Down, Down, Down

Consumers could hardly believe what their pocketbooks told them. On scores of items last week, prices were coming down. The big surprise was in autos. Thanks to the tremendous demand, there had been plenty of talk in Detroit of another boost in car prices all around.

But Henry Ford II cut the ground from under the price raisers. With a shrewd sense of public relations, Young Henry reduced the prices of Fords $15 to $50. Said he: the Ford Company was finally making money after a year in the red and could afford to shave prices, hoped to reduce them further. This "shock treatment" was the company's down payment toward stable prosperity. (It would also take some of the steam out of the U.A.W.'s demands for pay raises.)

Even with the reductions, Fords would cost slightly more than Chevrolets, except for one Ford which was $2 cheaper. But few automen would dare think of boosting prices now. And the start downward had begun months before most automen had expected, or consumers had hoped for, it.

Down Commodities. There was more cheer in commodity prices. The slip which had started two weeks ago turned into a slide.

Cotton, already down $35 a bale from its postwar peak, dropped as much as $7 more (from 32.86-c- a pound to 31.45-c-). Amid the growing abundance of dairy products, wholesale butter fell as much as 7 1/2-c- a pound in one day. In the New York area, the price of milk was reduced 44-c- a hundredweight by the Department of Agriculture, about a cent a quart, and pegged there to keep it from going lower.

Caught up with most of its commitments abroad, the Government's Commodity Credit Corp. curtailed its wheat-buying program. One result: the price of January wheat tumbled 5 3/8-c- a bushel to $2.13 1/2. (On the basis of other futures buying, it would be down to $1.92 5/8 by May and $1.75 by July.) With some 4,300,000 cattle fattening in the nation's feed lots (the alltime high, in 1943: 4,445,000), livestock prices in Chicago dropped "to $22.75 a hundredweight, the lowest since meat was decontrolled.

Up Smiles. In Manhattan, poultry producers gathered to try to avert "chaos" in the industry. Reason: wholesale prices were down to 30-c- a pound, yet retail prices were still as high as when wholesalers got 50-c- a pound. Most poultry raisers feared that the high prices and slackened retail buying would soon push the bottom out of the market.

Of all major commodities, only heavy metals went up. Even there the trend was mixed. By week's end, the Dow-Jones Commodity futures index was down 2.02 points to 117.56, about the same level as in November just before commodity futures joined the general price rise as OPA controls went off. It would take time for the lowered commodity prices to affect most retail prices. But many a retailer was hastening to clear his shelves of high-priced goods.

All over, retailers got ready for tough competition again, started training clerks to meet it. One big department store installed lyres in every department. When, from time to time, they are plucked, clerks are required to smile.

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