40-Hour Week - Facts, Not Fiction: Gov't Sources Rebut Anti-Labor Lies
LOW, MATTHEW
40-Hour Week — Facts, Not Fiction: Gov't Sources Rebut Anti-Labor Lies by MATTHEW LOW What are the facte ? 1. The National Wage-Hour lew, which established a 40-hour week, does not limit the...
...Dilling, Goes ? Stomping Round the Country to Raise Fnuds -By Special Correspondence MINNEAPOLIS, »Minn...
...Recommended reading in this connection is Albert K. Weinberg's fine study of Aemican politics called Manifest Destiny...
...At this meeting, Mrs...
...Union Seamen Protest 'Provocations' The Seafarers International Union A. F. of L this week charged the War Shipping Administration with anti-union acts which may hurt amicable labor relations on the waterfront...
...Earle G. Harrison, Adolph Held, William L. Shirer, Alan Cranston, Algernon Lee, Melvyn Douglas, Fritz von Unruh and Dr...
...Dilling had little to add to the evening session...
...Tenn.—The setting up of a nation-wide Migratory Agricultural Workers Union was announced this week by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union at its 9th annual convention in Memphis...
...The union has also «ueeeeded * establishing Cooperative purchasing and Marketing Projectf...
...Washington now feels that the elimination of large, areas of small business may be the price we hajve to pay for production and victory...
...Jerry " Voorhis, and Matthew Woll...
...Dilling's defense...
...If we lose this revolution the white man's day is over...
...Baloney" and she heaped derision on Walter Winchell, for the letter's attacks on her activities...
...Then Mrs...
...Mrs...
...when there is such an obvious sacrifice of production because of the time the machinery stands idle...
...So many people resort to personal explanations ef events, so many more have taken refuge in a curious cynicism and nihilism which always winds up orthodox through its tacit endorsement of the powers that be...
...The policy of concentration has been used in a number of industries using metals, notably those manufacturing bicycles, type-writers and stoves...
...One hardly needs to be an expert in technicoloi to know that the world's history is not set up in blacks and whites...
...Behind him lined up all the old enemies of labor and progressive labor legislation...
...A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" has been banned...
...On the other hand, an extreme anti-realist school was created as a challenge to the notion that Words were but expedient conventions of the present...
...At present questions of wages and working conditions-are settled -in a -contract, or Statement of Principles signed by the union, the shipowner and the govern-- ment...
...Pools of unemployment in many key cities, where men and equipment stand idle, must be eliminated...
...Mrs...
...She told her audience that she had no prejudice against Jews *as individuals...
...They had it all figured out that the old-guard in national politics would rally around the young Tory school of Willkie...
...Said the CIO last week: "The basic trouble in the war production program is that* organized labor has been and is being treated as an unwanted partner...
...She concluded by complimenting Rev...
...Avery is the head of an anti^e-mitic "Mothers of Minnesota" group...
...Their dreaded prince no more can harm us as of yore...
...What then is behind the campaign to scrap the 40-hour week law...
...and a free legal service for victims *» plantation injustices...
...be held on Wednesday evening, December 2, in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Roosevelt...
...P. ?. Box-50, Station ?.' New York...
...Maas' remarks were picked up only in part by the general press...
...past...
...These are funnelled into seven government bodies of "Claimant Agencies...
...Mrs...
...STFU Creates Natl Migratory Union,Asks Farm LaborRelease Special to The New Leader MEMPHIS...
...There is, of course, a higher cost of labor on overtime, but this problem has on the whole been submerged in the argument...
...Henry Luce, Gardner Cowles, et...
...Meantime the steel, copper and aluminum people send in their estimates of what they can turn out...
...Very little of this enormous expenditure has reached the man at the bottom of the agricultural ladder...
...Over 100 affidavits and statements were collected from small farm owners, tenants, sharecroppers and farm laborers who had been victimised by the American Farm Bureau operating in collusion with officials of the AAA in the states of Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama This material substantiated charge* made that membership does in the Bureau were checked off from AAA subsidy payment checks and from crop account* and wage settlements by plantation owners whose interests'the Farm Bureau represents...
...The second Directive, signed by Admiral Land, gives the Master of a vessel full discretion in signing on crew members...
