| Show PRICES or OF ITEMS TO BE REGULATED REGULATE ID policies governing the prices of a long list pf af items such as ice boxes bicycles stoves and several hundred others is outlined by OPA administrator chester A bowles in a special communication boards to the war price and rationing prices must not be set too low said mr bowles they may add to a dangerous drop in national purchasing power and pave the way for another depression if set too high savings and current dollar incomes willbe will be dissipated to pay unnecessarily necessary necess ari ly high prices and a booming inflation may set in followed by inevitable collapse our pric pricing in g policies should encourage the fullest possible production of goods and ser vices at the lowest possible prices to the consumer unless american industry produces to the limit of its power there will be an increased danger of depression and eventual collapse and ana widespread wide spread unemployment mr bowles stated that it would be well to remember the circumstances surrounding the end of world war one when prices dropped slightly and then started a dizzy zy spiral until the bubble burst in may 1920 in a year and a half factory payrolls dropped 44 per cent farm income 66 per cent corporation profits after taxes fell per cent wiping out almost completely the busness reserves accumulated during the war period industrial prices today are less than 3 per cent above the levels of may 1922 the cost of living index for the nation has risen 10 per cent since price con arol became effective it would be a folly in our anxiety for peacetime production to repeat the bitter mistakes of 1918 1919 |
