The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1948-09-02

A tricky little gadget enables
man to trim away the overgrown
edges of his hair and thus save
trip to the barber shop.
An outfit for a home permanent
wave keeps lot of women out OF
beauty shops.
The prices Of these items are low
enough for the mass market.
A company reduces potatoes to
concentrated flour. Water and milk
added provide the lady with
beautiful batch of mashed pota-
toes, "just like new" in about a
minute.
Items such as these throw the
economists into tail spins because
they throw calculations out Of the
window.
BARRIERS and beauticians are yell
blue murder. Potatoes from a lit
tie box of flour affect economics
in dozen ways, believe it or not.
Two small automobiles are COM
ing to market, to more or less dent
the economic calculations.
Thousands of young men go into
the defense forces. They will not,
for some time, produce any COM
modities for use.
The Marshall Plan and our new
defense armament costs will add
to the forces that cut production
for home use, while we pay, out
Of the remainder, for both Euro
pean help and for our own safety.
Our margin upon which to live
seems to grow smaller.
Forces are slicing our baloney
thinner and thinner, it seems.
But in all of the multitude of
forces at work, including the hair
trimmer and the home wave, we
get a puzzle about the future.
We know mighty little about
Just where we are at or where we
are going.
William Green says wages are
not yet high enough. But prices
are high enough, plus. They are
too high for most persons.
People are forsaking train and
plane trips, taking auto trips in
stead. They are eating lunches out
of a basket by the roadside, IN
stead of in restaurants.
Economics is like a crazy quilt.
There is no straight line, from one
end to the other.
Of course employment is high
probably at top peak.
But the results of employment
are varied and puzzling. If man
gets 1925 an hour and can buy
with it less than he once could
have bought for 81, what has hap
pened!
More important, what is going to
happen next?
1t gets the economists stumped,
as they have been many times be-
fore.
Economists are supposed to be
like doctors-find the symptoms
and prescribe the cure, regardless
of the patients name.
But some economists are employ
ed by unions, while others are en-
ployed by business.
Generally they disagree. Queer,
isn't it?
Do they see the same facts? Or
do they interpret them different
ly? Maybe a bit of both.
However, it may be that the
little gadgets which neither OF
them sees get into the works to
upset their calculations.
Years ago there was an actor
who recited poem, with soft llghCs
and a woebegone voice. The kicker
line was, "Life's very funny
proposition, after all"
To use a lousy phrase, "he was
so right"
While we contemplate these
things, along with cabbages and
ex-kings, the awful shadow of OBJ
war hangs over us. Per-
haps two or three years hence
nothing that now worries US VIII
make any difference at all.
Even the gadgets turned out to
mold the ideas of fertile brains, to
help avoid high prices, may have
been forgotten in an avalanche OF
climactic destruction.
Thus, along with the gadgets
and the high prices, we get the
smell of "what the hell" state
of mind. Unhealthy in the extreme,
to be sure.
Could humankind but get its
sights on decent things, on order
and sanity and tolerance and un-