Sign in the Sky?

A wage boost and price rise in steel in February 1946 took the last brakes off the postwar spiral of inflation. Last week, out of a clear sky with an apparently unlimited ceiling, U.S. Steel flatly rejected another round of wage demands--the third since 1946--and proclaimed instead a price cut (see BUSINESS).

Phil Murray's steelworkers had no other choice but to put on their hats and go home. Organized labor, preparing wage demands on a dozen other fronts, wondered with mixed emotions if the spiral was being reversed.

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