But I give you the solemn assurance that failure to solve
this problem here at home--and to solve it now--will make more
difficult the winning of this war.
If the vicious spiral of inflation ever gets under way, the whole
economic system will stagger. Prices and wages will go up so
rapidly that the entire production program will be endangered. The
cost of the war, paid by taxpayers, will jump beyond all present
calculations. It will mean an uncontrollable rise in prices and in
wages, which can result in raising the overall cost of living as
high as another 20 percent soon. That would mean that the
purchasing power of every dollar that you have in your pay
envelope, or in the bank, or included in your insurance policy or
your pension, would be reduced to about eighty cents? worth. I need
not tell you that this would have a demoralizing effect on our
people, soldiers and civilians alike.
Overall stabilization of prices, and salaries, wages and profits is
necessary to the continued increasing production of planes and
tanks and ships and guns.
In my message to Congress today, I have said that this must be done
quickly. If we wait for two or three or four or six months it may
well be too late.
I have told the Congress that the administration cannot hold the
actual cost of food and clothing down to the present level beyond
October first.
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