Design for Living

The good things of the U.S., the things that gave it the highest standards of living in the world, had gone to war. The luxuries were gone; some necessities were going; days lean as razorbacks were ahead. To share what was left the U.S. had two choices: it could have inflation, or it could fix prices, drain off public purchasing power and try to divide the available goods equally by ration.

Franklin Roosevelt did not want inflation. He hated the very word, refused to use it. To stop it he sent a message to Congress, a program which would impose on the U.S. a new design for living:

> The highest taxes in history: a limit on individual incomes to $25,000 a year (after taxes); a draining away of business profits to the "utmost limit consistent with continued production."

> A universal price ceiling, halting wholesale and retail price rises for the duration.

> "Stabilization" of wages by the War Labor Board--but with no change in time and a half for overtime.

> A ceiling on farm prices at parity levels --about where they are now.

> Vastly increased purchases of war bonds with forced savings to follow if bond buying lags. "In almost every individual case they should be big enough to mean rigid self-denial. . . . We cannot fight this war . . . on a spend-as-usual basis."

> Rationing of scarcity items ("the democratic, equitable solution . . .").

> Strict limits on credit and installment buying, to cut down spending and keep citizens solvent for the post-war jolt.

Franklin Roosevelt already had the power to enforce most of this design. Rationing was about to begin on sugar and East Coast gasoline. This week Leon Henderson clamped down the over-all price ceiling: starting May 11 for wholesalers, May 18 for retailers, prices of shoes and sealing wax are frozen at their levels of last March. Rents in almost all cities also come under the ceiling; so do the prices charged by laundries, tailors, auto-repair shops. All merchants will be licensed; retailers must display the ceiling prices in full view. This was regimentation --the first but not the worst of it.

The President urged Congress to pass a new tax bill swiftly: asked 100% taxation of excess profits--but buck-passed to Congress the problem of defining where excess profits begin. To help solve the farm price ceiling problem he asked repeal of the complicated, inflationary formula which the farm bloc wrote into the price-control law.

Congress might balk at both requests. The House Ways & Means Committee, working on a new tax bill, shied away from his all-out proposals. Farm bloc Senators complained bitterly, for the record. But Franklin Roosevelt had a big stick, at which his message hinted delicately: this is an election year, and the people are impatient with laggard legislators.

Of the people, President Roosevelt had no doubts. They were ready for blood-tears-sweat talk, and he came the closest yet to giving it to them:

"Inevitably . . . this enormous program is dislocating industry, agriculture and finance. It is disrupting, and will continue to disrupt, the normal manner of life of every American. . . .

"Each and every one of us will have to give up many things to which we are accustomed. We shall have to live our lives with less. . . . Our standard of living will have to come down.

"I firmly believe that Americans all will welcome this opportunity to share in the fight of civilized mankind to preserve decency and dignity in modern life. For this is fundamentally a people's war--and it must be followed by a people's peace. . . . [It] requires the participation of all the people in the common effort for our common cause."

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