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Show FEWER OPS ORDERS O Main Street merchants will be relatively-free relatively-free of orders from the Office of Price Stabilization Stabiliza-tion until August 1. Officials of OPS have said that while they are legally entitled to issue any orders which do not include roll-backs under the congessional 31-day exten- sion of the national production act, H&lf they likely will NOT do so until after eraser the new act has been formally passed by ivctl congress. FEATURE O Such orders as may be issued, will be for "relief" of merchants or manufacturers manufac-turers who may be caught in any squeeze of orders already issued. O Two factors of interest to coops and others dealing in fertilizer, and to hardware merchants dealing in farm implements have materialized. One is the fact that any shortage of fertilizer is due to such an acute shortage of sulphur, that the international materials conference has unanimously unani-mously recommended to all governments an allocation allo-cation of the world supplies of sulphur for the third quarter of 1951. Reason is that sulphur is used in manufacture of more commodities than any other raw material. Other factor is that defense production administration has allocated to manufacturers manu-facturers of farm implements the following scarce raw materials for the third quarter: Copper, S.619,000 pounds; steel, 673,723 tons and aluminum 6,774,000 pounds. This will mean a slight decrease in manufacture during this quarter. The- department depart-ment of commerce reports that manufacturers' shipments ship-ments of farm machines and equipment for 1950 amounted to $1,795,000,000 a decrease slightly under 1949, accounted for by the shortage of tractors, cultivators and weeders. THE BEEF ISSUE Q Despite exhortations from economists and the experts that weakening of the price control act will result in additional inflation and higher consumer prices, it appears that the "hogs eyes are sot" and that congress will remove all agricultural agri-cultural commodities under parity from any price controls, even including beef which is 148 per cent above parity. OPS officials have predicted that if beef with its run-a-way prices cannot be controlled, then the whole price control program may topple. Q After reaching a new peak in the preceed-ing preceed-ing two weeks, retail prices of food remained practically unchanged in the two weeks between May 28 and June 15, bureau of labor statistics re ports. Price increases for pork, fish and eggs were offset by decreases in poultry, fruits, vegetables, fats and oils. O The bureau also reported another decrease in the average primary markets of 0.2 per cent for the week ending July 3 principally because of declines in fats and oils, cattle feed and crude rubber. Prepared by the Washington Bureau of WNTJ Features. |
