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In the wild scare buying after the Korean war, commodity prices went only one way--up. Retail prices faithfully followed them. By last week, the big scare was over in many a commodity. A prime example was wool, which hit a 30-year peak this year (see chart). This week, when wool auctions opened in Sydney, Australia, wool prices were down as much as 15% from June, and more than 50% under February and March highs.

Retail prices of wool products were already feeling the drop. J. P. Stevens & Co., one of the largest wool fabric producers in the U.S., announced the first big cut in wool textiles; it shaved some of its spring line prices from the year's high, and many a wool user, such as men's suit makers, who had been threatening price rises, now considered cuts in their lines for next spring. U.S. carpet men, loaded with big inventories, have cut prices 20% since spring, and last week the biggest of them, Bigelow-Sanford, announced a third-round 10% slice.

No one was more aware of the sharp drop in the commodity prices than U.S. cotton men, who provide the raw material for thousands of consumer products. As a result of a bumper crop estimated at 17.2 million bales this year, cotton prices have tumbled from a March high of 46-c- to 35-c- a lb., 24% below ceiling and a hairbreadth above parity. Rather than sell at low prices, many cotton farmers have stored their cotton in warehouses, where they can get a loan price of 31-c- a lb., hope to drive the price up by keeping it off the market. In Washington, cotton men have been angrily demanding that the U.S. raise the support price to 40-c- and begin stockpiling cotton.

The drops of such spectacular leaders as wool, rubber and cotton, thanks to increased supplies and an end to scare buying, pushed the Dow-Jones spot commodity index almost back to where it was at the start of the Korean war.

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