MOBILIZATION: he Menacing Look

Economic Stabilizer Alan Valentine nervously pushed through the crowd and cached the head table. There before him in the seat of honor was his wage stabilizer, Cyrus Ching, sucking away placidly at his stove-sized pipe. A frown of injured dignity crossed Valentine’s face, but he took a seat at the left end of the table.

Presently, round little Price Stabilizer Michael DiSalle, the third member of the country’s price & wage triumvirate, came waddling in. He lowered himself into a seat near Valentine and looked blandly out at the faces of a hundred reporters. The newsmen had come to find out, if they could, what kind of economic controls the U.S. was in for—hard or soft. “I’m sorry we are late,” said Stabilizer Valentine, looking at DiSalle. “But the rice administrator hasn’t found his way around the building yet and we picked him down one of the corridors.”

“That’s not the only place I haven’t found my way around in Washington,”grinned DiSalle. Ching puffed away at his pipe.

At Sea. It soon became plain that the stabilizers were as much at sea as the rest the country. Valentine volunteered that the rumors going around about a price freeze were “far stronger than any action planned here.” Well, are general controls planned or not? Valentine tossed the ball to DiSalle, who said, “There is no question about it, we are planning for price ceilings, but we don’t see at this time any necessity of imposing such controls and we are still hoping . . .”

At this point, a trade-paper correspondent asked DiSalle to say firmly if there could be a price freeze by Sunday. “At is time no order is being drafted . . .” replied DiSalle, trying to be helpful. Valentine broke in to fog things up again: of course, we can’t tell what will happen between now and Sunday. There have been so many unexpected developments recently.”

Somebody asked cob-nosed Cy Ching whether he thought selective wage controls would work. “I don’t know,” said Ching, the only words he uttered during the conference.

Valentine unfolded a newspaper and read from it. It said that his office has authority not only to fix prices but to roll them back.

“Very interesting,” Valentine said, looking menacing and mysterious. “Very interesting suggestion.” Obviously, Valentine hoped to scare price raisers by threatening a price rollback. But it didn’t quite come off—it only made clear that, at the moment, Valentine wanted to achieve by threat what he was not ready to achieve by deed.

Refusal. Next day, Alan Valentine got an answer to his first public move to scare industry into voluntary controls. He was soundingly slapped down. Ford’s Henry Ford II had announced an average 5.5% price rise on 1951 models.

General Motors’ Charles E. Wilson announced an average rise of “something less than 5%.”

Stabilizer Valentine, apparently outraged, got off a telegram to both: “You are requested to suspend all price increases on automobiles announced by you during the week until the entire question of price can be examined and determined by this agency.”

They refused, politely but firmly, reminding Valentine of their own spiraling costs for labor and materials (see BUSINESS). The automakers implied they were willing to play along, but only if everybody else had to, too.

Valentine retorted lamely: “We must study the figures and keep open minds. Only after that can we determine our action. But we have authority if voluntary action fails . , .”

This week Harry Truman talked things over with his economic advisers, then summoned congressional leaders of both parties before taking the whole subject to the country.