Everybody's Fight

With the new Defense Production Act passed, signed and in his hands, President Truman summoned the country last week to "build up the strength ... to deter Communist aggression." He spoke over radio and TV in the middle of the nation's Saturday-night-out. Few people were much aroused from their weekend calm; the people had heard most of what he had to say before. Defense costs were going up & up; they would be $30 billion annually by next June, more in the years to follow. There would be less to spend for peacetime purposes. The home-front problem, the President said, was threefold:

More Production. "This will require harder work and longer hours . . . [Some] workers and plants will have to stop making some civilian goods." Priorities would have to be given to military equipment.

More Taxes. The $5 billion tax boost bill now in Congress would be only a first installment. "Congress should enact further tax legislation as soon as possible . . . This should include a just and fair excess-profits tax."

More Restraint. The consumer should buy "only what you cannot do without." The housewife "must put off buying whenever she can." The businessman must "hold your prices down." The wage earner must not "ask for wage increases beyond what is needed to meet the rise in the cost of living." Everyone should save as much as he can "out of current income."

The problem, said Mr. Truman, "is your fight, the fight of all of us, and it can be won only if all of us fight it together."

A Little Steel. Most of the U.S. would hardly feel the effects of the Administration's creeping mobilization at first. As expected, the job of administering the new act would be divided up among the regular Government agencies (see box). Manufacturers of war goods would have to answer to a new production chief (see BUSINESS). Chairman W. Stuart Symington of the National Security Resources Board would continue to be in charge of coordinating the whole program--helping to iron out interdepartmental disputes and prescribing overall policy.

Only reluctantly did the President bare any executive steel. He had ordered the tightening up of easy credit for installment buying. But at the moment, said the President, the Administration had no intention of imposing price or wage ceilings.

A Little Control. Against the time when ceilings might become necessary, he established one new agency: a somewhat shadowy Economic Stabilization Agency which would "guide our voluntary efforts," move in with selective controls on presidential order. Under ESA's administrator would be a Director of Price Stabilization (who might become a sort of latter-day Chester Bowles) and a Wage Stabilization Board made up of representatives of labor, management and the public (a latter-day War Labor Board).

The President did not think the Production Act's provision for applying selective controls was too well written. For one thing, he did not like the way wage controls were tied to price controls. "As a result we may have to resort to general controls before they are really necessary. This may prove to be a serious defect."

He also thought there was much room for improvement in the rent-control law.

But everything would be all right, Harry Truman indicated reassuringly, if "we work together . . . share the sacrifices . . . and submerge petty differences." In other words, the kind of action that was needed to meet 1950's crisis apparently would wait until after election day.

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