The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-06-29

keep up with things. The commit
tee admits that it is entirely unofh-
cial, but, nevertheless, it called a
press conference in a Washington
hotel, with all the trimmin's, at
which, it ballyhooed, a plan for
solving the national food crisis
would be announced.
When time came for the unveil-
ing, however, Clarence A. Francis OF
General Foods, acting as spokesman
for the group, had to admit that the
committee was not yet ready to give
it out. Things are changing Sc
rapidly Mr.. Francis confessed,
chat we have not been able to adj
Just our ideas unanimously. We
haven't the facility of self-expres-
sion with which you reporters are
gifted"
RATION STAMPS
AND MAN HOURS
The flattery fell fiat, and from
then on the party was one of those
strange busts which can happen
only in Washington, when a press
ACCENTED press conference goes sour
and turns into a rout. Every state
ment made was challenged and in
the end the spokesman had to adj
init he had no idea when the COM
mittee's plan would be forthcom-
| ing.
Out of the bedlam, however, 1t
was possible to piece a few ideas on
some of the things that were both
ering these leaders of the food in
| dustry.
When Mr.. Francis complained
about the 260 million man hours OF
| labor required to handle ration
stamps, he was asked if he were
against rationing. Oh, no! The COM
mittee was for rationing and for
price control and against imitation
-BUT-a new balance should be
struck to bring prices in line with
increased labor costs. just try to
figure out the logic of that.
The committee was unanimous in
its opinion that OPA was being run
inefficiently and not in the public
interest - BUT - they had to be
charitable to OPA because the law
said it must observe parity, apply
ceilings as of September Is, and al
low for reasonable profits. The COM
mite didn't believe the dictates Of
the law could be carried out I'M
less subsidies were used-BUT-
they were opposed to subsidies.
Where does that leave you
SETTING THE CEILING
They opposed OPA's plan of hav-
ing several price ceilings for stores
doing different volume of business
BUT-they favored single price
ceiling which would force the
smaller, "less efficient" stores out of
business. Then they complained
about the large number of stores
being forced out of business by
OPA.
The food industry was not inter-
ested solely in progts-BUT-pres-
ent OPA policies had resulted in
squeezing profits, resulting in losses
by wholesalers and retailers.
The financial statements of the
industry for the first six months
would show good profits-BUT-the
industry hadn't been making any
money since May 10, when the OPA
local dollars and cents ceiling on
specific food items went into effect
They favored the placing of food
production, distribution and price
control under the administration of
a single agency lin a matter of
hours, not of days" a
two-day session of their own they
were unable to write a report ex-
pressing their ideas.
And so on.
One of the restrictions which the
recent runaway session of the house
proposed for OPA was that only
men from the industry concerned
should be permitted to work on its
staff to make its decisions. The per-
Torrance of the Food Industry War
Committee outlined above would
seem to indicate this might, be, to
put it politely, somewhat question
able