Hoarders Beware

As expected, the first order of William H. Harrison, boss of the National Production Authority, put a ceiling on business inventories to prevent hoarding of scarce materials. The broad order, issued this week, covered 32 materials, all the way from iron, steel, copper, gypsum board and industrial alcohol to burlap and nylon yarn. (Retail buyers were not affected.) Businessmen were warned not to accumulate materials "beyond what is needed for immediate production."

But Harrison assured steel and copper men with whom he conferred that whatever businessmen had done to build up inventories before the order was issued was strictly their business. Said Harrison, in effect: "Any businessman who didn't do a lot of forward buying would have been neglecting the interests of his firm." Nevertheless, he added, now that the order was out, it would be vigorously enforced.

Harrison's views on inventory buying differed considerably from those of the Security Resources Board's W. Stuart Symington. Before a Senate subcommittee Chairman Symington angrily denounced the few "unpatriotic chiselers" and black marketeers who had built up inventories and pushed prices up, notably in crude rubber. Symington even threatened that the U.S. might seize the stocks of such "hoarders."

Actually, as President Alan Grant of Manhattan's C. T. Wilson & Co. (importers) told the subcommittee, the fact that the U.S. was short of rubber was the Government's own fault. It could have bought all the rubber it wanted for stockpiling at 16-c- a lb. last November; now it has to pay 55-c- simply because world demand is so great and Russia is buying huge quantities.

In any case, it was plain last week that, hoarding bans or not, the U.S. was going to be pinched for many materials because of the failure of the stockpiling program. And although he had not taken over the job until last November, just before many prices such as rubber started up, Munitions Board Boss Hubert E. Howard took the rap. Last week he handed in his resignation and President Truman accepted it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.