Hostilities' End

G.O.P. Congressmen had vowed that one of their first acts would be to divest Harry Truman of many of his wartime powers. But on the last day of the old year Harry Truman did it himself. He declared "the cessation of hostilities."

His sudden action meant the end of 51 laws, although actually it was only a beginning in the process of dismantling the machinery of war. Selective Service still remained. Nearly 500 emergency control measures--covering everything from butter substitutes for patients at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., to death sentences for deserters--still stand. Before the U.S. has been restored to a full peacetime basis, the President (or Congress) must terminate the states of "limited emergency" and "unlimited emergency"; and Congress must terminate the "state of war."

For Luxury Lovers. Last week's action did peel off (as of July 1) the top layer of taxes on luxury goods, amusements, communications and railway berths --taxes which have cost U.S. citizens an annual $1.2 billion since they were slapped on by the 1943 wartime Revenue Act. Chiefly this was a New Year's present to luxury-loving Americans.

A natural wild mink coat, on sale after Christmas for $3,300 (with a 20% tax), would sell for $3,025 (with only a 10% tax). A half-ounce bottle of Chanel No. 5, now costing $12 with tax, would cost $11. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt's Monday nights at the Met would cost her $1,221 a season instead of $1,320. A bottle of bonded bourbon, now selling for $6.90, would cost 60 less.

For the housewife it didn't mean much. The tax on electric light bulbs was cut from 20% to 5%; on local telephone calls, from 15% to 10%; on railway and plane tickets, from 15% to 10%. But existing federal taxes, not touched by last week's action, would still add 7 to the cost of a pack of cigarets, 10% to the cost of radios, phonographs, electric appliances, etc.

And one of the things Harry Truman recommended in his State of the Union speech was that Congress put the excise tax right back.

For Farmers & Labor. To farmers, the "cessation of hostilities" meant the end, on Dec. 31, 1948, of certain farm subsidies. These subsidies, designed to protect farmers who expanded during the war from a postwar collapse, are based on the abracadabra of "parity." They have already cost the Government $80 million for potatoes, which were luxuriantly overproduced in the past year. A few more such bumper harvests in protected commodities might cost the Government $1.5 to $2 billion a year.

Most importantly, perhaps, the proclamation ended the President's power to seize private property under the Smith-Connally act. Termination of the act means that the Government can no longer take over a strike-bound plant as a means of settling a labor dispute. And six months hence, the Government must get out of any private industry it is now operating: e.g., the soft coal mines and the Great Lakes tugs.

Having divested himself of this power, the President--as on the question of excise taxes--turned the matter over to Congress. He invited Republican legislators to find some other device for breaking industrial deadlocks.

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