Pots, Pans and Profits

London's Financial Times gloomed, "soaking the rich again." But in fact Brit ain's first full peacetime budget, slanted slightly socialist, offered everybody a little something, sent industrial shares up a respectable 1% and Government securities to ten-year highs.

Labor's shy Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, was happy about it.

For long months he had wrestled with the dilemma of controlling inflation with high taxes, spurring production with low taxes.

Every figure he set down depended on whether the U.S. loan would come through. But now he was sure he had the answers.

Now in April. For 2 1/2 hours his voice boomed confidently through the House of Commons as he explained just how far Britain could loosen its belt. Only thrice did he pick up the little teacup from its green tray and fortify himself with sips of rum and milk.* Once he drew a laugh as he absently rubbed his high, sun-browned bald dome, announced a reduction in the purchase tax on hair-waving and drying machinery.

There was class bias in the Dalton budget. Purchase taxes on pots, crockery, blankets, mattresses were reduced or removed, but not on cars or furs. Income-tax rates for a married man with two chil dren and earning $1,200 a year went down from 3% to nothing; for a man in similar circumstances earning $4,000 a year, from 30% to 24%; for the man earning $10,000 a year, only from 68% to 65%.

Come December. Excess-profits taxes, earlier reduced from 1 00% to 65%, would! end entirely by December. More impor tant, the $17 billion total expenditure was 31% less than last year's, and 91% of it would be paid from revenue. The next budget might be even better, for more than 40% of this one goes to defense supplies, demobilization gratuities, war contract terminations and other non-recurring expenses.

The big "if" of the budget was the pending $3,750,000,000 U.S. loan. Without that, warned Dalton, Britain would have to cut imports sharply, revamp all figures, tighten trade controls. But the "if" grew less "iffy"; the bill for the loan was sent to the U.S. Senate floor last week with a 14-to-5 vote of approval by the Banking & Currency Committee.

Perhaps Dalton did not have all the answers, but opposition to the Dalton budget was perfunctory. Even Conservative speaker Anthony Eden was partially reassured: "The Chancellor has played his part," said he, though he added, "but what are his colleagues doing?" His answer came from Leeds (see below).

* In similar circumstances Chancellor of the Exchequer Gladstone drank eggnog; Disraeli, brandy & soda; and a grinning Churchill announced that he was not sure whether his amber-colored liquid was cider or ginger ale (he prefers brandy to either of them).

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