( 217 ) 



frozen fresh meats, cured meats hanging from the rafters, 

 chickens in the yard, canned meat in the cellar, and coupons 

 which entitle them to buy still more meat. 



If the ceiling prices are to be maintained and enforced and 

 black markets are to be kept at a minimum, it will be neces- 

 sary to expand many times the OP A personnel and budget. 

 The War Manpower Commission has not put OPA police- 

 men on the deferred list. Neither has Congress exhibited an 

 interest in expanding OPA appropriations. 



The hopeless situation was aptly summarized by Life and 

 by a farmer. "One difficulty is that OPA has been trying to 

 police its myriad price ceilings with a staff of about 2,500 

 agents (now being increased to 4,000). This, in P. G. Wode- 

 house's famous phrase, is like a one-armed blind man trying 

 to shove a pound of melted butter into a wildcat's left ear 

 with a red-hot needle." 4 The farmer compared OPA's en- 

 forcement task to "picking weed seeds out of a manure pile 

 with boxing gloves on." 



Occasionally Compliance Has a Bad Effect 



In some cases it may be in the public interest to violate 

 the law, but it may not be in the interest of a particular 

 butcher to be a black-market operator. There are newspaper 

 stories of, say, 1,500 pounds of liver wurst destroyed here and, 

 say, 3,000 pounds of spoiled hot dogs there because someone 

 lived up to the letter of the law. All will agree that the liver- 

 wurst and hot dogs should have been eaten instead of de- 

 stroyed. The amount lost is nothing, but assumes huge pro- 

 portions in the minds of the millions who never owned at one 

 time more than a pound or so of either one. Losses of food 

 due to compliance are magnified out of all proportion to 

 their importance. However, they tend to weaken the faith 

 of folks. 



* Life, May 24, 1943, page 26, 



