Word: opa
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...price ceilings on every count during the price-free period (July 1 to Aug. 20). Milk prices had risen less. That was all there was to it. Gratefully, the Board moved off the griddle to await the decontrol questions that would be passed up from the Agriculture Department and OPA, and to keep its price-eye on the free-wheeling dairy folk. Congress, and supposedly the people, had got what they asked for. The country was a step toward a free market, but it was a hesitant, tentative step...
Time for Figuring. Agriculture and OPA, which knew nothing of the board's decisions until their general release, joined forces as soon as they heard the news, decided they would need another no-ceiling week (ending Aug. 29) while the machinery of bureaucracy figured the new meat prices. They picked Sept. 9 as the date to put them into effect in the butcher shops. Nobody knew what they would be, although OPA Boss Paul Porter guessed "at or near June 30 levels." But lamb feeders, cut off from a $36 million Government subsidy, were sure their product would have...
...toughest problem facing the OPA (which granted 150 new price rises last week) was enforcement. Industry lobbies, strikes, the-black market, noncomplying housewives, congressional uncertainty and a short staff had all combined to frustrate the line-holders in the past. Would they do it again? With a show of confidence, Boss Porter said no, declared that OPA now had 2,500 investigators, double the old staff, to nail the black marketers. He also had a big enforcement budget, a method of centralized slaughter control and a lot of hope. He would need it all to keep the black market...
Then came word from Washington that OPA needed more time to prepare new price schedules; stockyard ceilings would not take effect until Aug. 29, with slaughterhouse ceilings following on Sept. 1, retail ceilings on Sept. 9. Result: a thunderous stampede to beat the deadline...
Most packers predicted meat supplies in normal channels would dry up as soon as ceilings went back on. But things would be different this fall. For one thing, OPA has promised to "throw the book" at black marketeers. For another, ranges will start drying up in October, and cattle will have to be shipped to market willy-nilly...