...There are always, of course, the theoreticians, and they don't seem able to grasp that the long-term historical trends which we observe so confidently in the records of the past are right now being basically deflected and recharted...
...None of them could ever appreciate the intelligence and subtlety of -Marx's own contributions to this problem...
...Dilling kept referring to William Powers Malo-ney, her, prosecutor, as "Mr...
...The original industrial mobilization plans of the War College outlined essentially the plan now being followed in concentration and controlled materials...
...There was a regular department here called "Words, Wads, Words," which was a kind of • hell-box for all the printed nonsense about the par and- the peace and the awning of life in Times Like These...
...The S.I.U...
...Mrs...
...Japan is now in possession of fabulously rich territory in Asia and the South Pacific...
...ate near capacity releasing workers from other plants...
...Dilling then made this important statement: "I have more respect for the Jew than I have for those Herod-like and Judaslike Gentiles who "are being bribed to go along with the Jews...
...the end of Western civilization is here now...
...7...
...Roosevelt's four Freedoms vs...
...These have been listed by the Department of Commerce as 1,614,310 stores, ˆ37,585 service concerns, 200,307 construction firms, 168,814 manufacturing enterprises, 72,000 wholesalers...
...Ida Mae Cooper of lower Park Avenue aided her in her efforts...
...But there is a very important problem at issue...
...The Southern Tenant Farmers -Union -submitted this material to the Department of Agriculture and the Depait»«at of Justice with a request for an official inve;'.>ratn>:i...
...thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the age...
...In other manufacturing lines, the companies are not so fortunate...
...again it was black and white—Mr...
...All watching to devour us, Our souls to fear we need not yield, They cannot overpower us...
...How the war production situation is bettered by, for example, running, two 10-hour shifts (as one big aircraft plant is doing) instead of three 8-hour shifta is difficult to see...
...We have to ask what is propaganda—what is ideology—what is truth...
...In addition to recommending the establishment of a special organization to serve members who are being transported out of the South to other areas for employment on farms, a report on "Wasted Manpower in the South" stated that a reorganization of agriculture must be effected if the armed forces and our allies are to have a sufficient food supply...
...A two-years' supply is on hand...
...All meetings were called to raise -funds for Mrs...
...We only wish a little of all that useless excitement were diverted to healthy forums on the state of the nation and the turns of the world's events...
...This resulted in an order...
...Furthermore, farm labor must not be frozen on the land at starvation wages...
...all Masters to keep the log book in such fashion that it record all acts and occurences relevant to the question of the preservation of discipline...
...This would involve the extension of all social security legislation to this group of American citizens and a possible subsidy of wages paid farm labor...
...It may be 4>f sonn comfort to know that Friedrich Engels constantly made apologies on this score before proceeding to offer his analysis of events . . What this is really All About is no doubt a matter for the historians of the next few generations But nothing could be more disastrous than to abandon traditions of democratic controversy, socialist criticism, and elementary intellectual curiosity and scepticism...
...Reverend Stadsklev made an impassioned plea for funds...
...We ought to dig a little into meanings and values, and skip Baldwin and Eliot every other morning (Sometimes, as a matter of fact, the argument for an immediate peace is overwhelmingly attractive, when you consider that the end of the war will mean mass unemployment for military analysts and commentators...
...Thousands of casualties are expected...
...are unbelievably enormous...
...For lo...
...Paul on Saturday night...
...appeared before the Byrd Committee and submitted evidence showing that the Farm Bureau did not represent all farm elements in America, and in the South was actually a racket operated in the interests of the large plantation owners...
...It is now forbidden to sing it in churches, particularly because of the stanza: "And were the world with devils filled...
...plan is claimed as a tietory of the "armed services" over the civilian groups...
...What seemed to me the heart of his statement was a'.mdst everywhere omitted and ignored—and it was the shrewdest and frankest and most useful confession of an American imperialist that the war has thrown up...
...Bat Maas pat it differently...
...A whole new industrial front has to be opened up on the Negro question...
...The anti-labor campaigners shrewdly refuse to meet the issue of the wage-cut, refuse to face the facte of scientific recommendations for the most productive work-week, and juggle statistics around by selecting industries and coming out with figures that support their special pleading...
