Word: prices
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...provinces, food was again more plentiful and prices were down. In Biarritz, at luxury hotels such as the Miramar, room & board was about $8 a day. In smaller places a tourist could eat and sleep well for as little as $2 to $4 a day. All hotels had stern instructions from the government not to gouge U.S. tourists. Said Minister of Transport Christian Pineau: "[Americans] are no longer all millionaires . . . We will have to show [them] a good time at a reasonable price...
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...
...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...
What the FTC wanted, in effect, was an f.o.b. system such as automakers use, with consumers paying the cost of a product, plus the actual freight to the point of delivery. For many a consumer close to a plant, this would mean a price cut. Those far away might find prices boosted, at least as long as materials were scarce...