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Show labor would have a stt0 to evacuate congested in, centers and this mov. austal would aid and abet th S the National Resources p!"3 01 C0mtinjtart by JameS Preston Because news from far-flung battlefronts fails to cheer, intelligentsia intelli-gentsia here declines to hazard a quick war guess. But, new peaks will rise on the home front where the battle of production, already over the top, continues prolific under un-der daily orders and regulations expected ex-pected to be more drastic and of long duration. Changes already effected are not the end. Hardly an industry, no matter how remote from war effort, ef-fort, will remain unaffected. Major industrial units already have been converted. The smaller plants will be brought in to forestall as many casualties as possible. With its production house in order, or-der, WPB now assumes a new role as umpire to decide what proportion propor-tion of available materials goes to armed forces and how much civilians ci-vilians will get. What happens to allocations from there on is up to recipients. Two major problems remain: stabilization of wages and farm prices. The absence of a well-defined policy on these threatens to collapse the President's anti-inflation program, unless average factory fac-tory rates, up 26 per cent, and liave wage stabilization without freezing, a point by point formula is needed to determine exactly under un-der what conditions increases will be granted in all industries. Labor rails against freezing and advocates advo-cates industry subsidies which latter lat-ter measure congress opposes. Confusion, which already has forced the President to take direct action to control farm prices, may also bring sufficient pressure to get down to brass tacks on wages. It is believed, by the politically informed, in-formed, however, that the administration adminis-tration hopes to dodge this issMe until after the November elections. Meantime the Washington picture pic-ture presents many oddities: Mr. Henderson, a top new dealer being pushed all over town by labor pressure pres-sure groups who, at the same time, eulogize Mr. Nelson, a business man, for his labor-management policy. The whole wage situation necessarily neces-sarily involves consideration of the War Labor Board's recent New England textile decision, which conceivably might lead to a policy of eliminating regional wage differentials. dif-ferentials. If this ruling, which granted wage increases to nine plants, were adopted as a national policy, it would make wage scales uniform throughout the country. This would cause general disruption disrup-tion of wage scales and almost certainly cer-tainly eliminate any possibility of the successful operation of Mr. Henderson's price control policy. If wage scales should become uniform, Washington realizes that farm prices, up 38 per cent (over'a year ago) are checked, price control con-trol efforts ' of OPA Henderson can't work. If the War Labor Board blunders blun-ders in favor of the "Little Steel" wage increase, similar demands are certain to spring up all around. The end result could force the whole price structure out of line and control con-trol might go glimmering. Henderson Hender-son and other officials, therefore, are increasing pressure on the President to spell out a wage stabilization sta-bilization chart in dollars and cents. While the problem is how to |