Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 18, Number 41, DeMotte, Jasper County, 10 September 1948 — Laxity By U.S. Is Blamed For High Food Cost [ARTICLE]

Laxity By U.S. Is Blamed For High Food Cost

Commerce Department’s Failure-To Regulate Exports Blamed For Rising Costs Washington, Sept. 9. The inside story of the high price of food under the Truman administration began unfolding today before two senate committees. It was a story of the commerce department’s failure to regulate exports. Sen. Ferguson (R., Mich.), who presided at a senate hearing that brought the facts to light, told The Tribune afterward: “The testimony today indicates the shipment of two million pounds of lard and a large quantity of flour to foreign countries that the commerce department didn’t even know about. This is one of the reasons we have short supply in this country.” Tells Of Buying Licenses The star witness was Harry H. Levey, a New York exporter, who testified that he paid $29,255 in private circles for purported export licenses authorizing him to ship $1,051,565 worth of lard and wheat flour to foreign countries, altho these licenses are supposedly nontransferable. Levey said he believes the documents were forgeries and senate investigators said the papers were forged. But the commerce department never discovered the transactions, and one of the investigators, Max Dickey, said the department has no way of uncovering such operations. Levey, who heads Haro Products, Inc., testified that export licenses can be obtained by advertising in newspapers, altho he said he had difficulty getting them from the government. The holder of a license, Levey said, charges a fee for the use of his license. Ferguson brought out from Dickey that the issuance of a declaration of the goods to be shipped is automatic after the exporter gets a license. But, Dickey testified, exporters may then add items to the declaration, even attaching a new page to list them, and the department will never find out because it does not check the licenses against the declarations. Levey insisted he had only followed the practice of the exporting industry in advertising foj* licenses. He obtained the licenses which the investigators said were forged, he said, from John A. Quinn of Jersey City, N. J. Levey said the documents were properly filled out for his needs when lu* got them. Quinn, 32, was called to the witness stand. He refused to answer questions on the ground that answering might incriminate him, but was ordered to return Friday with his lawyer. William Rogers, counsel for one of the communittees, placed in the record a statement that Quinn was in jail yesterday on an undisclosed charge. John Felthouse of Chicago visited his father over the week-end. He is in the Jasper county hospital for observation.