RECOVERY: Dollar Men & Prices

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Antis. Few were the businessmen who made a counterplea for the privilege of price cutting. Two of them were representatives respectively of a prosperous firm and a prosperous industry which have thrived on price cutting. Said Q. Forrest Walker, economist for R. H. Macy & Co., great Manhattan department store: ''Our codes are chiefly charters for the elimination rather than the improvement of competition. . . . We have reached a point in our business recovery where price fixing constitutes an insuperable barrier to continued recovery. Neither industry nor trade can make any notable progress half-shackled and half-free." Said Alfred Reeves, vice president of the Automobile Manufacturers Association: ''We favor free and open competition under regulations laid down by Congress to prevent anti-social practices. Lower costs and lower prices increase volume, and hence employment. Higher costs and higher prices mean decreased volume, less employment.

"Trade practice provisions designed to accomplish price fixing, price maintenance or production control must inevitably lead to the regimentation of business and to the sacrifice of efficiency at the cost of the consumer." Most bitter complaint against price fixing by codes came from consumers. Exclaimed Joseph W. Nicholson, purchasing agent of the City of Milwaukee: "Much ado was made about 'Al' Capone's attempts to organize the cleaning and dyeing industry of Chicago so that fixed prices would be charged for this service and his gang would receive a percentage of the profit. He was a piker compared to the organized coercion, dictation and intimidation of tribute-enacting Code Authorities."