Word: prices
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Dave Beck not only dominates western labor; he dominates great chunks of business as well. He sees himself as a kind of self-appointed price-wage czar. With deadpan audacity he has used his power to prevent cutthroat competition, to punish price cutters, and to help firms with teamster contracts make a safe margin of profit...
Pressure. In the years after the passage of the Wagner Act, the teamsters' pressure on their enemies never relaxed. Price-cutting dry-cleaning establishments were brought into line. This seemed to end an epidemic of mysterious explosions, with which they had been plagued. Laundries formed an employers' association to police their industry and appointed one of Beck's friends, Bill Short, to run it at a fine fee. Taxicab drivers were organized, after they got tired of being rammed by automobiles with steel rails for bumpers...
Scores of such under-the-counter deals, which have run new car prices far above list prices, were dragged into the open last week by a House subcommittee in Washington. Detailing their new-car fever, buyers sheepishly told of 1) giving fat bonuses to dealers, 2) trading in old cars for much less than their value, and 3) paying out hundreds of dollars a car for unwanted accessories. To get new cars, four of them passed out "tips" of $500 to Robert Kearney and others in Washington's Kearney Oldsmobile Co.; four more shelled out from...
...annual rate of $450 million in the first seven months of the year in low trade-ins, tips and doodad accessories. There was nothing illegal about the deals. But Committee Chairman W. Kingsland Macy trumpeted that the auto industry "must police its own backyard" or face mandatory price controls. To police the backyard, Ford had already fired 23 dealers for grey marketeering. Most carmakers, while holding their own prices far under true market values, had actively campaigned against it. This week General Motors notified the Kearney agency that its franchise was canceled "effective immediately." But automen knew that, controls...
...Prices had dropped 10% to 40% in the past six weeks and volume was down even more. Outside of the Big Three (which in some cases were still drawing premiums of $150 to $300), prices on 1948 models were well below list price. On Detroit's Livernois Avenue, capital of the used-car world, things got so bad that 20 dealers closed down. Dealers hoped for a revival next spring, but one said sadly: "The customer will never again pay more for a used car than for a new one. This time the honeymoon is really over...