THE NATION: Steady

OPA was dead; dead as a doornail. All price ceilings were off—a state of affairs the U.S. people had not known for more than four and a half years. No matter if Congress did backtrack and restore a few, OPA was over and done with.

The news was variously received. Some cried woe and others hallelujah. Those who cried woe saw abysmal inflation ahead, chaos, the ruination of the nation’s economy. Those who cried hallelujah said, in effect: okay, this is going to be all right; we’re just going to do things the way we always did them in peacetime.

What was a plain citizen to think? He was worried and anxious. What was going to happen to him now? Was he suddenly going to have to pay twice as much for everything? Should he strike for higher pay? If everybody else put prices up he’d have to put his up too.

What it seemed to boil down to was fear of what the landlord, the butcher, the baker—the other fellow—was going to do. Maybe everybody would now try to make a killing. And then again, maybe he wouldn’t. The U.S. people, at bottom, have a great deal of common sense. Now they would be called upon to use it.