The Sunday Times on Shortages
While the right wing newspapers played up the shortages and echoed conservative allegations that price controls and other government programs were largely responsible for the crisis, The Times coverage reflected a more supportive attitude toward the measures. The front page story on Bowles' radio address on the clothing shortage, for instance, included his attack on special interests that he said were distorting the situation for their own benefit. Conservative criticism was covered further back in the newspaper, The anticipated meat shortage was not the headline story it was elsewhere. Calls for further controls of grain was reported in the context of a devastating worldwide famine rather than primarily as a bothersome problem to American consumers, which was how it was largely presented in the News and the Hearst papers.
The anticipated meat shortage was carried as a brief AP item on page 27 as a tag to the continuation of the page one story on La Guardia's call for greater sacrifice, The story noted an Agriculture Department report predicting that civilians in the Eastern, Western, Southern, and far Western states would face a severe meat shortage in the next few months. The government report attributed the problem to a lack of rationing and other controls since the war rather than to the controls themselves. Increased demand was compounded by. a normal seasonal drop in livestock marketing, low existing commercial stocks of pork, and a diversion of supplies to the relief effort. Increased consumption of eggs, butter, milk and cream, evaporated milk, sugar and fresh vegetables also was predicted. Overall the food situation was said to be better than the same period in 1945 with only butter, margarine and sugar in shorter supply. than it was then. Butter supply was expected to be 1/3 below the previous year's level and much of it would be consumed in the spring and summer when the bulk of supplies was produced.