Washington swarmed with lobbyists bent on lifting wartime price controls. In the Senate, they found many a sympathetic ear. As debate on extension of the present OPA law began, two hotly controversial amendments were proposed.
On paper, they seemed reasonablebut far too technical for the public to understand. The first, by Ohio's arch-conservative Robert Alphonso Taft, would guarantee to manufacturers and processors the same dollar margin over costs (i.e., profit) they received in 1941. The second, by Oklahoma's silver-haired Elmer Thomas, would allow processors of farm commodities to profit on virtually every single item instead of just on overall operations, as...
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