Word: ftc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...before raising prices. The industry waited nine days, then one by one the major companies boosted prices an average of $5 to $7 a ton (TIME, Aug. 4 et seq.). This week, the Federal Trade Commission, headed by Chairman Garland S. Ferguson, cracked back on the industry. FTC charged steel with conspiracy to fix prices...
...FTC's formal complaint was aimed at the 26 major steel companies and the American Iron & Steel Institute, gave them until Sept. 19 to answer. In prospect was a "cease-and-desist" order by FTC to break up the industry's "basing point" system...
Point. The basing point system, charged FTC, results in identical price quotations at any given destination. The companies using it "have calculated their delivery charges on the fiction that each shipment is made from one of a limited number of common basing points cooperatively used and recognized among producer respondents...
...switching charges-an arbitrary amount, "automatically arrived at with mathematical precision" by a formula provided by the steel institute. Even though cheaper truck or water transportation might actually be used, the formula allegedly bases delivery prices on all-rail freight and assesses arbitrary "switching charges." The result, said FTC, is the same as if "all mills were under one ownership and control...
...guests began to ask questions again: "Who's this lunch for? What's it all about?'' Even Nick Carey, the FTC's elderly publicity man, shrugged: "I wish I knew...