Sudden Shift

TRANSITION Sudden Shift

The price of sudden peace would be high. This week, as the nation wondered how deep and how serious an economic wound would come from sharp cutbacks in war production , Washington made hasty plans and emergency estimates. The most hopeful guess of Government economists was that the worst might be over in six months. In those six months the war-swollen U.S. economy would suffer hard bumps.

The average U.S. citizen was headed into a period of uncertainty that could become critical. Sensing the danger signals, President Truman ordered all U.S. agencies to act speedily for a quick shift to civilian production (see BUSINESS). But whether speed would make up for lack of long-term planning, for Army & Navy insistence on high war production up to war's final week, was a question.

Controls: Off & On. OWMR Boss John W. Snyder, still new in his job, got the task of drawing a master plan, of coordinating all the emergency plans.

Many details were incomplete, but the broad general policy was worked out. P: OPA price controls would continue. P: All manpower controls would be taken off. P:Wage controls would remain, but Washington worked feverishly on a stabilization formula which would be more flexible than the badly bent "Little Steel" formula. P: The 40-hour week would again be standard. That meant an immediate cut in the take-home pay P: Controls on raw materials would be lifted completely, except on still critical items, such as tin, rubber, lumber. Industry would be given a green light, but WPB would remain as a sort of umpire to prevent a mad and unseemly scramble. One result: automobile-makers (with WPB blessing) promptly upped their estimates of how many cars can be turned out in 1945--from 240,000 to 500,000.

Rationing: On & Off. To speed civilian access to goods and services, Boss Snyder's master plan called for an end to rationing as quickly as possible. The picture: P: Immediate lifting of gasoline rationing, but not of fuel oil which is still short. P: Continuance of automobile and tire purchase controls--for a short time. P: Canned goods off the ration lists at once. There will be more food, but meat rationing will probably continue for months. Shortage of sugar, fats and oils will mean continued rationing. (The Army will cut its food demands about one-fifth, will live for a time on its accumulations.)

Underlining the change, OPA this week made a decisive cutback of its own: it halted printing of 187,000,000 new ration books.

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