THE NATION: Peace?

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Few towns of 15,000 population are as famed as Newburyport, Mass. In Revolutionary days it was the home of "Lord" Timothy Dexter, who made a fortune selling warming pans to the West Indies. It has great square houses stretching more than four miles along its elm-shaded High Street, its restaurants specialize in clam chowder. In the late '20s, a buffoon of a mayor named "Bossy" Gillis put Newburyport on many a front page with his antics: he festooned his ridgepole with chamber pots, planted tombstones for his political foes in the front yard, finally went to jail for criminal libel.

Last week Newburyport was in the news again. Across Pleasant Street in front of the City Hall fluttered a huge banner:

NEWBURYPORT LEADING THE NATION—LOWERING PRICES FIGHTING INFLATION.

What had happened was that a 47-year-old hardware merchant named John Swanson had, like millions' of his fellow citizens, begun to brood about the high cost of living. Unlike most of his fellow citizens, he did something about it—not much, but something. He wrote out an advertisement—"Let's roll 'em back, Bub"—and took it to the advertising manager of the Newburyport News.

Otsego to Sherman Oaks. He might just as well have taken a box of kitchen matches, considering the wildfire he started. Within three days Newburyport's merchants agreed to cut prices at least 10% across the board. Newburyport went on a buying spree. Within four days, sales in individual stores had climbed from 20% to 80% above normal. The news spread, and the "Newburyport Plan" was put into operation in many another town—Otsego, Mich. (pop. 3,428), Franklin Park, Ill. (pop. 3,007), Liberty, Mo. (pop. 3,598), and Sherman Oaks, Calif., where merchants had kindled the same idea by spontaneous combustion.

Across the land, people read about Newburyport, and many hoped that their own merchants would soon do—or be forced to do—the same thing. The President of the United States, who likes nothing better than to commend a citizen for a small job well done, heaped his praise on Newburyport.

Main Street or Wall Street? Was it as simple as all that? Not exactly. Harry Truman's own ex-haberdashery partner in Kansas City, Eddie Jacobsen, said: "I'd love to cooperate with President Truman in every way, but I can't cut prices on nationally advertised merchandise which is marked at a fair price." The Newburyport merchants knew that their plan would never work permanently unless the price reductions were backed up all the way along the distribution and production belt. They got a tentative promise of a 10% reduction from some wholesalers, but they had no sign that manufacturers would do the same.

In New York, ex-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia sneered: "A big fuss is made because a small town is putting out signs reducing prices. A reduction in prices does not come from Main Street, but Wall Street."

The Little Flower, as usual, had a bit of demagogy caught in his larynx. But he did make the point clear that in a complicated modern economy a little rejiggering at the tail end—the retailer's outlet—will not overhaul the whole machine. A few manufacturers' price cuts were made last week, but with a slight air of hollow ballyhoo.