STATE OF BUSINESS: Propaganda v. Fact

Against the dire predictions of the pundits, domestic and European, U.S. business is winding up another banner year. In that happy situation, while the doomsayers began to talk ominously of the future, the U.S.S.R.'s propagandists ran off new and louder recordings of an old theme and broadcast them to the world. From Moscow last week:

IZVESTIA: The arms drive has seriously impoverished the popular masses and in the final analysis has established the conditions for a further contraction in the United States' internal market.

The Federal Reserve Board reported last week that U.S. output of goods and services in 1953 will hit a new alltime peak of $368 billion, up 5% from last year. Personal income is up 6% to a record $285 billion; savings will probably set a new record. Though the cost of living edged to a new high in October, said the Labor Department, it was still only 1.1% above the level a year ago. Food prices, in fact, were down (see chart), and it looked as though prices have just about stabilized. The October rise was due largely to higher rents and medical charges, and such scattered items as beer and haircuts.

PRAVDA: As a result of the major economic law of modern capitalism, its conflicts are growing ever more serious.

At a testimonial dinner for United Steelworkers' Boss Dave McDonald, U.S. Steel's Chairman Ben Fairless said last week: "Earlier in this century, labor fought an all-out war to establish the right of American workers to organize and to bargain collectively . . . That war ended more than 20 years ago, and labor won it decisively . . . I happen to think that labor's victory in that cause was a fine thing for America."

PRAVDA: The fall of stock prices means the monopolies foresee the onslaught of the economic crisis and are preparing "to make money" on it.

Last week the stock market reached an eight-month high as the Dow-Jones industrial averages rose four points to 280.23. Among the week's leaders: Du Pont, up more than three points to 105⅜; General Electric, up seven points to 89¾.

PRAVDA: The signs of the crisis have become so obvious that [Americans] have now begun to talk openly of it.

The New York Times reported last week that "it is becoming more evident that many of the forecasters, who earlier this year said the last half of 1953 would be a trying period for business, missed the boat by a wide margin."

PRAVDA: The organs of big capital almost openly are advocating a new world war as a means of surmounting the economic crisis. They are trying to surmount it by means of a further arms race.

Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, who used to head M. A. Hanna Co., one of the world's biggest coal companies, said last week: "Peace . . . is the first prayer of all America . . . For nearly three long horrible years . . . the financial burden of Korea [piled] deficit on deficit, debt on debt, and tax on tax . . . Shooting and bloodshed in Korea are ended, at least for the time being . . . Our every effort is at work to fashion a lasting, sound and equitable peace and substitute reconstruction for destruction in that wartorn land."