Show beers gjent on commodity trend myth A J of current price dip truman planned that thai way by BAUKHAGE news analyst and commentator washington it is still open season for economists financial experts and market wizards it took about a week after the first drop on the commodity market to send them into their holes up to that time you could get a prognostication anywhere from the chicago stockyards to broad and wall streets or pennsylvania avenue and street fiut but along about the sixth day of the dip anybody who would tell you whether we were facing a pen perr manent nose dive or just weathering the flutter ot of a few yards of 0 ticker tape was as rare as a vote against tax reduction that issue itself had changed after the sixth dip the reason no expert would talk was that all of them had been mak ing wrong credic eions ever since coolidge Coolid s per manent plateau of prosperity of pre depression days or hoover hoovers s corner around which prosperity was always duck ing the most silent man in washing ton was secre tary of the treas ury uz snyder der he baukhage knew that too many people re what he and others had eald said two years ago last fall snyder at that time director had predicted that by the spring of the next year 1946 eight million people would be unemployed in fact so many others believed that that henry wallace already dream ing of a home with white pillars on pennsylvania avenue decided to make sixty million jobs a come hither plank in his platform he wrote a book with that title and it became a best seller his book set a goal of 56 to 57 civil ans employed by 1950 but somebody must have stolen the idea or else they wanted to play a mean trick on wallace and on any how there were 57 per sons employed in this country as of 0 january 1948 two years early and 10 months before presidential campaign time likewise in october of 1946 sev cral eral astute washington insi inside de stuff letter writers were saying privately to their thousands of clients and the monthly survey was saying in public print that by early 1947 prices would come down one could say on january of 1947 with con sid erable accuracy that there was a general agreement on recession beginning soon and followed by more a little later other writers predicted it a little later and some by summer were insisting that deflation already was here but what happened in the very year of that doleful kroph ecy prices started on the that took them into their all time high many other similar bad guesses might be mentioned all of which contributed toward making the prophets reticent and so when the slide came in february of this year nobody would even whisper fox for tear fear that not even a kit would appear they knew that nobody would believe them after all the without the wolf wolfing that had been going on in any case this dip drop de or delusion whichever it turns out to be by the time these lines reach print or later will have its garland of myths and legends entwined about it the best myth of course is that mr air truman planned it that way the blueprint is simple enough if you are good at reading a blueprint between the lines prices were get ting too high at worst they might bring on a real depression before election at best they would bring a series of strikes and work stoppages which might seriously hamper the marshall plan on the one hand and add to the discontent of the voters on the other it would be like any operation not dangerous from the surgeon s point of view just a little amputation of credit at least so said doctors who work on the body economic which would let enough blood out of some businesses to cause a little unemployment enough to scare off strikes and make busi newsmen a little more cautious about expansion there was some evidence that this may really have been intended because the president did ask in his november 17 message to congress for credit control and increased bank reserves however when con gress grebs said humph to that along with the president presidents s other becom ions he turned around and demoted the man who is said to have written the deflation pre prescript scrip tion from the chairmanship of the federal reserve board marriner Mar eccles and put in a man supposed i to have more sympathy with an op I 1 cosite course however we in austn t spoil a good scoty by faces bacs there are other points which can be intro deuced to give a touch of verial mili tude to an otherwise not too convincing narrative the sooth sayers bay ay that several methods were pursued some of them successfully for example the president slam banged bang ed at what he called the gamblers in who were driving up food prices by specula speculating tir in grain and other futures that did open a pandora s box and some of the plagues released alighted on the very rooftree of the white house but it also threw a scare into the marke and the markets then came the day of a white house press and radio conference when the president made a remark credited at the time by some of his friends as an unhappy slip when he said that if the cost of hv liv ing was not controlled there would be a crash that got headlines frightened a lot of little fellows who pulled out their chips and bombin ing with other evil binns released from the economists jinn jilin bottles did the trick there are many others of these tales which will grow such as the creating of sun spots by the admin rations s atomic energy experts but one is enough for the moment anyhow it was planned that taft hartley issue losing its potency there has been a lot of noise over the taft hartley act lately and on the surface it looks as if the law might become an issue in the pres dennial campaign if that should happen it certainly would help the prestige of senator taft but the old timers say it can t happen As you know last autumn right after the aca ac went into effect a lot of people felt its provisions would decide the votes in the bye elections but those elections came and went and it was hard to adduce any sta to prove that T H had figured very much if at all later on animosity against the law died down but now both the CIO and have announced their preliminary plans for campaigning against the men who voted for it taft has used it in his campaign speeches in midwest centers where labor is strong phil p murray was indicted under its provisions and both murray represent ng the CIO and the international typographers union have charged it is dional but the issue still tails falls to comm command and any real dramatic in terest this is another proof of how a controversial issue that calls forth bitter debate and stirs up nationwide interest at the mo ment can fade into the back ground as time passes and by election day have little or no effect on votes it is much like a fare that makes page I 1 because it breaks out just as an edition of an afternoon paper is going to press it may get a banner on page 1 if the news is light but by the next edition it may have shrunk to a single head on an inside page expands the importance of all events you may recount excia edly at dinner how you almost got hit by a truck on the way to work but by tomorrow you 11 be telling with much more gusto about a fish you caught last summer 0 the city of washington always qua Is before a real snowstorm like a pup with the hose turned on it |