No WIN Campaign

The Nixon Administration had the shop harder program, which urged housewives to flock to store food sales. Gerald Ford had his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) crusade. Now comes the Carter Administration's entry in the P.R. war against rising prices: a 16-page booklet titled A Consumer's Shopping List of Inflation Fighting Ideas. The guide's producer, Esther Peterson, 71, the feisty $51,000-a-year head of the Office of Consumer Affairs, says that the idea is "to help you cope" and to show people how to "stretch their food, housing, energy and health care dollars." Some of Peterson's advice for the inflation-worn:

FOOD. Before going to the grocery store, advertised sales should be checked. Shopping should be done at the end of the month when there are more specials.

FUEL. Oil furnaces and air ducts should be checked out at least once a year, preferably in summer, when off-season rates apply. Install weather stripping if a quarter can be slipped under outside doors.

HEALTH. Dental bills can be reduced by visiting dental schools, where the patients' work is done by students.

Peterson, an Assistant Secretary of Labor during the Kennedy years, was the first person to fill the White House consumer post after Lyndon Johnson created it in 1964. Reappointed by Carter, and enjoying somewhat greater clout in the Oval Office, she helped persuade the President to raise beef import quotas in June as a way to drive down meat prices, and she is lobbying for legislation to keep coffee and sugar prices low. Of her new publication she says: "It's not pabulum. It's no WIN button."

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