Mental Trouble

Placing its fingers on the unsteady pulse of U.S. reconversion, the National City Bank of New York gave its diagnosis of the cause of the nation's economic bellyache. Said the bank in its October Letter: "The economic situation reveals . . . the unwillingness of people to reconvert their attitudes from those . . . [of] war to [those of] peace. It is already seen that physical reconversion will be no vast or long-drawn problem. But reconversion is more than a physical process. It requires new attitudes, and above all acceptance of the fact that production, prices, and . . . wages must now conform to what a multitude of consumers want and can pay, instead of the orders of one customer [the Federal Government] whose needs are insatiable and interest in prices secondary. . . .

"Arguments as to whether industry can afford this or that increase . . . obscure principles. The main principle . . . is that wage increases should not be granted which will raise prices [and] start an inflationary boom. . . . This leaves the way open for increases justified by harder, more efficient . . . work and by higher productivity."

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