Hot Plum

Bent on grappling with the problem of price upcreep, President Eisenhower last week handed Vice President Nixon a job that was part plum, part hot potato. Richard Milhous Nixon's new post, his first major executive responsibility: chairman of a new Cabinet Committee on Price Stability for Economic Growth, with a franchise to 1) study the labor and management factors pushing up costs and prices, and 2) "strive to build a better understanding" of inflation and the public and private policies needed to curb it.

In carrying out mission No. 2, Nixon may preside over televised hearings. Whether the committee's Cabinet members--Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson, Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, Commerce Secretary Lewis Strauss--will fracture Cabinet tradition by turning public investigators has not yet been decided.

Hoping to avoid any antilabor tag, Nixon and Secretary Mitchell (who urged the committee, boosted Nixon for chairman) are planning to look into all cost-push factors, not just rising wages. Example: in the featherbed-ridden construction industry, a sure target for investigation, the committee will delve into such nonwage matters as outmoded building codes and novel, cost-cutting house designs.

The new job is part hot potato because it will be easy to offend both labor and business in investigating their cost-pushing practices. It is part plum because it gives Nixon an opportunity to improve his 1960 presidential prospects by doing a big and important job. The committee will be a "continuing" body, said the President's announcement, and in '60, it is safe to bet, it will be going like 60.

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