OCR Text |
Show fPGENERAL HUGH S. 45 JOHNSON fj Jour: Urn tan mutant Washington, D. C. WAR PROFITEERING Very timely is Leon Henderson's warning to producers of raw materials materi-als not to profiteer prices upward. Timely, too, Is the Brooking's institution's insti-tution's report on the same subject. One of the worst evils is price inflation. in-flation. In 1914 to 1918 it increased average American prices to 213 per cent of their pre-war level. The effect ef-fect In human suffering is devastating, devastat-ing, and it does not cease with the guns or for many years. For an example of only one of its lesser evils, compared with purchasing purchas-ing power of 1913 dollars, the staggering stag-gering costs of the war to us were more than doubled by reason of that Inflation alone. That means that the burden of that mountainous debt on all our people was also doubled. A greater evil is that starting at the high peak or war prices, there Is first an abrupt and ruinous and then a j gradual decline in values, prices and ' wages back to about the pre-war lev- j el. After the Napoleonic, Civil and j Wnrlri ware that nrnrAci In bdpIi I case, took 14 years. Of course, any such process is simply a slow destruction of half of all values in a nation. Our post-war gyrations from flash-booms to deep and continued depression were all by-products of this massive readjustment. readjust-ment. It profoundly changed and gravely threatened both our economic econom-ic and political systems. Indeed, the old threat is not yet removed as a new and similar menace appears. So much for the brief mention of a few of the terrible hang-over efTects of war-time price Inflation. The jitterbug jit-terbug Joyride of the actual price debauch, while it is going on, makes a feverish appearance of prosperity but It is prosperity for precious few. Some wages go up with prices and some go up first, but most of them lag grievously. All people dependent de-pendent on fixed revenues such as salaries, pensions, interest on savings sav-ings and almost all wages are the real sufferers. The most piteous of these cases are the families of soldiers at the front. All these people and they are by far the majority of us find their cost of existence doubled or multiplied while their means to get it remains the same. It all adds up to a serious nationwide cut in wages, salaries and income. This is distressing dis-tressing and hideously unfair and it produces an even more dangerous result for a warring nation. It destroys de-stroys morale both at home and among the soldiers at the front. Napoleon Na-poleon said that in war the ratio of the value of moral strength "is to the physical as 3 to 1." In most great wars this terrible force has been either little heeded or inadequately handled. In the World war, our war industries board was presented with the process of rising prices too late to prevent it, but it did halt it In its tracks and later turned the trend downward. That experience proved that war inflation in-flation can be prevented and suggested sug-gested the only way to do it The Brooking's report advanced some methods and Leon Henderson described others. The shortcomings of both parcels of suggestions is first that they are theoretical, experimental experi-mental and uncertain, and, next that they are aimed at only the prices of certain commodity groups, I or piecemeal price regulation. It can't be done that way. There is only one way to do this job. That is, by fiat, to put a ceiling over the whole price structure and thereafter to permit increases in particular cases only on a showing of necessity. That's what our World war experience proved. BLl'FF AND APPEASEMENT This comment column business, when it touches foreign affairs, is getting to be pretty tough. I believe in total defense. I didn't recently begin to believe in that. I have been preaching it since the day this column col-umn started Tn predictions, as accurate ac-curate as any, of Just why we were going to need it and long before the government bestirred itself to implement imple-ment its constantly growing aggressive aggres-sive attitude to make its fighting wurus seem more man Diuil. Nobody No-body can justly call the five-year urging of this column "appeasement." "appease-ment." The difference between that urging urg-ing and what is going on today is that what I advocated was armament arma-ment to keep us out of war. There is a good deal of evidence and it is growing that strong influences in this country and perhaps even the government itself regard this belated be-lated and, therefore, unplanned and somewhat panicky armament con-! con-! ference as preparation for participation partici-pation in war. We are not ready for war or even for adequate defense. I have felt, for this reason,' and many others, that we should not bluff ourselves so far out on a limb of premature aggression ag-gression that we could not avoid going go-ing further, and perhaps ovvr the brink without seeming either silly or cowardly. But there has been no halt or delay in the march in that direction. In the meantime, the shrewdest best financed, open and shameless propaganda to go further in that direction has increased to both volume and tempo. |