Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

Manufacturer, reseller

Eastern and East Central areas.

Amendment 15, RMPR 206; Amendment 19, Order 1, MPR 592.

Dec. 17, 1945

Source: Office of Price Administration, Building Materials and Construction Branch, Dec. 20, 1945.

SUPPLEMENT 1, JAN. 30, 1946

Manufacturer..

_do....

Southern California.

Manufacturer, jobber. Manufacturer, reseller

do...

Amendment 2 to. West coast.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Manufacturer, reseller.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

SUPPLEMENT 2, MAR. 25, 1946

[blocks in formation]

Vitrified clay sewer pipe and allied prod- 9.7 percent.

ucts.

Window and picture glass.

Vitrified clay sewer pipe, 6 inches and 11 percent over GMPR..

above.

Cast iron soil pipe and fittings.

Enameled cast iron plumbing fixtureware

Brick and tile

Glazed brick.

Clay drain tile...

Domestic oil burners.

Gas fired and liquid petroleum fired fur-
naces and unit heaters.

Specified items of brass plumbing fixtures
supply fittings and trimmings.
Brass plumbing fixture waste trimmings
and fittings.

$3.95 over GMPR

$6 per ton.

8 percent

$2 per thousand, 80 cents per ton

over GMPR.

$2.50 per thousand..

80 cents per ton.

9 percent.

12.5....

5-25 percent..

9 percent.

Item

Increase

Gas-fired conversion oil burners...

9 percent..

Low pressure steel boilers......

Automatic nonelectric temperature controls.

Specified hardware items...

14 percent..
5 percent...
10 percent.

Builders hardware and insect screen cloth..

__do.

Specified butts and hinges...

16 percent.

Specified hardware items and insect screen cloth items..

Jobbers, wholesalers, and retailers. SO-151....

Do.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

The important fact is that, except in minor instances, price is no longer an impediment to production. The principal difficulties are manpower, raw materials and equipment. Manpower is now the key problem in the brick industry, for example. In the case of castiron soil pipe the problem is pig iron. Production control rather than price increases is the answer here. Each day we are running into new cases in which price and other impediments have been removed but shortages of such raw materials as pig iron and sheet steel emerge as the remaining principal difficulty.

In stepping up the production of building materials a great deal more progress has been made since VJ-day than is generally realized and the outlook is good. But even with maximum success, the demand for building materials will run so far ahead of supply that there will be shortages for many months to come.

OPA is cooperating wholeheartedly in the program developed by Mr. Wyatt. We believe that program can and will succeed. But the maintenance of stable building-material prices is crucial to the success of that program. On the other hand, the authorization of premiums which the Senate has voted will go far toward easing our pricing problems. I hope the House of Representatives will concur in the Senate action. But it is only fair to point out that premium pricing cannot be effective unless basic price levels are held stable. By compelling major changes in OPA pricing standards, Congress could easily undo all the good that the premium-payment plan promises to achieve.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. May I ask a question there, Mr. Chairman? Your statement:

It is only fair to point out that premium pricing cannot be effective unless basic price levels are held stable

Mr. PORTER. Right.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Wouldn't it also follow that premium pricing cannot be effective unless basic price levels are also sound? Mr. PORTER. Yes. I would not dispute that for a minute. Now, we come to dairy products.

Dairy products: Few problems which OPA confronts are more delicate than that posed by dairy products. Fluid milk has a multitude of uses. It is not be to wondered that at times the nice machinery of adjustment gets out of balance.

We are faced by a fall in milk production which, although not precipitous, must be promptly halted. Between January 1945 and January 1946, the number of dairy cows dropped 3 percent and milk production fell from an annual rate of 122 billion pounds in 1945 when feed conditions were favorable to a recent estimate of a 118-billion-pound rate, a figure still far above peacetime levels.

This is not to say that the recent difficulties with respect to dairy products have not been real. The increases in costs for food and labor have narrowed unduly the margin between the dairy farmer's cost and his return. The Office of Economic Stabilization has approved two actions, one to be taken immediately and the other by July 1, which will increase the dairy farmer's return by a total of 40 cents per hundredweight, whether by ceiling-price increase or subsidy or by a combination of both.

While such actions will sustain milk production, further steps must be taken as part of a program developed with the Department of Agriculture to check the diversion of butterfat from butter to its more profitable uses, a diversion which has come about since the lifting of the butterfat restriction orders, soon after VJ-day.

For the first time in the history of price control we plan to institute a ceiling on the sale of commercially separated cream in bulk. This should serve to protect the margins of the ice-cream manufacturer and the cream retailer.

These steps, together with an allowance for butter storage to be made effective during the summer and with certain local adjustments to prevent diversion will, we are confident, alleviate the present acute shortage of butter.

