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From Labor Action, Vol. 10 No. 37, 16 September 1946, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Big Business, now that it has dynamited the government’s price control program, is laughing behind its hand at the “revived” OPA. It has a telling simile for the present OPA law – “like trying to wrap 50 pounds of nails in a wet newspaper.”
The N.Y. Journal of Commerce can’t take seriously the talk of a war between the United States and Russia. Terming such an event “a very remote possibility,” the paper lists the following reasons: The great technical superiority of the western nations over Russia; the war weariness which pervades the world; and lack of evidence that Russia’s foreign policy involves "inevitable conflict with the basic vital interests” of the United States.
The Argentinian bourgeoisie are stepping up their drive to oust foreign imperialism. The Peron government has established itself by decree as the sole sales agent for the $350,000,000 annual meat export business. The decree establishes prices the government will pay to foreign-owned packing plants for export meat. Previously the meat had been sold by the packing plants through their New York agents; the decree eliminates the New York factors. Argentina has not renewed the recently-expired British contract to buy all the former country’s export meat ... The Argentinian government has completed arrangements to purchase from the International Telephone & Telegraph Co. its Argentine subsidiary, United Telephone Co. of River Plate, for approximately $95,000,000. I.T.&T. will continue as technical advisor in the operation of the Argentine properties for 20 years and will supply the necessary equipment for operation of the facilities.
The increasing industrialization of Iran has got the Persian rug importers worried. They say that weaving has been seriously curtailed because weavers are leaving their small communal groups and heading for the cities where considerably higher wages are being offered.
Real income at the start of July, 1946, was at least 11 cents on the dollar lower than a year earlier, according to a recent study by Investors Syndicate. “The typical American consumer, on the average, nationally, in June had to pay at the rate of $1.04 for essential goods find services which were purchased at the rate of $1 in June 1945,” the study stated, acknowledging the impossibility of gauging the even higher prices paid on the black market. “Wage payments in June were at the rate of 86 cents, compared with $1 in June, 1945.”
Insurance underwriters are now becoming worried about the increasingly serious fire hazard created by overcrowding of dwellings. The city building inspector in Minneapolis blames overcrowding for a recent fire which took the lives of two persons. He says there are many such potential hazards in the city. His office has received hundreds of complaints of landlords crowding in twice as many, and in some cases three and four times the families for which permission has been granted. They are hailed into court but revert back to the practice as soon as the inspectors leave, stated John Nelson, the inspector.
The Wall Street Journal expresses disgust at some of the dodges used by veterans to continue drawing their $20 a week unemployment compensation. In San Francisco, it is reported, the USES has many listings of GIs who say they are diamond cutters. There is no use for such a skill in that city. On the other hand, many veterans who say they have no skill at doing anything are proving a problem for the USES, reports the above paper. Some even claim unfamiliarity with a shovel when sent out on a common labor job. The Journal omits to say that if there were jobs at decent wages available, few veterans indeed would cling to the meager $20 a week.
Rebuffed in attempts to negotiate air agreements with Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria, the U.S. is doing its best to persuade Brazil, China, Australia, India and South Africa to sign aviation pacts permitting U.S. air lines to acquire landing rights. Romania and Hungary have formed aviation companies jointly with the Russians, with 50 per cent of the ownership vested in Moscow and with a Stalinist director.
Though Henry Kaiser has yet to place an automobile on the market, the Kaiser-Frazer Export Corporation is already constructing factories in Ahmedabad, India, and Stockholm, Sweden, for production of the two cars. Kaiser cars will also be produced in Melbourne, Australia, and will be assembled in Argentina.
The Army-Navy Munitions Board is reported discussing a system of industrial mobilization that would operate on virtually a push-button basis in case of war. Principal features of the plan are: (1) Two production lines in each important factory, one with peacetime products, the other with a small amount of wartime products; (2) special Munitions Board, purchasing, engineering and supervisory staffs in the plants of major prime contractors, suppliers, subcontractors and primary producers; (3) retention of war-built facilities from more than a score of industries for standby purposes; (4) stockpiling of vast quantities of metals, minerals, and materials for any future emergency.
The New England textile machinery industry is enjoying its greatest boom in history, with some manufacturers speaking of potential orders so huge their plants will be busy for a decade. Buyers from throughout the world want to replace war-destroyed machinery or to equip new textile industries in their countries. American textile machinery makers aren’t accustomed to such foreign demand. Before the war, England was the exporter of looms, Germany of knitting machinery. England has not yet reconverted her machinery-making plants from war production, and German plants in Saxony have been either destroyed or grabbed by the Russians.
Want to know one reason why cotton goods are hard to buy? In 1937 American cotton farmers harvested the largest crop on record when a yield of approximately 19,000,000 bales was reported. They realized an average price of 8.5 cents a pound, or about $807,500,000. The 1946 crop promises to be about 9,000,000 bales, for which farmers should realize an average price of 36 cents a pound, or approximately $1,620,000,000. In the space of nine years, the income of cotton farmers has doubled, although actual production is cut in half. The larger farmers in particular have profited from the government program of planned scarcity.
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