...Dilling said that the Jews have raised $40,000,000 for the underground movement in Europe...
...Production is going satisfactorily and the Allied task is shipping these munitions and guns overseas...
...machine tool plants average more than 56, engine factories 54, shipyards 52, locomotive shops 52, ordnance factories 51, aircraft plants 49...
...Reservations can be obtained by writing "Neue Volkszeitung...
...Avery...
...this is so because the army has long pushed this plan...
...Daring the evening session, at the same hall, the audience boasted a Mrs...
...new-line Republican demagogy...
...Roosevelt Mrs...
...It mast have upset some observers of the American political scene...
...The locus of global economic power lieg now not in Europe, but in Asia and the Indies...
...A propoea...
...it provides only for overtime pay at a time-and-a-half rate...
...Dilling held up a copy Of the indictment and told her audience that she would attempt to interpret it...
...There is a very naive and a very ignorant prejudice which has it that all the accents of reaction are somehow un-American...
...When the Farm Security Administration was being attacked by the powerful American Farm Bureau, a representative of the S.T.F.U...
...Dilling'also addressed a rally in St...
...a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence...
...On the one hand, an extreme' realistic school grew up, which cultivated a systematic cynicism: all ideas, ideals, and ideologies were but masks for self seeking interest-groups...
...Volkszeitung' Dinner Features Mrs...
...The entire output for bicycles has been concentrated in two plants...
...It was only historic justice that this week the news should come from Hitler's New Order that Luther's great hynan...
...Stadsklev, an old hand at the game, once helped Andre Nord-skag when the latter attempted to put over "The Dubuque Plan" an appeasement plan to prevent U. S. aid to Britain...
...War shops in machinery, brass, bronze,-and copper, in aluminum, explosives and iron and steel are somewhat below a 48-hour week...
...The charges, made in the current issue of the union paper, the Seafarers Log, state that two directives issued by the agency regarding alleged insubordination of unlicensed seamen, are in violation of the Maritime Commission's guarantee of May 1942 which froze union contracts and conditions for the duration...
...W. B. Riley, contributor to the Missionary periodical, "Bible News Flashes" (Win-rod's "The Defender" advertises it in the November, 1942 issue), sent a message to the meeting and commended Mrs...
...46.341 amusement places and 25.-244 hotels...
...It has been inaugurated quietly, possibly the intricate nature of the plan has barred any wide publicity...
...New Gov't Plan Sacrifices Little Business By GEORGE SHORT Special to The New Leader WASHINGTON, D. C—A new "over-all" plan for the control of American industry goes into effect this month...
...Dilling declared that when the Rev...
...It is particularly relevant to two remarkable speeches recently made by-Melville Maas and Wendell Willkie on America's perspectives in World War II...
...Half a dozen books have been written which have seized upon every little last reactionary word ever whispered in a German Rathskeller as evidence of a congenially poisoned national spirit...
...The total prospective supply is set against estimates of the prospective need, and the melon is cut...
...Julius Deutsch, David Dubinsky, Dr...
...Labof is not willing to have the sins of management and the inadequacies of business-minded bureaucrats put on its head...
...During the afternoon meeting on 'Sunday, Mrs...
...But, he added, "what is taking place in the Pacific is not war at all but the first mighty explosion of a truly world-wide revolution against the white man's civilisation...
...The real American way to keep farm labor on the land is to increase the wages and improve living and working conditions on the farms of the nation to a "parity" accorded other American workers...
...Labor needs to be given new recognition, new strength and controls in the national structure and policies...
...The dinner will...
...2. Peak efficiency of the individual worker engaged in prolonged war production can be best maintained by a forty-eight-hour week, according to scientific studies and experts on industrial relations...
...INHERE are people now in every circle in the • country who are forming cults of hate...
...claims that the War Emergency Board's amended Statement of Principles,' is ambiguous and- could be misinterpreted in such a way as to abrogate any clause or clauses in the unions collective bargaining agreements...
...Those that can fit into war production are kept, others go by the board...
...She declared that even to her it was as clear as mud...
...The chaos which now threatens is the end product of the chaos and conflict which has marked the planning of the whole war effort by government and industry...
...Shipping today is the crucial problem...
