Show GENERAL tit HUGH S JOHNSON jair taud ri r i V s washington D C WAR profiteering very timely is leon hendersons warning to producers of raw materials not to profiteer prices upward timely too is the brookings institutions tut ions report on the same subject one of the worst evils is price in inflation fla tion in 1914 to 1918 it increased average american prices ti to D per cent of their prewar pre war lev level el the effect in human suffering Is devastating and it does not cease with the guns or for many years for an example of only one of its lesser evils compared with purchasing power of 1913 dollars the staggering costs of the war to us were more than doubled by reason of that inflation alone that means that the burden of that mountainous debt on all our people was also doubled A greater evil is that starting at the high peak of war prices there is first an abrupt and ruinous and then a gradual decline in values prices and wages back to about the prewar pre war level after the napoleonic civil and world wars that process in each case took 14 years of course any such process is simply a slow destruction of half of all values in a nation our postwar post war gyrations from flash booms to deep and continued depression were all products byproducts by of this massive readjustment it profoundly changed and gravely threatened both our economic and political systems indeed the old threat is not yet removed as a new and similar menace appears so much for the brief mention of a few of the terrible hangover hang over effects of wartime war time price inflation the jitterbug joyride of the actual price debauch while it is going on makes a feverish appearance of prosperity but it is prosperity for precious few some wages go up with prices and some go up first but most of them lag grievously all people dependent on fixed revenues such as salaries pensions interest on savings and almost au all wages are the real sufferers the most piteous of these cases are the families of soldiers at the front all these people and they are by far the majority of us find their cost of existence doubled or multiplied while their means to get it remains the same it all adds up to a serious nationwide cut in wages salaries and income this is distressing and hideously unfair and it produces an even more dangerous result for a wa warring rr in g nation it destroys morale b both th at home an and d among the soldiers at the front napoleon said that in war the ratio of the value of moral strength is to the physical as 3 to 1 I 11 in most great wars this terrible gerrib ae force has been either little heed heeded ed or inadequately handled in the world war our war industries board was vas presented with the process of rising prices too late to prevent it but it did halt it in its tracks and later turned the trend downward that experience proved that war inflation can be prevented and suggested the only way to do it the brookings report advanced some methods and leon henderson described others the shortcomings of both parcels of suggestions is first that they are theoretical experimental and uncertain and next that they are aimed at only th the prices of certain commodity groups or piecemeal price regulation it cant be done that way there is only one way to do this job that is by flat fiat to put a ceiling over the whole price structure and thereafter to permit increases in particular cases only on a showing of necessity what our world war experience proved 0 0 0 BLUFF AND appeasement this comment column business when it touches foreign affairs is getting to be pretty tough I 1 believe beli eve in total defense I 1 recently begin to believe in that I 1 have been preaching it since the day this column started in predictions as accurate as any of just why we were going to need it and long before the government be stirred itself to implement its constantly growing aggressive attitude to make its fighting words seem more than bi bluff cufr nobody can justly call the th e five year urging of this column appeasement the difference between that urging and what is going on today is that what I 1 advocated wa was s armament to keep us out of war there is a good deal of evidence and it is growing that strong influences in this country and perhaps even the government itself regard this belated and therefore unplanned and somewhat panicky armament conference as preparation for participation in war we are not ready for war or even for adequate defense I 1 have felt for this reason and many others that we should shoud not bluff ourselves so far out on a limb of premature a aggression 9 gres sion that we could not avoid going further and perhaps over the brink without seeming either silly or cowardly but there has been no halt or delay in the march in that direction in the meantime the shrewdest best financed open and shameless propaganda to go further in that direction has increased in bath volume and tempo |