Cutting Back and Coping
All over the U.S., the pangs of recession and inflation are touching the lives of Americans in myriad ways, and people are trying to cope with a variety of devices. Examples:
> In Horse Shoe Bend, Idaho (pop. 700), Theodore Hoff Jr. closed his Hoff Lumber Co. mill last month because sales had fallen through the floor boards. In all, 325 workers were laid off, devastating the town's economy. Those workers--plus 80 more Hoff employees at a mill in Rexburg, Idaho--got together and figured out a plan to return to work. They decided to take a 10% pay cut, put off a scheduled 9% cost of living increase, and eliminate overtime pay. Result: by last week both the Horse Shoe Bend and Rexburg mills were working two shifts a day, and nearly everybody was back on the job.
> In Provo, Utah, the Rainy Day Foods company, one of the nation's biggest processors of freeze-dried foods, reports that business is booming as a result of popular fears of future shortages. Since last June, Rainy Day's monthly sales have jumped from $100,000 to $1 million; other processors of storable foods also report large sales increases. Rainy Day President George Murdock thinks he knows the reason: "I hate to say it, but our customers are preparing for the worst." His new customers are largely high-income people: doctors, lawyers, even corporation chiefs. Some are ordering as much as $10,000 worth of food at a time.
> In Manhattan, General Electric Co. has decided to give rebates to buyers of appliances, even though rebates have not done all that much to stimulate sales for the auto manufacturers. From March 1 to May 18, buyers of G.E. hair dryers, toaster ovens and 37 other kinds of appliances will get rebates of from $2 to $5. Not to be outdone, the Proctor-Silex Corp. intends to give rebates of $3 to buyers of its self-cleaning steam irons. Beginning in the spring, buyers of Schick electric shavers, curling irons and hair dryers will also collect rebates of as yet undetermined size.
> In Chicago, Lieut. George Bicek, commander of that city's police prostitution unit, reported that call girls have sharply dropped their prices because big spenders are in short supply. For example, one woman who had been collecting fees of $50 to $100 now settles for $20, but has greatly increased her list of sometime clients in hopes of keeping her income close to what it was in rosier times.
> In San Francisco, inflation has ravaged the board of education's budget, leaving it with a $4 million deficit for this school year. Besides dropping plans to buy new books and supplies, the school board threatened, in effect, to eliminate some high school and junior high school sports teams by no longer paying coaches for overtime. That was too much for local parents and businessmen, who quickly raised $71,200 in private donations to rescue the teams. Even girls' basketball was saved. But a bigger deficit looms for fiscal 1976.
> Even for readers of the funny pages, there is no escape from reminders of the gloomy economy. Blondie's henpecked husband, Dagwood Bumstead, beefs about inflation. In the prosaic adventures of Mary Worth, two characters are currently struggling with unemployment. Alf, a character in The Dropouts, recently suggested a complicated idea for solving the present financial problems. "Terrific! Why don't you send a note to the world's economists?" a colleague enthusiastically recommends. Says Alf, "Can't afford to--'til the price of paper comes down." One of the oldest comics, Little Orphan Annie, first drawn by Harold Gray in 1924, is also one of the most topical strips. Gray died in 1968; the strips that run today in 300 papers were all drawn by him during the Depression of the 1930s. "S'po sin' we are pretty hard up right now," Annie recently told her companion Ginger, a flower vendor, in a rerun of a Nov. 19, 1936 panel. "What of it?" Annie continues. "We know doggoned well we're not goin' to stay that way."
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