Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 38

Editorials als Lassoing Meat Prices Nixon administration officials have been jawboning at food industry representatives to hold the line on meat prices. The jawboning looks like a classic case of too little too late. The Commerce Department announced Friday that during June wholesale prices for a wide range of goods rose by 0.5 per cent-and livestock prices zoomed at a rate nine times that high. These wholesale price boosts are already working through to local supermarket counters. There is every indication that prices will get even worse before they get better.

Treasury Secretary George Schultz, who has been doing most of the jawboning for the Nixon administration, conceded last week that it will take weeks, and perhaps months, before meat prices begin to stabilize. As for a downturn in meat prices, Schultz was not prepared to venture even a guess when that might happen. One reason meat prices continue to rise sharply is the old law of supply and demand; Americans are eating more meat than ever before. The administration recently removed import quotas on meat, which in time will increase the available supply and have a beneficial effect on prices. The administration also extended price controls to meat wholesalers and retailers -but not to tarmers.

As renorter Frances Cerra's current series in Newsday points out, the meat business is big, complex and interrelated. Meat goes from the rancher to the feed lot operator to the slaughterhouse to the wholesaler to the trucker to the supermarket counter. From the slaughterhouse to the supermarket, prices and profits are controlled, but the farmer and the feed lot operator are free to set their prices as high as the market will pay. Regardless of where the blame may lie, in the eight months preceding last August's 90-day price freeze, prices climbed at an annual rate of 5.2 per cent. In the eight months since the beginning of Phase II last November, prices have risen at a 5.3 per cent annual clip.

Higher food prices are the main reason the Nixon administration is having difficulty achieving its goal of holding price boosts to 2.5 per cent annually. In June, wholesale livestock prices rose by an incredible 56 per cent annual rate, and poultry prices rose even faster. In this election year, the President faces a political dilemma. On the one hand, he does not want to risk the farm vote by putting farm prices under controls. On the other, he does not want to see prices spiraling upward as election day approaches.

Well, he'd better make his choice soon. This Is Public? The New York Stock Exchange is adding 10 "public" members to its board of directors. At first it sounds like an exemplary attempt to give a voice to the "little guys," the small investors who form the majority of the 32,000,000 Americans owning stocks. But not after you look at the list. True, there is one woman and one black man among the nominees, and neither has had previous ties with Wall Street.

But the other eight "public" members include James Roche, former head of General Motors; Robert Sarnoff, chairman of RCA; Donald Cook, president and chairman of American Electric Power, and other assorted captains of industry. As Newsday financial writer George Wheeler recently pointed out, the Big Board is now going through a major reorganization following the collapse of more than 100 member firms during the NEWSDAY 8 'Brown, y'all have anything against being sold or traded er never mind' stock market blitz of 1969-71. With public confidence in the exchange at a new low, and with Congress clamoring for reform, the market decided to take on the job of reorganization itself before government moved in. A key recommendation of the Big Board's own plan was to open up the board of directors to "all segments of the investing public," including financial institutions such as mutual funds and banks that act as conduits for the public's money. But they will not be represented on the new board.

Dr. Juanita M. Kreps, an author and economist, got one public seat on the 20-member board, and so did Dr. Jerome H. Holland, ambassador to Sweden.

The other eight public representatives are Roche, Sarnoff and the other corporate moguls. They are good men, all, but whom do they really represent? Icelandic Soap Opera That was no Norse saga playing in Iceland last week. It was more like an old-fashioned American soap opera: Could a quirky genius from Brooklyn find happiness across a chessboard from the Russian world champion? Would he get to Reykjavik on time? Would his monumental avarice, arrogance and petulance deprive the chess world of one of its great moments? Would a "Dear Boris" letter satisfy the Russian's demand for an apology? Will the penitent challenger keep his balance? Will the champion keep his cool? Will the frustrated and humiliated Icelanders keep theirs, or give up chess for Ping-Pong? Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling installment, because that's when the first Fischer-Spassky game will begin. Or will it? 38.