GOVERNMENT: GOVERNMENT Warm-Up

"Businessmen," wrote their longtime friend, Editor David Lawrence of the United States News, "are about to be given the same dose of smear publicity that they were given in 1933. Economic crisis is at hand and political government wants to shift the blame from its own shoulders."

Many a businessman last week nodded agreement. The Federal Trade Commission's attack on the steel industry's "price-fixing conspiracy" (TIME, Aug. 25) had hardly left the headlines when the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division sprang into feverish action.

In the space of four days, it demanded dissolution of alleged price-fixing agreements and competitive restraints among 1) eight major rubber companies and their Rubber Manufacturers Association; 2) twenty manufacturers of brake linings and clutch facings and their Brake Lining Manufacturers Association; 3) the Eastman Kodak Co. and Technicolor Inc., charged with monopolizing the processing of color film. This week, it impaneled a federal grand jury in Washington to investigate alleged price-fixing by oil companies.

Most bewildered of all was the rubber industry, which only recently had cut tire prices to below prewar levels (TIME, June 23). Cried William F. O'Neil, president of the General Tire & Rubber Co.: "It seems strange that the Department of Justice fires only verbal guns at industries putting price rises into effect but files criminal charges at one of the few industries cooperating wholeheartedly with the President's fight against inflation."