CONTROLS: Bury the Dead

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As Regulation W was buried, U.S. businessmen urged the Administration to inter the rest of the controls on business in the same grave. A majority of the Commerce Department's 166-man business advisory council told Secretary Charles Sawyer that the economy was moving into a buyers' market and that price & wage controls were no longer needed. "It is time to start working for decontrols," said Eastman Kodak's Treasurer Marion Folsom, chairman of Sawyer's committee. "Wage controls have broken down; there is no evidence of general inflationary pressure." It was put more simply by Council Member Charles E. Wilson, ex-mobilization boss, who had recently been urging continued controls. "The controls program," said Wilson, "is a dead duck."

By fits & starts, the Administration has been working toward decontrol for weeks: voluntary credit control programs for banks have been suspended; some commodities have been freed from price control; additional quotas of steel, copper and aluminum have been allowed for consumer goods and commercial construction. But the Administration still clings to such measures as Regulation X, which restricts credit for homebuilding. One result of this: the construction industry is not absorbing its full share of structural steel (see Steel). And the Administration still hesitates to remove controls from many important commodities.