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Last week the Brazilian Government was deep in a slam-bang fight to keep prices down. Latest measure: an order compelling food stores to stock essential foods, sell them at a 10% maximum profit.

Like most of the world at war, Brazil has been suffering from inflation. Few weeks ago Dictator President Getulio Vargas decreed increases in nearly all wages. So that further price increases would not cancel wage hikes, Economic Coordinator Joao Alberto Lins de Barros fixed ceilings on all goods and transportation charges (as of Nov. 10). But, suspecting that ceilings alone would not do the trick, he took many other measures.

When buttermen refused to sell at his prices, he imported Argentine butter and sold it at low prices until he broke them down. When cheap cloth got scarce, he compelled all cotton mills to produce one tenth of their export cloth in popular styles, had the goods sold at "yardstick" prices through portable street stores. They were mobbed by pushing housewives, and soon cloth prices in regular stores went down. In some cases of speculation or hoarding, he turned to outright requisition.

Last week prices were stable or falling. Frustrated money-makers were howling. Said canny Joao Alberto: "I manipulate shortages with care so that all industries will not scream at once."

Tropical Fireball. Blue-eyed, all-confident Joao Alberto started political life as one of the wildest guerrillas in all of Brazil's wild history. An expert, irrepressible revolutionist, he was often in hiding, was once caught and imprisoned for six months. He was driven into exile, struggling across the wilderness of the Matto Grosso to the Bolivian frontier. After lean years among the outs, he was one of the leaders of the 1930 revolution which anchored his chief, Getulio Vargas, in Guanabara Palace. Subsequent revolutionary movements failed, and Joao Alberto had much to do with their failure.

Since 1930 his life has usually been more placid. In July 1942, he was Minister to Canada (a job he considered "stuffy"), when Vargas called him home to prop up his country's war-threatened economy.

Brazil was in a mess. Even before she entered the war, the U-boats had smashed the vital shipping routes along her 4,899-mile coastline. She was starved for imported manufactures. Buyers were scarce for her coffee, cotton, cacao. The Allies were screaming for unheard-of amounts of manganese, rubber, bauxite, mica, other strategic materials.

Joao Alberto took charge. When a worried U.S. mission arrived, his dictator-boss (untroubled by constitutional restrictions) had already given him power over nearly every detail of Brazilian economic life. If the Americans expected to meet a wordy tropical dreamer, Joao Alberto surprised them with his quality of calm decision, his drive and force.

Joao Alberto has yet to prove that he can stave off inflation indefinitely. But, under his regime, matters have improved. With U.S. help, Brazil is producing many manufactures which she could not buy abroad. She has bolstered her defenses.* She recently announced a plan to pay off her long-defaulted foreign debt. She began to shift her agriculture away from disastrous, one-crop dependence on coffee alone. And she is supplying increasing amounts of strategic materials (figures secret).

No Angel. In his middle 40s, Joao Alberto is tallish, slender. A nervous tic periodically distorts his face. His kindly, scholarly bearing does not match his violent past or his present push. Brazilians tell some cynical tales about his appetite for money, and they remember his successful but intensely unpopular term as Federal Interventor in the rebellious State of Sao Paulo. He plays the piano beautifully, has almost memorized his favorite book, The Arabian Nights. He speaks English, is pro-American, has a son in the U.S. Air Forces. Among his pals: Sumner Welles and Carmen Miranda.

*Brazil has long wanted to take an active part in the war. Last week she had a small group of officers in Algiers preparing the way for an expeditionary force.

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