These steps remove the threat to milk production arising from higher feed and labor costs, and assure a more normal distribution of manufacturing milk among the various uses. Inability to obtain feed may still, however, affect milk production in some localities. With fluid milk taking an unusually large proportion of all milk, and with the total production limited for some time by cow numbers and available feed, I cannot claim that these steps or any others that could be taken will provide within a period of many months supplies of butter and most other manufactured dairy products which will equal demand.

| Senator HICKENLOOPER. Do you establish ceilings on fluid milk now to the consumer?

Mr. PORTER. To the consumer, yes; we do.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well, then, there is one great difficulty we have in our State. The commercial users of fats and oils will go out and pay 70 cents a pound for butterfat to use commercially. They are paying that today. Our creameries and dairies that supply the public with their butter or milk cannot afford to pay more than somewhere around 55 to 58 cents per pound for butterfat. The result is that these fellows are paying 70 cents a pound for butterfat and are taking all the butterfat and they are by the same token taking all the raw milk-that is, a very substantial portion of the raw milk.

The food consumer, the public, is facing that absolute inability to either get raw milk or cream or butter because of the commercial competition that enables these fellows to pay 50 percent more than the food producers in milk products can possibly pay for their product.

We have had some meetings, I know you have been in them, the last few days. What steps do you contemplate?

Mr. PORTER. Senator, we think that this ceiling on cream, together with the restriction orders on the use of this sort of products will restore from the available supplies a more equitable balance, and at the same time prevent these commercial users you are talking about going out and bidding up the price to the extent they get the supply. So I think the answer is twofold, as I say, for the first time a ceiling on cream for manufacturing uses plus restriction orders that will prevent that diversion. I think that is the only way we can go about it, is through restoration of these orders.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. One of two things is bound to happen. The price of raw cream, the price of butterfats that goes into butter or into consumers' milk supplies has got to go up drastically, because you cannot pay 78 cents for butterfat and make a pound of butteryou can make a little more than a pound of butter out of a pound of butterfat but you cannot pay 78 cents and be forced to sell it on the

mark

Pents or whatever the ceiling on butter is.

Mr. PORTER. There is no question about that.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. That is why we have no butter, and here we are facing an extreme shortage of butter even in the butter-producing areas of the country.

[ocr errors]

Mr. PORTER. If you undertake to raise the price upward to meet the competition of these commercial users, I don't know where you would stop, because they would go a little higher. So I think the ceiling I have talked about plus restoration of these control orders will at least have the opportunity to solve that problem.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. All right, then you have got one of two steps: You either have to cut down the price of butterfat which means the farmer will get 20 percent less for his butterfat than he is getting now in the producing area, or you have to subsidize that with public money. I see no other alternative on that theory.

Mr. PORTER. I wonder if Mr. Baker will care to comment on that. Mr. BAKER. At the present time, Senator, the plan is, of course, to increase the return to the producer, now, by 20 cents a hundredweight; as Mr. Porter has said, and by another 20 cents on July 1, or a total increase of 40 cents a hundredweight, which is roughly equivalent to about a cent a pound.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well, is that all subsidy? Mr. BAKER. That is, the first step of that is subsidy. Whether the second step is a subsidy depends on Congress, and their decision on the extension of subsidies.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Your decision is that 40 cents a poundMr. BAKER. Forty cents a hundredweight.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Will be a subsidy?

Mr. BAKER. No, the first 20. But we do recommend that the second 20

Senator HICKENLOOPER. If Congress authorizes it the second 20 will be a subsidy?

Mr. BAKER. Yes. Now, with respect to the question of butterfat the idea there is that wherever we have an increase in the fluid-milk return we make a corresponding increase in the butterfat price so as to keep them the same as they are now, but by virtue of the restriction orders on heavy cream and on butterfat and ice cream and possibly, on a foreign type of cheeses, we divert the butterfat into butter so that the farmer then will presumably either sell his milk as fluid milk, which we have no restriction on in terms of quantities or will at least give butter an equal chance with the butterfats, because no more than a certain amount can be used now on ice cream or in cream itself. That is, by limitation of the butterfat content of cream which will have the effect of increasing the butter supply.

We have added to that a storage allowance on butter which will make it profitable for a person to make butter and hold it in storage,. which would not be true under the flat price which he had during the war when the Government bought the butter and stored it at their own expense.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. That is right.

Mr. BAKER. It will not, of course, as Mr. Porter says, increase this total supply of fluid milk or manufactured milk for butter, but at: least

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Well, it won't increase the total supply of fluid milk at the moment, but I would think it might vary conceiv

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »