Gadsden County Times

Practical OPA Needed
The Office of Price Administration has been on the receiving end of a great deal of criticism since it was set up and there is a widespread rumor currently being circulated to the effect that OPA has about reached the end of its existence.

Much of the criticism has been deserved because some of the greatest confusion on the home front can be laid at the door of OPA officials.

However, if it were operated along more practical lines in some cases and not used at all in others, most of us will agree that OPA could be one of the greatest helps the nation could have. The first World War and the trends of the present one clearly show that the nation that is to survive with anything like normal living conditions must have some kind of price stabilizing program.

The OPA is necessary to hold the cost of living in line at present and to keep the bottom from falling out when the war is won.

To some people who are making three or four times as much money now as they have ever made before, the OPA might not be so important. They wouldn't mind the increased cost of living. They are making the money and don't know what to do with it. But, to the millions who are still earning the same salary they were before the war and to those who are trying to hold a business together with little merchandise and little help, the OPA is pretty important.

Any encouragement to continuation of the OPA, however, is predicated on the assumption that most of the mistakes of the Leon Henderson administration will soon be corrected and much of the overlapping authority and confusion existing will be cleared up.