...August Claessens, George S. Counts, Dr...
...In this plan, prospective users of steel, aluminum an-d copper—the plan is starting off controlling only three metals— estimate their coming needs...
...Jahmke, Mrs...
...Housing and health provisions have to he instituted in war centres...
...American radicals in the days of the Revolution set up Committees of Correspondence which sparked that critical, constructive and militant attitude toward the historic events of the day which has given us some ol the most heroic chapters in the American story What we perhaps neeo today are Committees of Controversy to make some of us face issues, admit ambiguities, meet real political and economic problems head-on...
...The other factories have turned to war production...
...by Bertrand Russell:—"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—rrftre than ruin, more even than death...
...Here there is both the short-run motive of cutting wages, which is the only thing that the abolition of the 40-hour week will accomplish, and the long-run campaign of sabotaging and diverting any movement for an effective plan for over-all coordination...
...Avery proposed to hold, a^ meeting in a park of Minneapolis arid suggested that the Rev...
...thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits...
...Avery are admirers of Mrs...
...It was Walter Reuther who pioneered in war production .planning...
...Rudolf Katz, is the leading anti-fascist German newspaper in the United States...
...The S.T.F.U...
...Among the Committee of Sponsors are J. Baskin, Dr...
...Elizabeth Dilling, one of the 28 persons indicted in Washington, D. C. on seditious charges, was the principal speaker here last Sunday, November 15th, at two sessions of a "Truth and Liberty" meeting at Gustavus Adolph Hall...
...Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glor>' of man...
...yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe...
...Carl J. Friedrich, William Green, tAIbert Grzesinski, Algernon Lee, Carl Meyer, Jacob S. Potofsky, William L. Shirer, Samuel Shore, Friedrich Stampfer, Hon...
...It plats with words a bit, but nothing could be more dangerous than a reluctance to face certain plain implications...
...all disputes that cannot be settled to the satisfaction of all parties to be- held in abeyance without prejudice until the next arrival it a U, S. port...
...the real world war...
...and come right down and show cards . . All this is, of course, from a text, and a great one...
...At the bottom of it all is the fear and reluctance to face the basic issues of planning which an all-out production program for total global warfare has raised...
...Dilling tried to hold a-similar fundraising function recently in New York but failed...
...This new scheme, under the innocuous title of the Controlled Materials Plan is a nearly complete "rationalization" of American industry...
...has #aa> submitted to mobilize a fore* af at least 10.000 farm laborer* i" the South to sav< crops in sekaT ai-eas of the t'.R.A wWrt · serious shortage of laboi exiala...
...His -rage we can endure...
...The two standpoints (to borrow En-gel's sentence) "are so bitterly hostile to one another because they are the opposite poles of the same narrow-mindedness...
...Among the other speakers and guests of honor are Mr...
...She did say that the Jews were responsible for getting Rev...
...1 issued to all Agents of Vessels owned or chartered to the War Shipping Administration blames the breakdown of discipline on the deterioration of the authority of the Master and licensed officers and instructs all Masters to report serious breaches of discipline to the operating agent of the War Shipping Administration...
...There are over 2,750,000 small businesses in the United States, estimated to handle about 34 per cent of the total business of the country...
...Truman said there was no shortage of-timber in the country's forests, but the problem was having it cat and delivered to the places where it was needed...
...Is there an argument from the manpower crisis ? That is a little more tricky, but no more convincing...
...Truman investigates Lumber Shortage Threatened shortages of lumber attributed largely to substitution of...
...There is no argument against the 40-hour week, then, from "poverty...
...First, there are the old-guard politics in Congress...
...Jf democratic new-world optimists are a little vague about materialistic details, America's Old Guard has its eye on the ball...
...If the overtime provision of the Wage-Hour Law were scrapped, the war industry plants would still have to pay the organized and skilled workers as .a matter of contract, r It will be the un-organized7T low - wage workers, * numbering hundreds of -thousands, who will get it in the neck...
...Dulling and it is known that on Juiy 15, 1941, at the home of a fellow member, Mrs...
...Directive No...
...The meetings were called on short notice by one Reverend ?. O. Stadsklev, and although it is not generally known, Mrs...
...William E. Bonn, Abraham Cahan...
