DECEMBER 28, 1945
Page Three
Economists for "ECONOMIC ROYALTY" Economic to Suit
(From Page One) i
that price ceilings on new homes
are unnecessary because people
won't be "foolish enough" to pay
high prices. This is an interesting
argument, because, if it is true,
there should never have been an inflation in the history of the world;
people would never have been foolish enough.
This kind of argument is typical
of the sort of pressures now at
work to crack price control. Senator Wherry of Nebraska contributed his mite during a radio debate
recently, when he held two women's slips aloft before the (studio)
audience. One, he,said, was a good
article priced at $1.95; but, because
the manufacturer's price was over
the ceiling, he had been forced to
stop producing it. The other slip, a
bad one, was put out by another
maker as a "new line," at $3.95.
; "Almost every congressman,"
says Sam Grafton, "has been subjected to this argument during the
last few weeks; Washington is full
of people wandering around w^th
"two women's slips in their hands."
But another speaker on the program rather spoiled Mr. Wherry's
point by reminding the audience
that when OPA asked for power to
enforce quality standards, Mr.
Wherry voted against it. With proper backing, OPA could have curbed the maker of poor slips, or, under a proper presentation, it could
have been induced to give relief to
the maker of good ones, as it has
done in literally thousands of instances.
There is nothing in Mr. Wherry's mournful chant of the chemises to warrant our flopping into inflation; that just comes under the
head of fighting the furniture and
kicking the wastebasket.
The opponents of price control
cannot get away from the fact that
what they want is higher prices.
Usually they work it out to read
that higher prices mean higher
production; they then try to .call
their higher-price plan a higher-
production plan; but it is startling
to see American industry, after a
generation of convincing us that
higher production means lower
prices, now allowing spokesmen to
say for it that lower prices are a
barrier to higher production.
What has happened to the old
marriage between mass production
and low prices ?
What new element of incompatibility has disrupted that happy
mating?
If the country were broke, American industry would be pulling off
its customary miracles to make and
sell goods at prices people could
pay; with an assured market, the
miracles ought to be, if anything,
a little easier to accomplish. It
seems very short-sighted propaganda investment, flabby and ultimately profitless, for any segment
of industry to reverse its field in
this emergency and try to build up
a mystic union of high production
and high prices.
But even if arguments are some-
times flabby, tempers are high; and
so Mr. Truman, going to work in
one special price-control field, has
tried to meet some of both. His action in placing priorities and ceilings on building materials and real
estate is being hailed over the
country as one of the most courageous peacetime acts of any president.
In taking this stand, he is bucking one of the most powerful and
completely organized lobbies in
Washington — and in these days,
congress is all but swamped by the
inundation of lobbyists, all backed
by millions of dollars, and all making their money talk. *
The national real estate founda
tion, for instance, has a $5,000,000
lobby-fund of its own. Combined
with it is a newly organized rental-
property-owner group, which plans
to raise $8,000,000. Then there are,
lined up with them, the great metropolitan realty corporations, the
investment trusts, the life insurance cmpanies, which own and op-
Just Another Renaissance
(From Page Owgj1. f
named it the "dark ages." Everything was at a standstill—and deteriorating.
Another 500 years and there was an awakening from somewhere;
architecture, art, literature, religion, all went on a rampage,—upset
all the applecarts. They turned back some, yes, to draw on the wisdom
of the ancients, but they brought them down to datey injected them
into the future, fitted to the revised times and; needs ahead. Call that
the 3rd Renaissance.
What we're facing today, after near another 500 years, is economic7" readjustment, somewhat political, and politically somewhat economic. Progress, invention, science, have contrived situations to which
in our laissez faire attitudes, we decline to readjust ourselves.
Religion somewhat, universal education considerably, and social
consciousness predominantly, are demanding in fact the equalities
that we have been pretending,—and social and economic justice is in
quite universal .demand.
Those not demanding it demand the antithesis of it. The blood of
the feudal lords still runs in their.veins. They don't want slavery; oh
no,—and they don't want serfdom. However, they don't object to a
revision, mollified for deception, of much the same things.
It isn't all a matter of dollars and cents. It is a breaking down of
that class-consciousness, conceived first in the brain and prides of the
upper-classmen, and exercised to a frazzle,—under which the great
mass of mankind was looked down upon, obscured, obliquized, or ostracised, not for immorality, or even minor intelligence, but because
of its means of livelihood. ':$*M
These masses have awakened, just as they did some 500 years ago,
and the intelligentsia, among them, seeing the light, are helping them
to shine. Everything proceeds from below up; potatoes, peanuts, even
the trees that give us fruit. Elijah's ravens are the only possible ex»
ception, but Jesus was born in a cow-shed.
The challenge is that world progress cannot, must not, be wholly
capitalized; that it is not enough that the?masses share in th© overflow,, after the hoppers of the few have been filled to overflowing, but
that they have a dip into the hopper as it fills.
