price controls and rationing of many retail products.

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