A Little Tinkering

According to many an economic handyman in Washington, a little tinkering will make the old machinery of capitalism run a lot better. In 1942, Washington handymen began tinkering with meatpacking:

The Government froze meat prices. Meat supplies thereupon flowed to cities where prices happened to be highest. The Government set "uniform ceilings."

Meat packers found themselves jammed between the ceiling and the rising cost of meat on the hoof. A black market sprang up. The Government tried to fix that by giving the slaughterers' subsidies. Then it put a ceiling on livestock. Cattle raisers bemoaned high feed costs. So the Government gave them subsidies too.

Packinghouse workers decided that it was time to strike for higher wages. The meat packers said they couldn't give a raise without going into the red. The Government had to seize the packinghouses and run them itself.

That was the situation last week when Chester Bowles went to work. Mr. Bowles, busy cutting "wage-patterns," cut one for the meat industry -- a 16-c- wage boost for packinghouse workers, 1 1/2% boost in the price of meat, continued subsidies to cattle raisers and slaughterers.

In the meat industry, the Government now controlled virtually everything but mating. The Department of Agriculture, with its artificial insemination experiments, is working on that.

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