Against the observation of the Galilee reformer, that in the economic way of then as now; "To him that hath shall be given and he
shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly, and from him that
hath not shall be taken away even that thatj^e hath,"—the 4th Renaissance has adopted this^Jejyrecommendation of the same Biblical
authority: -w3rW
"Of him that hath much, much will be expected, and of him that
hath more, more will be required,"—which applies to inventors, scientists, even the literatti, the religionist, and buffoon, a3 well as the financier. Our superior blessings also confer a responsibility,—and the
masses have determined to collect.
There is your 4th Renaissance, -the course of human events, and
you can no more stop it than you can fly to Mars. Scientists have said
seven different civilizations have tried to live upon this earth and
failed; they didn't exactly fail. They went berserk in their clumsiness;
unable to keep pace with themselves,;—and out of it evolved better
civilizations.
Ipt That is what we are doing right now; evolving. This war that we
have just fought to "save our civilization" will evolve a better civilization or the war will be a failure. We can't stand still and we won't
go back.
Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, kicked, up an awful stink; became the
Axis carbuncle on a world in distress, which had to be drained,—but
maybe the ordeal will effect results well worth the pains.
The year 1946 will be jammed full of things contributory to this,
new life. The year 1945, despite its V-E day, and V-J day, and all the
rest, including the vote to give us the capital of thei world, will pale
into insignificance in comparison. Big things are on the wing.
We'll squabble and fret, mollycoddle and threat, but it will all come
out in the wash. Eventually, if not right now, shadowless right and
absolute justice are the final victors in every contest.
It isn't fate; it is destiny» as Isaac Newton put it: "that one far
off divine event toward which the whole creation moves."
erate 65% to 70% of metropolitan
real estate, and a large proportion
of farm property over the country.
Further lined up against the
home-builder, along with these
powerful interests, are the railroads (which control the lumber
industries), and the material manufacturer, the lumber dealer and
the builder. They all want controls
removed—the lid off. Inflation! A
run-away market, in which they
can reap swollen profits, and in
which the poor victims will stand
to lose all, when the real estate
people have got theirs, and the in- !
flationary bubble bursts.
Against all these predatory interests, in behalf of the harassed-
householder who must build, because he has nowhere to go, President Truman has taken his stand.
Every renter, every potential homer-
builder, everyone needing a place
to live—including thousands of returning veterans—should give the
president unqualified support in
this fight. Still there, is a fly in the
ointment. When the president said
$10,000 for a ceiling he might as
well have said $10,000 for a floor.
Due to the frailties of human
nature^ whenever you establish a
ceiling, you lay a floor; the ceiling
becomes a floor. No difference how
bum the house, it will be a $10,000
house; they'll all build beneath it,
but charge it,—unless the government intervenes. It is much the
same with everything; has been all
through the war. They can charge
the ceiling; they'll charge it and
give as little as possible in return.
One can wonder in this connection how the ceilings on automobiles are going to affect the quality; the care and material in construction. The workers in the back
room usually follow orders from
the office fairly close. That is coming out in the Durham case on trial
in federal court at Pt. Wayne,
where the corporation seeks to establish its innocence by making a
goat of the workers; anything done
was without official authority,—but
the workers are slamming back.
Manufacturers-^ who will hold
back sales and distribution of commodities, until after the New Year;
strike thus, just to dodge the excess profits tax—are none too good
to play "shoddy" to get even with
a price ceiling on those commodities. It is fighting inflation in price
with deflation in quality. It will require, and perhaps force, endless
governmental inspection to avoid
it—the thing that leads to socialism; production for use, exclusively, and no profit at all.
The forces of economics had better get together on some of these
things; they're breeding a bloody
nose — everyone of them. The Old
Shuffle that gave us the New Deal
is entirely outmoded, — and the
New Deal while susceptible of remodeling, won't remodel backwards. It must bet improvement,
not demolition; there may be compromises,—but without contravention. Industry must meet its brag
to procedure more, mass production, • with labor-saving machines,
and sell for less—and eventually it
must take care of the man-power
that it deemploys.
All in all there wouldn't be a
need oi scare in America, as regards inflation, but for the American greed for profits, wealth,—and
the things that these sinews can
buy.
OlJ
JOHN HENRY ZUVER, Sr^ EUtor
Publishers: Mirror Press, Inc., 307 West Jefferson Boulevard, South Bend,
Indiana, Phone 3-2635. Entered at the South Bend (Ind.) post office, September 2, 1909, as second class mail under act of congress of March 3, 1879
—and of the independence of tbe United States the 103rd.
VOL. XLI—3fcth YEAR
DECEMBER 28, 1945
No. 52
SOUTH BEND, INDIANA
WEEKLY
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