Word: cements
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When a U.S. contractor set out to build a building or a road, he ordered cement from as many as ten plants. The nearest might be next door, the farthest 1,000 miles away. But when the cement was delivered, it all came at the same price, no matter whether it had been shipped one mile or 1,000. The "multiple basing point system" worked that...
Under this cozy arrangement, the base prices of cement were fixed at certain "basing point" plants across the country. Beyond the base price the buyer also paid freight costs from the nearest basing point plant. All cement plants in the U.S. thus charged the same price for cement laid down at any one job. The plants closer to the consumer than the basing point plant tacked on a "phantom freight" which was more than the shipping cost; the plants farther away charged a freight which was less (and took less profit...
...with the Old. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the cement industry's basing point system illegal. It upheld the Federal Trade Commission in its eleven-year-old antitrust suit against the Cement Institute and its 74 member companies. Said the Court: "[The system is] a handy instrument to bring about elimination of any kind of price competition." In fact, said the Court, cementmakers had used the system to suppress competition by 1) boycotts, 2) price cuts (against plants refusing to play ball), 3) identical bids to cement users, and 4) opposition to the building of new plants...
...very odd coincidence, something went terribly wrong with this mixture: the cement began to harden before it could be poured, and all hands had to get it out of the machine by brute force. Now & then the picture faintly approximates the iron sadness and bitter glamor which Remarque tried for in his novel; most of the time the deep grimness of the subject and the schmalziness of its exploitation get embarrassingly in each other...
...crisscrossed the U.S., touching every state at least once, in his unprecedentedly vigorous campaign for the presidency. He lives in South St. Paul in a red brick, Tudor style, eight-room house which he built for $12,500 in 1938. A horseshoe is embedded in the cement doorstep, framing a footprint of Glen as a four-year-old. He does much of his work at home, has a Dictaphone in the library where he wrote his book, Where I Stand. For recreation he likes to hunt (pheasant, quail, deer), play chess, take Glen fishing, go for long walks alone...