Plastered President

In his lecture three weeks ago on the need to balance prices, President Roosevelt singled out plaster as one article for which the price is too high. Leaning back in his chair with a long wooden pointer, he discussed a large graph showing that plaster prices are now twice what they were in 1929 (TIME, Feb. 28).

The largest U. S. plaster maker and one of the largest concerns in the building industry is U. S. Gypsum Co. and last week in the annual meeting of Gypsum stockholders, Chairman Sewell L. Avery took occasion to crack back at Franklin Roosevelt. Reading TIME'S account of the President's lecture aloud to some 50 Gypsum stockholders assembled in Chicago, Chairman Avery declared that Franklin Roosevelt had been misleading in his comparison of 1938 with 1929. In 1929, said Mr. Avery, plaster prices were drastically low because of a savage price war. Today Gypsum's average prices are 9% under the 1926 level which Franklin Roosevelt has often called his commodity price goal.

A lone woman stockholder rose to suggest that Mr. Roosevelt should be set right.

"I don't think the President can be very well blamed for this," smirked Chairman Avery. "His economists supply this information."

Chairman Avery plastered President Roosevelt with plenty of blame for the new amendments to the Housing Act, however. Predicting that the easy credit it provides to would-be builders will not produce any housing boom, Chairman Avery dubbed the Administration's approach "superficial" in regarding building as a distinct industry. Said he, "Easy credit will not be an inducement to build homes which when built will not be worth what they cost." According to Sewell Avery, building represents a wide cross section of all U. S. industry and therefore will not revive until business as a whole regains confidence. In Gypsum's case, January and February sales were 25% under last year and the company is therefore unlikely to equal the $5,400,000 it made in 1937. This made Chairman Avery very bitter. Turning lecturer in true Rooseveltian style, he too presented a price chart, but he held it upside down. Snapped he: "It's the influence of this Government business."

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