Business: Tire Prices

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.’s Paul W. Litchfield this week fixed a figurative bayonet and counterattacked the wartime forces that tend to inflate prices and costs. In full page national ads, full-jowled No. 1 U. S. Rubberman Litchfield announced tire price cuts of as much as 12½%, in spite of a wartime increase of nearly 25% in the price of crude rubber (August 29, 16¼¢ a lb.: Oct. 27, 20½¢). After “streamlining” plants and methods, costs were slashed to absorb September’s rubber inflation as well as the rubber business’ big complaints: higher wages & taxes.

Goodyear’s credo: “We stand for prices as low as manufacturing efficiency, economical distribution and raw material costs permit—prices productive of wider sales and wider employment.” Litchfield’s challenge: “That is the way to economic stability, which should be the goal of every responsible business leader at this time.”