An Outpouring of Goods

The latest gag in retailing circles is: "These shortages are so terrible I'll soon have to rent another warehouse to store my goods."

The quip pointed up the fact that after eight months of war in Korea, the civilian shortages predicted by Washington's hair-shirt cult had not materialized. The booming auto industry, which three months ago dropped thousands of workers because of a materials pinch, had now rehired most of them. Last week the automakers turned out 168,000 units, 40% above the 1950 period when Chrysler was closed by a strike. Building was nearly 25% above the February 1950 figure. And in January business inventories jumped $2 billion to $63 billion despite peak retail sales.

The chief reasons for all this were that 1) military production was still at a low level, and 2) what military production there had been was neatly dovetailed with civilian output. Furthermore, with the brighter outlook in Korea, the pressure for armament production this year has dropped. Washington officials last week estimated that spending in the current fiscal year on war goods will be less than previous estimates. But there were other reasons for the outpouring of civilian goods. U.S. industry was expanding so fast --and materials cutbacks had worked so well--that the National Production Authority was changing its mind about the extent of controls needed. NPA once thought that all steel, copper and aluminum would have to come under a controlled materials plan by summer. Now it thinks that a CMP for aluminum and for only certain classes of copper and steel is necessary, thus leaving the bulk of raw materials uncontrolled.

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