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Show SCANNING THE WEEK'S NEWS of Main Street and the World Cspeharf Amendment Allows Price Increases on Thousands of Hems HERE WE GO With a sigh of "here we go again", home town housewives across the nation learned the Capehart amendment to the controls law is effective immediately. The amendment opens the way for possible price increases on thousands of consumer items including .clothing, meat, foods, milk, butter, coal, gasoline, tobacco, beer, drugs and cosmetics. Under this amendment manufacturers and processors are allowed to use their pre-Korea prices and add or subtract cost increases or decreases through last July 26 in computing new ceilings. Because application of the Capehart formula is optional, the general effect of the new order could not be adequately estimated. However, it was believed the particular effect will be to raise prices when- ver an application for adjustment is granted. Minru ftC MMtC There is just one possible hope for the con- l"AKV,H Or DllVicS sumer. Manufacturers are not required to seek '"" tm' " new ceilings, but are allowed to do so. If any ; t : concern seeks higher prices for any line of goods, 1 " " f ' any reductions required by the formula for other i'V5fi'i''t goods must be put into effect as well. The firm 3X?JiJIf cannot seek higher prices alone. mrWlHfr Among the items affected by the new order ilAWMyitUiM are wool and cotton yarns and fabrics, soft drinks, 'OU.i fejfe liquor and wine, lumber and millwork, crude oil. It canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, and many I f other processed foods, also many important chem- 1 I icals, plastics, insecticides. Price Director Michael V. Di Salle has warned t . i . 1 congress that prices apparently are rising again JANUARY 231 and it would be a dangerous risk to decontrol any major item now. FOOD PRICES While the OPS was announcing possible future price increases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that its latest index n food prices indicated an increase of nearly 1 per cent since its previous report. The bureau pegged the price index at 231.2. That placed it 131.2 per cent above the 1935-39 average and 14 per cent above June, 1950. Leading the advance were fruits and vegetables, and dairy products, including milk, chese and butter. Meats, poultry and fish declined, as did fats and oils. TRUCE TALKS The drawn-out, frustrating Korean peace talks continue con-tinue with the two sides deadlocked over supervision of the truce and the Heds refusing to open discussions on the exchange of prisoners. Perhaps the most significant news from the truce talks is that the negotiations have entered the sixth month. It is almost inconceivable that two parties can talk for five months without agreement if there was good faith and a desire for peace on the part of all concerned. This fact alone has made the people in the home town of America pessimistic of the outcome. By the time this reaches print the December 27 deadline on the pro-visional pro-visional cease-fire line will have expired. If and armistice has not been agreed on, then a new cease fire line must be drawn before a final settlement. settle-ment. For this reason (since it appears unlikely an agreement will be reached) increased fighting can be expected on the batUefront as both sides attempt to improve their positions. TRUMAN President Truman cut short his Florida vacation and returned re-turned to Washington. The President hastened to assure the public that no sudden world emergency dictated his return. It was obvious two things were uppermost in the President's mind: 1) The deadlocked Korean truce talks, and (2) the still-developing tax scandals. It was considered unlikely there would be any public .announcement concerning decisions about the Korean situation until those1 decisions had been carried out. The tax scandal, however, was another matter. The President and those surrounding him have become more and more concerned with the developments (see blow) in the tax fix probe. White House intervention, even the calling in of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI chief, to conduct a sweeping investigation, appeared to be a likely prospect. pros-pect. MRS F.D.R. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most controversial figures to appear on the American scene, came under attack of Archbishop Arch-bishop J. Francis A. Mclntyre for "assuming the role of an agnostic and fatalist". Mrs. Roosevelt said on a radio program recently: "I don't know whether I believe in a future life ... I came to feel that it didn't really matter very much because whatever the future held you'd have to face it when you came to it, just as whatever life holds you have to face it in exactly the same way. "I think I am pretty much of a fatalist. You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give." The archbishop said he considers it "a strange situation that one who as chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, on the question of religion, assume the role of an agnostic and fatalist." DEFENSE Secretary of Defence Robert A. Lovett has announced that a provision for increasing the Air Force from 90- to 143 wings 126 of them combat will be in the 1953 fiscal year budget now being prepared and which will be presented to congress early next month. The actual size of the defense budget has not been announced, but it is believed to be within an informally set ceiling of $45,000,000,000 for the entire en-tire military establishment. Congress appropriated a total of $59,403,264,000 for the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the present fiscal year, exclusive of foreign military aid. The present 90 wings of the Air Force their size varies from about 75 planes for fighter units to 30 for heavy bombers are not modernized since they are in many instances made up of aircraft such as the B-29 and B-50. These planes are World War II vintage and must be replaced. ' TAX FIX The House Ways and Means subcommittee graft In the I Revenue Department was blown wide open by the charge of Abraham If Teitelbaum that two men claiming i 'I i , i f friendship with federal officials tried to shake him down for $500,000 with promises of a "tax fix". Teitelbaum, a wealthy Chicago lawyer, further identified as attorney , for the Capone family in some of their legal troubles, swore that Bert K. Naster, Hollywood, Fla., businessman, business-man, and Frank Nathan, Pittsburgh, led him to believe that they knew of a Washington clique which was on the lookout for "soft touches". Naster and Nathan both vigorously vigor-ously denied the charge, but Attorney At-torney General Howard McGrath ordered a grand jury investigation ABRAHAM TEITELBAUM of charges. ,..,, As far as the people in the home towns are concerned, the charges and denials continue to throw a darker shadow across the Internal Revenue Bureau, under fire since the dismissal of J0 General Theron Caudle by President Truman. And the deeper the in-ve,tigato?cmmlttee in-ve,tigato?cmmlttee digs the more dirt that is There is no doubt now that the echo of this investigation will be heard to the election campaign of 1952. |