The Daily Alaska empire., 1944-10-02
The Line Against Imitation
(New York Times

(NeW 4Ofk I1IneS)
 Washington dispatch to this newspaper reports that according to informed Government circles President Roosevelt lis expected personally to make decision granting appeasement from the wage freeze of the Little Steel formula" It is indicated that this might be done some time between now and election, possibly around mid-October.
 If any such action is taken it will amount to a repudiation of the policies and promises that the Administration has heretofore made In his Executive Order of April B. 1943, MT. Roosevelt said flatly:
 To hold the line cannot tolerate further
 increases in prices affecting the cost of living
 or further increases in general wage or salary
 rates except where clearly necessary to cor
 rect substandard living conditions. The only
 way to hold the line is to stop trying to find
 justificatons for not holding it here or not
 holding it there.
 No one straw may break a camel's back, but
 there is always a last straw. We cannot afford
 to take further chances in relaxing the line
 We already have taken too many.
 On the first anniversary of this hold line order this year joint statement signed by Fred M Vinson the Director of Economic Stabizaton; Chester Bowles the Price Administrators Marvin Jones, the War Food Administrator and William H. Davis, the chairman of the War Labor Board, declared:
 The general level of the cost of living has
 not been permitted to rise. Indeed, the cost
 of living as whole is slightly lower than it
 was year ago today < Only by decisive
 action to halt the rise of wages could the
 pressure of costs prices be kept within
 manageable limits.
 Such statements were supplemented many times by those officially responsible for sabiization policy MT Vnson, for example, pointed out last April that labor successful in it's effort to smash the Little Steel formula it would be "short-time winner at the economic roulette table" Everyone, he eX- pained would be the loser in the price rise and in- flationary period to follow Even more important in his testimony before Senate committee passing on the extension of the Emergency Price Control and Stabization Acts, MT. Vinson, in reply to direct question: declared: @As far as I am concerned have no intention purpose to break the Little Steel formula" In view of the circumstances under which it was made, this statement may be regarded as pledge which Congress took into consideration in its revision of the Price Control and Stabiization Acts
 If the President at this time should smash the Little Steel formula for political reasons he would iprecipitate dangerous inflationary situation. But the Republicans would have to share part of the blame. In their platform adopted in June at Chicago instead of supporting unreservedy such efforts as the Administration has made to hold the line, they con- demned among other things "the freezing of wage rates at arbitrary levels The country can be saved from nasty economic situation only if both tht Democratic and Republican candidates, instead o playing for the votes of pressure groups, take tht question out of politics by unqualifedy declaring common purpose to hold the line against imitation