anaheim-gazette 1944-04-27

FRESH AST FRESH-RIDE Tomatoes We Carry Nothing But ONIONS 3 Pounds 36¢ CARROTS 2 Bunches 17¢ CELERY ROOTS | HOT HOUSE RHU AVOCADOS | PARSNIPS LETTUCE lb. 11¢ APPLES lb. 12¢ OPA’s Real Defect (CHICAGO TRIBUNE) Two Baltimore shopkeepers, a grocer and a butcher, have told a senate committee some of their OPA troubles. The grocer showed the committee two heads of cabbage—one good and one somewhat bedraggled. Under OPA regulations, he said, he has to charge the same for each head. He made the same point with two heads of cauliflower. He told how he had got in trouble with the OPA because he had sorted the apples he bought and had undertaken to sell some of them below the OPA ceiling price and some above. The butcher exhibited a couple of cube steaks. The OPA won’t let him pound the meat in advance in order to take care of a rush of business, he said. He has to cube it in the presence of the customer who selects the meat. It can be presumed that the two merchants are honest men or they would not have risked the publicity attendant upon their appearance before the committee. It may be granted that sound reasons exist for the OPA regulations of which they complained. To grant that merely demonstrates the inefficiency of the IS THE MORNING GREATER ANAHEIM MARKET'S VEGETABLES But the Best Regardless of O PEAS 2 Pounds 25¢ BEETS 2 Bunches 15¢ USE RHUBARB WATERCRESS RED CABE IPS CHICORY TANGERINES GRAPE APPLES lb. 12¢ TOMATOES lb. 25¢ CABB 2 lbs. APPLES lb. 12¢ TOMATOES lb. 25¢ CABBAGE 2 lbs. fect system of merchandising that price control and rationing have forced upon every business in the country. Price control is useless unless differentials are set for quality of merchandise. OPA price ceilings are complicated enough as they are. They might very well be unworkable if the grocer were allowed to set separate prices for the good and the bad cabbage and to sort out his apples and sell them at different prices, averaged to give him the return allowed by the price ceiling and no more. An honest man could do this and not violate the spirit of OPA regulations, altho he would violate their letter. An honest butcher could cube his steaks in advance, but the OPA forbids him to do this because dishonest butchers would conceal the poor quality of their meat if they were not required to show it to the customer before they mangled it. The OPA proceeds on the theory that every merchant is a potential cheater. Its officials undoubtedly know that most merchants are not, but the bureaucrats seem to have found no way to relax their restrictions for the honest men without permitting the cheaters to slip by. Except as merchants have been forced to sharp practices by OPA ceilings which would force them to sell at a loss, as some ceiling have, there are no more dishonest merchants in business today than there were before the OPA started work. Some tomers. OPA or custom for the protect because that the mercha There regula aggrav perience could tremen tomers OPA. The and pr of the tion an discrim ants a as a w grudg after NING DEW IDAHO Potatoes ss of OPA's Selling Price! BANANAS 2 Pounds 23¢ TURNIPS 2 Bunches 15¢ ED CABBAGE | NEW POTATOES GRAPEFRUIT | ONIONS | PEAS CABBAGE 2 lbs. 9¢ ORANGES 5 lbs. 45¢ CABBAGE 2 lbs. 9¢ ORANGES 5 lbs. 45¢ Some merchants have always tried to cheat customers. When they did they lost the customers. The OPA operates, apparently, on the theory that every customer who walks into every store is going in there for the first time and will not go back. He has to be protected against sharp practices on that single sale because, in the view of the OPA, he has not the defense that the customer always has of ceasing to patronize the merchant who fools him by giving him inferior merchandise or by overcharging him. There has been a great deal of stupidity in OPA regulations. The stupidity, however, is just an added aggravation. Even an organization intelligent and experienced far beyond the present OPA personnel could not do a price fixing job that would not be a tremendous burden on merchants and on their customers as well. The fundamental fault is not with the OPA. It is with price fixing. The quicker the country gets away from rationing and price fixing and goes back to the normal practices of the market place, in which prices are set by competition and quality is maintained by the vigilance and discrimination of the customer, the happier merchants and customers both will be. Rationing is accepted as a war necessity and, even so, the acceptance is grudging. Those who talk about continuing rationing after the war are talking thru their hats.