The Durant news. (Durant, Miss.) 1882-1985, 1944-05-25
VoodOo Statistics
m ce0eCe keENs0N

During my boyhood / knew one typi-
cal ante-bellum Negro, a picturesque
character born 80 years, you might say,
after his time. 1t was said Of him that,
with solemn Congo River ritual, he nam
ed one Of his seldom-used pockets 1.-THE
World" Promptly then he had his wife
sew up the empty pocket. After that,
when a fellow worker asked him for a
chew Of tobacco he could truthfully say,
World.
This is not q pointless story. II de-
scribes an interesting philosophy, now
in general use, notably by the Office Of
Price Administration When the powers
Of this bureau find it impossible to
stabilize a price Gas they sometimes do)
they promptly sew up the outlet with
q so-called Zine limitation shift the
trade to another store with somewhat
~fancier prices and call it a deterioration
Of quality; not a price boost-never!
The Magic Twist
It's uncanny. People pay more for
what they get although prices stay the
same at all points Of sale. Just consid-
er the case of Mrs. Effie Stone, proprie-
tress of Effie's Stone Inc. Nobody has
ever called Effie a modiste. She runs a
sort of general store at the edge Of a
farming town and stocks some apparel,
mostly cheap, working garments for
farm families and mill people. Wooden
skirts at 81 and ladies' suits at $50 are
for Effie's quality trade.
But now the store is out of wooden
skirts entirely. Effie can buy them at
about $3.50 wholesale. and could sell
them for SO and show a profit but it's
not legal If OPA rules are law. The
trouble is that Effie sold no skirts above
81 for several years, including the
months hat OPA has since designated
as a base period" By doing this she
automatically fixed her own ceiling
price. The OPA's MRP rule No. $40
caught her.
High-Brow Humbug
Nobody is fooled. Effie's highest al
lowable price for skirts is 81 and she
can't get any more 81 skirts to sell. Her
customers would pay more, in fact they
are paying more. They still like the
kind of clothes they wore during the
famous '1base period" But they are
buying elsewhere, paying $3.50 for skirts
in shops just opening; that have no
base period" or in big stores with
higher ceilings" upheld by more costly
lines.
The very same sport skirts Effie used
to sell at 81, the very same brand can
be sold legally by Ye Smart Shoppe at
higher prices than they'd dare name II
Effie was still a competitor. But Effie
is out. She has lost her skirt business
and her suit line is just ready to die
the same death. She is not alone either.
She has shopped round a bit with a
q merchants instinct and has found
dealers in other lines tangled up in the
same red tape.
Who Said Scandal?
A few days ago Effie went to the shoe
section Of a basement store to buy some
cheap oxfords to work in; no luck! She
found no soft shoes at low prices. She
shN - a. ~ VPVhtSo
her own s4-skirt story in other words.
But later. at d fancy footwear salon
she paid satin-slipper prices for what
used to be called cheap shoes. Even this
dealer did not get rich on the trans
action either.
Checking competition does not help
Mr.. and Mrs. Consumer. Truly Effie's
prices have not advanced, neither are
her competitors prices any higher, but
the cost of living climbs anyway Price
Administrator Bowles has called quality
deterioration a national scandal, and !
believe he has something there-but
are indications that the fault is
with 0PA regulations which we are
glad to believe 0PA is taking steps to