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Show Washington, D. C. FARMER PRICE VICTORY Louis J. Taber, National Grange president, and other farm leaders didn't come away empty-handed from their conference with the President Pres-ident on price control. While he would not agree to their proposal that wages be included in the price control bill drafted by Price Administrator Leon Henderson, Hender-son, Roosevelt did make one important impor-tant concession. He said he would have no objection to a "parity averages aver-ages formula" being put in the bill to limit the dumping of government-owned government-owned wheat and cotton when the prices of these commodities threaten to soar out of bounds. i Under this formula, to insure farmers an average parity price for the full crop year, restrictions would be placed on the amount of wheat 1 and cotton that could be sold. Also, the dumping could not begin until prices reach certain above-parity levels, to be worked out by Henderson Hender-son and the department of agriculture. agricul-ture. Taber and his colleagues had to do some fast talking to sell the President Presi-dent on this plan. At first he seemed in no mood to accept any changes in the bill and told his callers that if they had come to debate the ques-tion ques-tion of controlling farm prices they were wasting their time. "We have simply got to head off Inflationary trends," the President declared grimly, "or face the worst depression the country has ever known after this emergency is over." The farm leaders finally won him over to their plan with the assurance that they would not oppose Henderson's Hender-son's system of selective price controls, con-trols, providing he parity gains won at this session were not lost. Taber pointed out that though the prices of wheat and cotton are now only slightly beJow parity, and livestock live-stock above it, farmers get only 43 per cent of the consumer's dollar spent for farm products, as against 60 per cent in 1917, when defense production was geared to the peak it has reached today. NEW LABOR HEADACHE Strikes are still a serious problem, but the big labor headache currently harrying defense chiefs is the complex com-plex and mounting difficulty of employment em-ployment dislocations. Almost every day brings new reports re-ports of workers let out due to lack of materials, forced curtailment of Official estimates of such dismissals put the number at between one and two million. And the end is not in sight. Some experts anticipate that in the auto industry alone 200,000 workers will lose their Jobs. Aware of the serious economic consequences of such dislocations, OPM heads are making strenuous efforts to overcome them. So far only partial answers have been found. Originally.- OPM tried to handle such dismissals by local absorption. This worked all right in towns with industries engaged in defense work. They could use the displaced hands and gladly took them on. But in communities where this condition did not exist, other solutions had to be found. Various methods have been used. In some instances defense orders have been granted to reopen shutdown shut-down plants. In other cases, where conversion of a plant wasn't possible, pos-sible, an entire new defense plant has been erected in town. In still other instances, workers have been given "retraining" instruction and moved to places where labor was needed. Defense chiefs count on Floyd Odium's Od-ium's reorganized subcontracting division to take up most of the slack on defense dislocations. Odium originally estimated it would take two months to set up administrative machinery, but OPM chiefs are urging him to turn his attention to getting subcontracts now and rounding out his organization as he goes along. MERRY GO-ROUND The American Association for Economic Eco-nomic Freedom has reprinted an address ad-dress made more than 10 years ago by Federal Judge Robert N. Wilkin of Cleveland on "A New Social Order" Or-der" in which he advocated a union of the English-speaking countries to resist the totalitarian aggressors. Heavyweight champ Joe Louis, soon to be drafted, is tackling what he describes as "the biggest fight of my career." He has sent a circular letter to every member of congress asking them for help to raise a fund for a movement to improve the economic eco-nomic condition of Negroes. It isn't advertised, but the army now has a regular military air service serv-ice across both the North and South Atlantic, operating on schedule, just as punctually as any commercial airway in the U.S.A. Good news for the troops eaten by chiggers in the Louisiana maneuvers: maneu-vers: Denton Crowl of Toledo had just discovered a chemical Which will make them as scarce as American Amer-ican heavy bombers. Jesse Jones is angling to get John Hertz, original king of the Yellow Taxis in Chicago, appointed to the Maritime commission. |
