Evening star., 1943-01-01
Wars End 10 Release
Vast Production,
Buying Power
Better World Foreseen
For Average Citizen
After Transition
BY Cambridge Associates.


"The America we have known" Is
not going TO be swept away by the
war. THE America we have known
is going to be blended with a new
attitude toward other nations Of the
world and, more important, toward
the rights and privileges of individ-
uals. For the average citizen it will
be a rather more comfortable coun-
try than he has ever known. After
a possibly painful period of read
justment and despite continuing
high taxes, he and his children will
share considerably more good things
than did his fathers.
To look into the immediate post
war era, the productive capacity =.
the Nation will be far in excess OF
its pre-war potentials. The savings,
voluntary and compulsory, which
were piled up in wartime will fur
nish both the means and the incen-
tive to turn the machines which are
making jeeps, guns, tanks and vari-
Gus other impedimenta of war back
into machines to make cars, refrig-
orators, electrical appliances, home
furnishings and homes.
Price Controls to Continue.
The demand for consumer goods
coupled with release of war-bridled
spending power is, in fact. likely to
be so powerful that wartime curbs
OF prices and spending may have to
continue through the reconversion
period. To loose them would be al
most certainly to invite boom fol-
lowed by inevitable bust.
The process of reassimilating the
men of our armed forces into peace
time economy will obviously be diff
cult and perhaps long. There are
industries which will be hard-pressed
to find adequate places for them
selves under more peaceful condi-
tions. The competition they will
generate, however, will not be un-
beneficial for the consuming public
as a whole.
Consumers Heyday.
Looking beyond the admittedly
serious and delicate problems that
will arise directly after the silencing
Of the guns, there seems to be sub
stantial basis for hope.
There has been no period in which
the consumer, and we are all con-
sumers, will be more in the ascend
ancy. His dollars will 60 farther,
both in raw materials and finished
goods than they ever did before.
Before the war, before both wars, the
general trend of basic prices was
downward.
Both wars interrupted the trend to
an extent, but the real reasons why
prices should continue downward are
undisturbed and this trend should be
resumed.
Private enterprise will by no
means be on its last legs in this post
war world. 1t will be, more accu-
rately, attaining its prime, prime
dominated by longer view of self
interest than previously, but with
genuine rewards for successful ven-
lures. There will be a whole world
to invest in and whole world to
draw profits from, profits which will
accrue to individual investors and,
indirectly, to all individuals Of the
commonwealth.
Beveridge Report Cited.
The Beveridge report delivered last
fall to the British Parliament is by
no means blueprint of the post
war world. 1t offers hints, however,
which cannot be ignored.
Almost certainly it will be &C
cepted by most nations that all
citizens shall be endowed with free
dom from want as a basic principle.
That, in fact if not in statute, has
been a working principle in both
the United States and Great Brit
ain.
Postwar regulations will clarity
and regularize this principle as a
matter of common sense and public
policy. 1t is most likely that an in
surance procedure will be adopted,
but the actual method is incidental.
The principle is too well implanted
to be uprooted even by an after-the-
war inclination to stop the clock and
return to what was fondly called in
the 1920s normally"