Monday, Nov. 26, 1951

Unscratched

Ten months ago, Eric Johnston told a congressional committee: "It is impossible to take this job without having a lot of dead cats thrown on the doorstep." With modest courage, Johnston let it be known he was ready to suffer the dead cats.

Last week, scarcely scratched, handsome Eric Johnston announced that his stint as Economic Stabilization Administrator was over. Brought in originally because his predecessor, Alan Valentine, could not bring himself to decisive action, Johnston quickly did his first duty: he imposed an overall freeze of prices and wages. But he promptly eased the blow by rapidly unfreezing the freeze. Thereafter, his policy became one of reluctant yielding to inflationary pressure. The price agency he supervised developed a "soft" attitude toward price increases. He cozened labor, which had walked out in a huff, back into a wage-stabilization board which promptly displayed a "soft" attitude toward wages. At Johnston's farewell dinner, ESA employees lampooned the board with a theme song: "I can't say no!"

Stabilizer Johnston felt he could point with satisfaction to the price index, which went up only from 181.5 when he took office to 186.6 as he left it. But there is trouble ahead. Under the new control law (which he declared "makes the administration of controls impossible")) Johnston has warned of a 5% to 8% rise in the cost of living next year. In the next few months, the C.I.O. steelworkers will launch a major assault on the wage ceiling, posing a nasty political problem for ESA's wage board. By then, Stabilizer Johnston will be safely back in his $125,000 job as president of the Motion Picture Association.

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