5^tmtc Nugget
Published Monday, Wednesday
and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125
P. O. Box 618
$1.50 PER MONTH
$15.00 A YEAR
W. A. BOUCHER. .Ed i torPublishier
EMILY BOUCHER-.Society Editor
Entered as second class matter
October 14, 1943, at the nostoffice
at Nome, Alaska, unQfc* the Ac
of March 3, 1879.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 10. 19457
■— -
FORGOTTEN
MOTHERS
A baby crop of record
dimensions has been one
of the major by-products
of war. The trouble, be
lieve it or not, is to get the
newcomers clad. It so hap
pens that of all the items of
clothing, those for young!
children are in shortest
supply, particularly in the
low-end brackets. Even a
superficial investigation j
will show startling con-;
trasts. Women’s dresses,
especially in the upper
register, are plentiful, and
even cotton dresses, we are
told, are retailing for $80.!
But it is a different story
in the market for low-end
children’s garments. A
survey recently conducted
by the Office of Civilian;
Requirements of the WPB
found that at the head of
the list of scarce goods in
the textile field were such
essentials as diapers, train
ing pants, girls’ panties,
boys’ briefs, children’s un
^ T --
ion suits, creepers. The
case of the mothers is thus
complete. It has been as
sailing the ears of candi
dates at the recent election
with such force that an in
quiry appears inevitable.
The members who are
trooping back to the Capi
tal are full of the mothers’,
grievances. They will seek
to know why retail stores
are able to fill less than 50
per cent of the demand for
babies’ wear.
The culprit, so far as we
can make out doesn’t seem
to be the Office of Civil
ian Requirements. OCR
can do nothing but recom
mend, and this it seems to
have done. The responsible
agent is called Gen. Max
or the OPA regulation
which gives the manufac
turer the same profit per
centage on all textile items.
The result is that the eco
nomic pull is away from
the low-end market. If a1
manufacturer gets the
same percentage on a high
priced garment, this is the
item he is going to manu
facture. And he has been
doing precisely that. He
has neglected to provide
enough of the cheapest gar
ments, which are the low
end baby clothes, because
the incentive is lacking. ,
Thus the babies of Ameri
ca have been out of luck,
while the woman who
wishes to spend $80 on a
cotton dress can get all the
dresses she wants. Our
mothers, let alone our ba
bies, have been forgotten
in the wartime bonanza.
Several remedies have
been suggested for the par
lous situation of the Na
tion’s offspring. The tex
tile mills, might be recon
stituted. Most of its mem
bers are in the textile
trade, and, of course, they
have a common interest
with it. A revision of Gen
eral Max might be under- ,
taken. But, with the war
so advanced, the time has
arrived to attempt a rad
ical solution. This would 1
be to combine OPA and
WPB. There was never
any sense, anyway, in the
separation of the two agen
cies and. if Mr. Donald
Nelson had not been so
eager to shed the functions
he obtained under his first
executive order, there nev
er would have been a sep
arate OPA. Neither in
Britain nor Canada has
there ever been any such
division of the functions of
pricing and programming.
Adjustment Administra
tion. The Federal Govern
ment did not invent the
device of dumping agricul
tural surpluses to avoid a
glut on the market. As old
as farming itself is the ex
pedient of not taking to
market—or letting rot—
produce which will not
bring enough to pay ex
penses at the market
place. It represents a
seemingly criminal waste
to plow under some crops,
of course, but for that
matter it was in a sense a
criminal waste to close
down factories and turn!
out of work men who
could have been producing
bathtubs and iceboxes and
clothing for people who
needed them during the
same era. The reason that
industrial capacity was
wasted during the depres
sion, along with agricul
! tural capacity, was for
the same reason: Lack of *
sufficient buying power to
make the production prof
itable.
It’s the American way
to try to make everything
that people need, and to
create buying power in the
process. Mass production,
the basic factor in Ameri
can industrial supremacy,
is founded upon the thesis
that if you make enough
of a thing, you can make ^
it cheap enough so that
enough people will buy it
to make the manufacture
profitable. Artificial scar
city is as different from
that as the old days of the
custom-built surrey with
the fringe on top.—(Cin
cinnati Enquirer).
"Around the World News in
Pictures" appears regularly in
The Nugget.
They obviously belong to
gether.
Something certainly will
have to be done to assuage
the mothers of this coun
try who are searching in
vain for baby garments in
stores wich still have end
i
less stocks of high-priced
women’s wear. The pres
ent situation is thoroughly
inequitable. It penalizes I
mothers with limited bud
gets—the very persons
who are entitled to first
consideration in any con
trol scheme. It encourages,
noncompliance and black
markets. For the mothers
with money can clothe
their babies, but at a price,
and the price in many
cases isn’t legitimate.—
(Washington Post.)
THE AMERICAN WAY
We think that President
Howard L. Bevis of Ohio
States University hit the
nail on the head when he
declared that the United
States should adopt a pol
icy of plenty rather than
one of “pig killing” and
“plowing under.”
Of course, there has
been a lot of demagoguery
pinned on that plowing un
der and pig killing which
took place in the early
days of the Agricultural
Nome Directory
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