Byrnes v. Inflation

The struggle in Congress over the President's anti-inflation bill came to a quick, soul-satisfying happy ending. First came the climax of terrible confusion, when the President lashed at Congress just as it was working hardest to do his bidding (see p. 75). But then, in one busy afternoon and evening, Senate and House conferees approved the bill just as the President wanted it, got it voted on, rushed it to the White House. There, in a scene of great jubilation, forgiveness and mutual back-patting, the President signed it--less than 24 hours after the Oct. 1 deadline.

Stubborn farm-bloc members still insisted that they had got what they wanted, but they had not. All they wangled was one little concession: that the President should give ''adequate attention" to farm-labor costs in computing farm prices. But Franklin Roosevelt received all the powers he asked for. Next day he:

> Ordered wages and farm prices stabilized at Sept. 15 levels. Henceforth no raises or cuts can be made without War Labor Board approval. Henceforth price ceilings will cover 90% of the items that go into the nation's market basket (notable exemptions: most fresh fruits and vegetables, which are almost impossible to control).

> Extended rent ceilings to the entire country.

>Ordered the freezing of salaries over $5,000 a year, except to accompany real promotions to harder tasks. So far as "practicable," salaries will be limited to $25,000 a year after payment of taxes, insurance premiums and fixed obligations.*

The People's Tsar. These orders did not bring inflation under control. That still has to be done by the organization created to carry out the orders. To administer the new anti-inflation program, as Director of Economic Stabilization, the President chose shrewd, wiry Jimmy Byrnes, 63, a hale good fellow who was one of the smoothest politicians on Capitol Hill before he moved up to the Supreme Court last year. Byrnes is a middle-of-the-roader who can get along with men of all beliefs; he knows when to hold his tongue; he is an expert at finding the common denominator.

Economic Tsar Byrnes is no great master of economics (though he is a longtime friend and follower of Wizard Bernie Baruch), but he is not supposed to be. He will leave administrative details to his new committee: the heads of all the wartime and peacetime agencies which now deal with the various aspects of inflation, including OPA's Leon Henderson, the War Labor Board's William H. Davis and Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard. Byrnes's job is to listen to the arguments among his committee members (who have seldom seen eye to eye in the past), iron out conflicts, set policies, steer for a united front against inflation.

If Jimmy Byrnes can do this, he will have won his final medals as a master politician--and as a wartime official. Said he wryly: "I know it's a tough task. It will require the proper appreciation of the frequent use of the word no. You are bound to be unpopular when you say no."

But Jimmy Byrnes did not hesitate to leave the eminence of the Supreme Court, and its $20,000-a-year income for life, for a job that will be one of the meanest in the war effort. He well remembers his humble background: he was born after his father's death in a decrepit Charleston house, delivered the dresses that his mother sewed for a living, started as a law-firm office boy at 14, worked up to being a court reporter and studied law on the side. (He still takes his own shorthand notes at 150 words a minute.) Said Jimmy Byrnes last week: "Certainly a country that has given a man these opportunities has a right to ask any sacrifice of him. I don't care how much it costs me."

*In reviving the idea of a $25,000-a-year ceiling, first proposed last April, Franklin Roosevelt seemed to be inviting administrative headaches. Observers guessed that it could be enforced only by refusing to let companies deduct very large salaries as costs on their own tax returns.

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