INFLATION: Angry Man

Since Aug. 5, Representative Thomas Francis Ford of California had kept his temper. This was a record for Mr. Ford. But last week he blew his top, with cause, over the treatment of the Price Control Bill.

A lank, dour fellow, with a face like a withered apricot, a sandy-grey pompadour, and a thundering disdain for anything Republican, Representative Ford is one of the shortest-tempered men in the House. He has been a 1,000% New Dealer ever since he came to Congress in 1933, after ten years of editing the literary page of the anti-New Deal Los Angeles Times.

As a member of the House Banking & Currency Committee, Mr. Ford had sat patiently through most of the hearings on the hashed, compromised, junk-assembled Price Control Bill. He had listened while the committee got a triple-plated Ph.D. course in high & low economics from Price Boss Leon Henderson, in a steady examination that gave “The Great Jawbone” the probable all-time record for lengthy appearances before Congressional committees.

The committee had begun hearings with little respect either for Leon Henderson or for economic law. The Great Jawbone had hammered into their skulls a profound respect for himself—but the committee as a whole still had little respect for economics. Many of them privately agreed that a little inflation was probably a good thing; most agreed that snow would fly before they got down to cases on ways and means to control skyrocketing prices, which are daily costing the defense program (and the taxpayers) millions of dollars, inevitably pulling down the standard of living, setting in motion a vicious spiral of inflationary forces.

All this the frumious Mr. Ford had watched. He had listened to paltering discussions of whether to impose wage controls and farm-price controls—two enormous areas which the bill in the first instance ignores, in the second winks at, lest labor and the farmers be outraged. (This bogey had been challenged by Bernard M. Baruch, World War I defense tsar, who declared that the public will support any bill that is uniform in its treatment of all classes and all goods, if the law is fairly and evenly administered.)

Last week Mr. Ford listened to his colleague, red-faced Representative Thomas Rolph of San Francisco, lengthily examine Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, on taxes. Mr. Ford knew that Mr. Rolph, not being a member of the House Ways & Means Committee, has no particular say about taxes; that Chairman Eccles, not being Secretary of the Treasury, has even less say. He knew that, while this theoretical discussion continued, prices were still going up; that this bill was still in alarmingly unready shape. Suddenly roared Mr. Ford:

“Fiddling while Rome burns . . . here is the wave of inflation coming all over the country, and we sit here discussing something that is not even before the committee. Why can’t we get down to cases and talk about price control?” Mr. Ford stomped out, grinding his teeth.

After a startled moment, the committee went on hemming-hawing about excess-profits taxes.