Change of Pitch

For seven years, as wages, prices and employment rose, the U.S. had poured forth goods and foodstuffs like a great machine being pushed to its ultimate, agonizing peak of performance. Last week the nation heard the wheels slow down a few revolutions. Though they had cursed inflation to a man, U.S. citizens had grown so used to the howl of high-speed gears that any change in pitch sounded ominously like warnings of a slowdown.

Many thought they heard a faint warning when the Bureau of the Census announced that employment had fallen off by 700,000 jobs since December, and that another 2,000,000 people were working less than full time. Actually, this sounded worse than it was. January employment is always less than December's, when the Christmas trade is glowing; 351,000 more were in jobs than were working in January 1948. Wholesale food prices were also dropping sharply--the Dun & Bradstreet wholesale food price index was the lowest since the end of OPA.

In Washington, Dr. Edwin G. Nourse, pince-nezed chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, gave some reassurance. In his monthly report on the economy, Dr. Nourse predicted that neither the drop in employment nor the decline in food prices would develop into a trend (see BUSINESS). An enormous total of 57,500,000 people was at work. The decline in food prices, he added, was a reflection of last year's bumper crops rather than an indication of a slipping economy.

But despite his soothing tone, he too seemed to be listening warily to the vast and delicately balanced machine. He announced that the winter months "are very decisive" and that officials of the Government, including the President, "were watching things closely."

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