Truman Urges Price Reduction, Maintain Tax to Bar Depression; Reuther Submits 'New Proposal'

NEW YORK, April 21--President Truman today coupled a pointed demand for sharp price reductions with an appeal for home front "unity" to avert a major depression which would carry disaster for the forces of democracy the world over.

Addressing the annual luncheon of the Associated Press, the President declared that "prices must be brought down" and taxes kept up until the country is "over the hump" of inflation.

An "economic cloudburst" he said, would weaken the power of the United States to aid democracies in their fight against "totalitarianism" and leave free nations everywhere "easy targets for external pressures and alien ideologies."