With inflation accelerating the tendency of merchants to bid against each other for a dwindling supply of commodities, the Government last week clamped down with a long-awaited inventory regulation.
Applying only to large firms (having annual sales in the year ending last November of over $200,000 and with inventories of over $50,000), WPB's order seeks to maintain the same relationship between gross sales and stocks as in the years 1939-41. Thus a merchant with average sales of $500,000 in the earlier years and stocks of $250,000 may now hold stocks worth (at cost) half of his current sales volume.
Leeway factors to this...