Price Mouse

The House was in an ugly mood. From the floor came the angry buzz of milling, wrangling men. Majority Leader John W. McCormack tried to line up votes he knew were not there. After four months, Leon Henderson's price-control bill was getting the works.

As it came out of committee, the bill was already a fantastic compromise. Congress was loath to look economics in the eye, even in time of crisis.

Even the compromised bill was too much for the House. Lined up against the committee's bill was a queer, potent alliance: the farm bloc, Republicans who still smarted under their defeats on LendLease and Neutrality Act revision, Congressmen who distrusted the New Deal, Congressmen who distrusted Leon Henderson, Congressmen who distrusted price control.

Their massed ranks were too much for McCormack, for Speaker Sam Rayburn, for lumbering old Chairman Henry Steagall of the Banking and Currency Committee which had handled the bill. Quipped Republican Jesse P. Wolcott: "If the minority over there on the Democratic side will just cooperate with us, we'll pass some sort of a bill."

Veto for Baruch. Tennessee's handsome young Albert A. Gore presented his own blunt plan for price control: an overall bill to freeze all prices, including farm commodities and wages. The Gore bill was taken directly from the ideas of Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch, head of the World War I Industries Board, and had Baruch's official blessing. The House rejected it by a vote of 218-to-63.

Then the rebellious House got to work on the milder committee bill, rewrote it almost completely. It kicked out provisions to give Leon Henderson licensing power over business and unrestricted right to buy and sell commodities--big-stick enforcement clauses. It created a fiveman board of review with veto power over Henderson's actions. The House insisted on keeping an inflationary three-point formula for farm prices, even added a parity scheme for fish. Finally passed by a 224-161 vote, the bill was now little more than a scrap of paper.

Said one Congressman early in the debate: "The committee labored for three months and brought forth a field mouse." What Now? To Leon Henderson and his Office of Price Administration, the final day of debate was a sad spectacle. Since last April, when OPA was set up, Henderson has had to rely on what he calls "jawbone control," and even Henderson's stout jaw eventually gets tired.

But anything at all was better than nothing. Henderson's greatest fear was that Congress would turn him down completely. Then his present house-of-cards, which depends entirely on voluntary cooperation, would have collapsed altogether.

Working with no power except what he can exercise indirectly through priorities sanctions, Henderson has done a better job than anyone had a right to expect. His 43 price ceilings have frequently been riddled by bootlegging, black boursing, coony little tricks such as charging "extras" for make-believe services. But by pleading, bellowing and sometimes bulldozing, he has persuaded or forced at least partial compliance. He has also worked out many a voluntary industry agreement on prices.

When The Great Jawbone began to function, prices of commodities over which he later took control had risen 14.5% from pre-war levels. Since then they have risen only 2.5% more. Meanwhile uncontrolled basic commodities have jumped 24% above pre-war figures.

The House's price-mouse will not make Henderson's job much easier; indeed its farm provisions are a direct invitation to inflation in one big segment of the national economy. But at least the House, by going on record for some kind of price control, did not tetanize The Jaw.

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