Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-09-22 | Page 30 | Criticises Action in Price Fixing

CRITICISES SGTIOfl li PK FIXING Engineering and Mining Journal Takes War Indus- ; j tries Board to Task, j $ ! The war industries board appears to j have set itself firmly against increased j prices for anything:, and the formal meet- j ings between the producers and price- j fixing committees have lost most of the j interest they used to have, says the Engi- j neering and Mining Journal., There is j nothing1 much to be gained by the pro- j ducers going to Washington to play checkers with Mr. Brookings. Some peo- ( pie still talk about speeding up produc- I tion, but in many of the major minerals j and mtals we see waning outputs, in ; others statistics that are just about hold- j ing their own, and in but few any mate- 1 rial increase, exempt in those cases where ; the markets have been let alone. A de- ; pression is gradually spreading over the ! great mining Industry, where there ought ; to be enthusiasm. This is in no way 1 the fault 01" the producers. They are : doing everything that they can. They j have simply been led into an economic blind alley in which they are- helpiess. j The price-fixing committee is quite un- : perturbed about this. It says that it has enough of iron, copper, lead, etc.. so wherefore should it raise prices in order to encourage production by those producers pro-ducers whose margin har disappeared ? ' The latter are told that they will best j shut down, so as to release their men ' to move esscnt ial occu pa tions. At the same (im, however, everybody is trying to curtail consumption for what are deemed to be. not immediately necessary purposes. There can be such a 1 hing. . however, as making it so impossible jot-people jot-people to do business that they can neither subscribe enough to Liberty bonds or have earnings on which to pay taxes. K the country is put wholly on a war j bais, with the result of a relatively few contrau'tors making great profits, of millions mil-lions of mechanics and laborers receiving grat wages and squandering a large part of them, tho rest of the people may be w tsqucerixl that they can yield no more. The war industries board is not. of 1 course, responsible for all of this. It is ; simply playing its part ju a genera! tin- ! economic policy.- At the beginning of the war we thought that a sound prevept was "Increase production and curtail con- 1 sumption." The war industries board ha changed this to "devej.s production 1 and curtail cor.su mot ion more and more."