Word: beefing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...this week, almost everybody agreed that the beef shortage had become a scandal of indecision. But there was almost no agreement on what should be done...
Item: OPA said that a ceiling on live-cattle prices would force a more even distribution of beef away from hotels and restaurants (a quantity market), and so into small retail markets. But OPA set no ceiling. Item: the Western cattlemen loudly prophesied that the results of a ceiling on their cattle prices would be less beef for all, housewives included, and furthermore that the beef would be of a poorer quality...
Half-Measures. The fact was that OPA was caught in a trap it had foolishly sprung on itself two years ago under political pressure. At that time it clamped a low ceiling on the wholesale and retail prices of beef, but left cattle prices free to rise. Packers were hushed with a subsidy. This compromise was what the politically potent cattle raisers wanted. They won their market freedom, against the warning of scores of economists that no control over the retail price of food could work unless there was complete control of all farmers and farm prices...
Almost no one was surprised when the economists turned out to be right. It was elementary arithmetic. As corn and other feed prices soared, cattle prices climbed from an average of $12.23 a hundred pounds for choice beef in 1941, to 1944's average of about...
Play on Demand. Meanwhile, shrewd cattlemen had their own way of edging prices up. They carefully regulated the flow of cattle from the ranges to the packing centers. Result: the demand of their ancient enemy, the packers, for beef animals was always a little greater than the supply in the pens. Thus the cattlemen forced the packers to bid high for beef on the hoof. Whenever the packers shaved their prices, the cattlemen held back their shipments until prices moved up again. So long as the demand for beef was insatiable, and ranges did not dry up, the cattlemen were...