Show s high wages crop loans threaten cost of living price control measures considered likely peace lovers picket white house hull reveals post war plans by BAUKHAGE national farm and home hour commentator service 1343 n H street washington D C dollars Dollar sl t at last they are beginning to worry washington not the ones going out of af the treasury we can take that in our stride but the ones rolling into pay envelopes and starting to burst forth again is such excitement cit ement that everybody is afraid that the noise is going to scare prices up a tall tree wages today are the highest in history and as one official remarked to me if something done well have inflation and a slump that will be streamlined it will ill make the old timers wish they had their old model T depression back again some people puttee put the blame other places es but this is the story that friends of the administration tell leon henderson price czar hoped to keep prices from running away by using moral suasion or legal effort to keep industrial prices from going beyond a certain level there were two reasons for that to get down costs in essential defense commodities modi ties to control prices on basic materials like steel which always take other costs up when they rise themselves next to achieve a balance between agricultural prices and others the government would support farm prices up to a certain point lastly a certain amount of elasticity in wages would be allowed in order to prevent strikes but what happened wages reach peak workers demanded and as I 1 stated are getting the highest wages in history workers wanted to get their slice of the money the government is spending on defense then the friends of the farmer came along they said the farmer might as well cut a melon too while the cutting was good and so congress voted an increase in crop loan rates which the president said might push certain products above parity and so the result is more dollars for the consumer to spend and less leas things for him to spend them on 0 especially since the defense industries have to beat their sewing machines into tanks and the like when the demand is big enough and the supply is small enough it takes all the kings horses and all the kings men to keep prices down you cant repeal the law of supply and demand however the prospects are that congress will be asked at least to try to amend it in other words some drastic price contral central measures will be taken A flat ceiling will be established for certain goods and then unless a method is adopted for getting folks to lock up those extra dollars with no place to go nobody knows aws what will happen 0 0 0 1 peace pickets muddy the water muddying the waters it seems to me that I 1 have heard that phrase more and more often recently there is a good example of it right in front of the white house every day in fact 24 hours a day while the american peace mobilization pickets stroll backward and forward day and night I 1 watched them in the bright sun of noon and as I 1 looked at each face we stared brazenly at each other I 1 felt sure some were sincere believers that war of any kind wils was wrong some were fanatics joining a cause for the sake of joining 0 some were simply indulging in a an n exhibition complex and some were cleverly muddying the waters the leader of the line was a girl in a military cut jacket she was carrying a united states hag flag she looked straight at me as she approached pro ached and as she drew nearer I 1 noted the strong oriental cast of her features next to her was a man carrying a placard and a lantern the light of pee pea ce he had eyes that burned with the light of the fanatic gray hair sunken cheeks the stoop of frustration you have heard the type rant on any emotional subject he shuffled past man alan Is self seif conscious next was a serious looking average man in glasses he was the only one who looked at me a little self consciously he carried a banner with the commonplace request to join the peace movement there were others but by this time I 1 was feeling a little self conscious myself so I 1 grinned at the policemen and they grinned back there were two of them guarding the pickets who had been attacked at least twice by soldiers two more bluecoats blue coats stood at the white house gates for when there are demonstrations no one can enter the grounds without proper identification As I 1 went in I 1 heard one of them reporting at the call box everything going fine out here but I 1 wondered hull tells plans for post war peace just a simple bourgeois 1 I A thing of shreds and patches of fiscal bumps and scratches and monthly bills to pay with apologies to gilbert a and nd sullivan I 1 modernize nanki pooh from the mikado hoping there will be no reprisals for sometimes I 1 think it is time the bourgeois who seem to be so unpopular until the guns begin to shoot and the taxes are levied deserve a word or two and so on one washington summer day recently when I 1 was wakened by the birdsong in the neighboring invisible elms I 1 had a surprise that pleased me As I 1 opened the door and reached for the milk the morning papers and the rent bill my sleep dimmed eye caught a cheering headline HULL DEFINES OUR POSTWAR POST WAR PROGRAM WANTS RAW MATERIALS TRADE FOR ALL that was the first hopeful message for the average guy that my weary eye had met in a long time you may recall that in this year of our discontent one of these columns began this way there is a peace machine in washington all oiled and ready to start the moment the last gun is silenced in europe from it may come a plan which the democracies can offer to the world as an alternative to the totalitarian way of life and at last the good gray and stubborn gentleman in the state department part ment trotted it out to hold up to the struggling world a promise instead of a threat a hope instead of a sneer two hours later a philosophical communist friend was sniffing at it as we walked past the treasury building back to the old order he said contemptuously half an hour later a genial conservative serva tive was laughing at it give me good high tariffs he said as if he were contemplating a slice of juicy roast beef perhaps as an old style bourgeois I 1 should have agreed with that but I 1 am a bourgeois new style I 1 dont know anything about economics but I 1 know what I 1 like I 1 like to think that secretary of state hull is right when he says that the seeds of war take root behind any artificial barriers which keep people from getting their share of the earths bounty five points in program mr hulls program is the one he has lived by since his early days in in congress and the five points which he outlined to the world are his credo no extreme nationalism which would enforce excessive trade restrictions nondiscrimination discrimination non in international trade relations raw materials of the world available to all nations international agreements to protect the consumer countries and their people international finance run so that all countries can develop their essential enterprises it if these conditions were explained to the middle class people of the world today in britain and germany in france and italy in terms of the kind of life mr hull believes his plan would bring and if those people could be convinced that such a plan would be carried out ill wager they would turn their guns and battle for these five points under any honest leader unfortunately there were once upon a time 14 points which woodrow wilson off offered ered as the basis of peace in 1918 and all those little points were broken off short by the gentlemen in paris who thought they had a better scheme they made a peace which we learned to our sorrow was just a thing of shreds and patches |