Calling All Cops

Leon Henderson last week asked for 90.000 new Federal employes (and $210,000,000) to enforce his price-control and rationing program, That is about 70% as many men as there are in all the State and local police and detective forces in the country; it is more than 20 times the peak staff (in bootleg years) of Federal prohibition agents; and it amounts to one employe for every 19 retail outlets in the U.S. But--as OPA was quick to point out --it is only one-third more than the 60,000 Britain has hired to price-control and ration one-third as many people.

With the manpower shortage getting worse each week, OPA worried about where to find 90,000 men or women able enough for this vast new police job. OPA worried still more over the huge new patronage pool that such a staff creates.

There was reason to worry: to the White House went many a New Deal Senator, to complain that Henderson refused to consider their patronage demands. The whole Senate stewed--90,000 jobs, and not a plum for them.

Retailers worried even more about the price-control records they would have to keep for the 90,000 enforcers. But this was just a trifle. The plain fact was that price control is necessarily regimentation, and therefore requires totalitarian methods. The U.S. might as well get used to it.

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