Time to Slow Up

If consumers would stop their mad rush to buy clothing and wait until midsummer, they might save themselves close to a billion dollars a year. Reason: prices will be lower. Last week, WPB and OPA finally decided to snap a checkrein on runaway textile prices. Shoppers agreed that it was high time. Since 1939 the volume of woven fabrics available to civilians had decreased 20%, but the nation's clothing bill had zoomed skyward from 1939's $5.8 billion to $11.4 billion last year.

What the OPA-WPB team now proposes to do is so kindergarten-simple in outline that consumers might well ask why it was not done long ago. WPB will tighten its control over the supply of cloth to converters and clothing manufacturers (TIME, Dec. 4). Cloth will be released only for the types of clothing WPB wants produced, and within certain price ranges. Meanwhile, OPA will roll back prices to 1943 levels. Thus WPB can force garment manufacturers to switch their output back to inexpensive underwear, shirts, house dresses and other scarce articles.

The price rollbacks were greeted by cries of anguish from converters and garment manufacturers. But OPA stood firm, prepared to unlimber its big guns on the biggest evil of all in the textile price situation. OPA's target: the upgrading of cloth and garments by converters and by style experts who, by adding an extra print, or a fancy ruffle, have vaulted ceiling prices and upped their profits 800 to 1,400% since war began.

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