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Show Merchant Hails Competition As Enterprise Basis All business must fight for a lower price level if free enterprise enter-prise and a prosperous standard of living are to be maintained, declares Jack I. Straus, president presi-dent and head of the largest department de-partment store in the world. Calling attention to the attack upon the American business system, sys-tem, "everywhere in the world," Mr. Strauss says that certain weaknesses, which can be traced to the seller's market, have been seized on to condemn the American Amer-ican business system as a whole.-1 He points out that this is based on enterprise, profits and competition com-petition and warns that "if we lose competition, we shall lose enterprise and the profit system as well." The battle must be waged against three major obstacles, according to this merchandiser. The first is the continued shortage short-age of raw materials which prevents pre-vents quantity production and thus does not permit the production pro-duction of enough low and medium med-ium price merchandise. The second obstacle, according to Mr. Straus, is "percentage mark-ups and percentage markups mark-ups on percentage mark-ups." This pyramiding of prof its, which - are now unjustified, could . not be maintained if the supply of goods were adequate. The third obstacle, in the opinion of Mr. Straus, is the weakening of competition at retail by price-fixing laws and by the practice by manufacturers of price maintenance. |