Rout & Reaction

In the wake of meat decontrol, steak suddenly appeared on butchers' counters -- at $1-&-up a pound. Lard and other meat by-products edged up toward 70-c- a pound. Dazed by the sight of so many rare items, the people went on a two-day buying spree--a mood reflected by a six-point jump in the Dow-Jones industrial index.* Then they hesitated.

Controls kept coming off--margarine, mayonnaise, shortening and coffee. OPA Administrator Paul Porter said that he was preparing a big cut in his staff of 35,000, and that the whole decontrol program had been moved up two months, to Nov. 1. After the first of the year, price lids would remain on autos, building materials, refrigerators, furniture, sugar, basic clothing items, farm machinery and rents.

Thinking it all over, the long "protected" consumer began to realize that if his government was not engaged in a rout, it was certainly conducting one of the fastest retreats on record. Maybe he had better hold off and wait for supply-&-demand to balance a few things.

The Resistance. The step from thought to action was short. In Decatur, Ill., a woman asked her grocer if he had any lard, learned that he had--at 65-c- a pound. "So," said she, "no wonder you still got it." In Kansas City, a secretary stalked indignantly from a shoe store, announcing that she would not pay $32.50 for a pair of shoes; in Los Angeles a butcher hung out a sign saying that he had refused to buy at the price the packers were asking. Chain stores with a stake in public relations refused to stock up on skyrocketing items.

By week's end, meat prices had sagged a little (one Manhattan butcher shop sold sirloin for 68-c- a pound); and buyer resistance was up to its postwar peak. The resistance was partly fear, partly doubt, and partly an out-&-out inability to pay the price. But more than that, people were beginning to feel like unmitigated suckers.

The mixture of fear, frustration and anger was expressed in many ways. In Cleveland, U.A.W.'s Walter Reuther announced that contracts covering 400,000 of his autoworkers would be reopened promptly--a statement that increased the possibility of a new wage scrimmage. Some people trembled to think what would happen if federal rent controls were dropped. And some were beginning to shift uneasily at the prospect that the booming U.S. was in for a recession, if not a bust (see BUSINESS).

* By week's end, it had fallen back 4.6 points, to 171.34-

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