Prices: New Level

In a blurred, easy voice, Decontrol Board Chairman Roy Thompson let the big price secret out through the nation's radios. Livestock, meat, soybeans, cottonseed, flaxseed and their by-products would go back under controls on a date to be fixed by the OPA. Dairy products and most grains would not. "I expect," concluded Chairman Thompson, red-eyed from weariness, "that we are going to hear plenty of criticism."

He was right. Next day, C.I.O. President Phil Murray sang out lustily because any controls had been dropped. Industry's top stentor, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President William K. Jackson, yelled because any had been kept. Lesser fry--packers, cattle and grocery men, the pro-and anti-control press, etc.--broke out in a contagion of argument. Last of all, the consumer took up the battle with violent yes and no messages to the Board.

To Specification. To the biased glance, the price decisions seemed a studied compromise. They were--and they were not. Boardmen Roy Thompson, George Mead and Daniel W. Bell, who had bravely picked up the coals hot-handled them by Congress last July, had followed congressional standards in determining recontrol. The standards: 1) the price of a commodity must have risen unreasonably since June 30; 2) the commodity must be in short supply; 3) its regulation must be enforceable; 4) its recontrol must serve the public interest. These standards, in some respects political, in all respects loosely phrased, were Congress' way of hedging the free market.

In the Board's opinion, meat, soybeans, cottonseed etc. had qualified for a return to price ceilings on every count during the price-free period (July 1 to Aug. 20). Milk prices had risen less. That was all there was to it. Gratefully, the Board moved off the griddle to await the decontrol questions that would be passed up from the Agriculture Department and OPA, and to keep its price-eye on the free-wheeling dairy folk. Congress, and supposedly the people, had got what they asked for. The country was a step toward a free market, but it was a hesitant, tentative step.

Time for Figuring. Agriculture and OPA, which knew nothing of the board's decisions until their general release, joined forces as soon as they heard the news, decided they would need another no-ceiling week (ending Aug. 29) while the machinery of bureaucracy figured the new meat prices. They picked Sept. 9 as the date to put them into effect in the butcher shops. Nobody knew what they would be, although OPA Boss Paul Porter guessed "at or near June 30 levels." But lamb feeders, cut off from a $36 million Government subsidy, were sure their product would have to jump at least 5-c- a lb. Beef feeders, still smarting under similar subsidy treatment, figured 1#162; a Ib. Meanwhile, meat producers frantically rushed their crops to market (see BUSINESS).

The toughest problem facing the OPA (which granted 150 new price rises last week) was enforcement. Industry lobbies, strikes, the-black market, noncomplying housewives, congressional uncertainty and a short staff had all combined to frustrate the line-holders in the past. Would they do it again? With a show of confidence, Boss Porter said no, declared that OPA now had 2,500 investigators, double the old staff, to nail the black marketers. He also had a big enforcement budget, a method of centralized slaughter control and a lot of hope. He would need it all to keep the black market out of the nation's butcher shops.

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