Prices were going up.
The housewives knew it, the indexes confirmed it, and the Administration admitted openly that it could not stop them. Cried President Harry Truman last week: "The tools Congress has given us to curb inflation ... are not good enough to do this job as it should be done."
The reason, said Truman, was that "scores of special interests have ganged up together for the purpose of securing special short-run advantages for themselves." Truman was making partisan hay out of a half-truth. Some special interests (e.g., meat) had wangled concessions in the controls bill. But the truth was...