...It is unfortunate, however, that so many persons have reacted to it in such exaggerated fashions...
...She continuously ridiculed the phraseology of the indictment, declaring that freedom, of speech was a thing of the...
...For the past ten year the farm operators have been paid millions of dollars by the government to bring his living standards up to a parity with industry...
...She said that she would always be grateful to him...
...What is generally overlooked on this question is that more than half of the total number of workers employed in war industries are working under collective bargaining agreements calling for time and a half for overtime after forty hours...
...Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid...
...Third, there is the big-business lobby and its elaborate propaganda machine with outlets of publicity throughout the country...
...If Japan wins the war...
...Any provocation therefore may disrupt labor relations...
...Lulu Avery...
...Dilling gave the old bogus line that the Jews themselves have boasted that the leaders of the Russian revolution were Jewish...
...The Time of Day by MELVIH J. LASKY ?? waat to begin by wrestling with the prob-^ i— Of the Ward...
...These will operat...
...He said that if committee, investigators studying the situation ' did not believe a solution could be found soon the committee would hold public hearings on the problem...
...with its membership of 17,000 has made important strides in the past year...
...The CIO convention last week showed dramatically how intelligent and understanding the labor movement is on these fundamental problems...
...That's one postwar social problem we won't worry the planners about...
...The funds, he assured the audience, were to be used to defray her expenses...
...IT is that narrow-mindedness, for example, ·* which persists in indicting whole peoples for the tragedies of history...
...The group and Mrs...
...In the South we are still increasing the surplus of cotton...
...Her criticism of the Jews lies in the fact that they stress world-wide Jewish unity over national unity...
...was most impressive, and most omi-" nous about the Maas manifesto was its realistic recognition of certain major economic situations which, lent necessary substance to the lurid ideological trimmings...
...His doom is sure, A word shall overthrow him...
...And only the other day a piece of anti-German propaganda by-Belgian writers here flaunted a remark by Luther: "When the State authority says two and five make eight, that should be believed against all evidence...
...Lies, distortions, and flagrant misrepresentation have been the weapons used against the 40-hour week...
...George N. Shuster, as chairman...
...Stadsklev might be the principal speaker...
...40-Hour Week — Facts, Not Fiction: Gov't Sources Rebut Anti-Labor Lies by MATTHEW LOW What are the facte ? 1. The National Wage-Hour lew, which established a 40-hour week, does not limit the number of hours labor may work...
...But the point is this...
...But no one is shouting about that...
...Benator "Pappy" O'Daniel has discovered that there are 24 hours in every day, and has consequently called for a 72-hour week...
...3. Employees in key war industries, with some exceptions, are working a national average of 48 hours or more a week, according to figures released by Donald M. Nelson's War Production Board and corroborated by President Roosevelt...
...Stadsklev off the radio...
...What is taking place in Europe," he conceded, "is a terrible European war wild) dire consequences to us all...
...Can plants engaged in war production afford to pay time and a half for overtime ? This question was bluntly raised and answered in the affirmative by Daniel Tracy, Assn't Secretary of Labor: "The most recent report of industrial operations shows a progressive and in some instances a spectacular increase in the net earnings of leading corporations engaged in war production, even after allowing for the payment of greatly increased taxes...
...There may be something to the charge that we dropped it because aar own remarks on the war here last week struck notes perilously close to all the sour organ-tones we have been trying to shut our ears to...
...Clifton Fadinian of the gentle Sew Yorker is in a broth over the question...
...Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible...
...On that score we have for the most part been singularly hard-headed...
...Again, the only way the government could benefit from the reduced costs resulting from the abolition of overtime pay would be through a renegotiation of all existing war contracts...
...Eleanor Roosevelt heads a distinguished list of speakers appearing at the Tenth Anniversary' Dinner of the "Neue Volkszeitung," anti-fascist German language newspaper...
...Marx's words remain a wise and profound comment...
...government should drastically curtail production of this crop and use the acreage for producing other crops_ needed for the war and release farm workers of the South whose labor power is not being properly utilized for other areas of the U.S.A...
...If, they didn't go back to -Tacitos' portrait of the Germans in his History, they certainly sicked up from Martin Luther in the 16th century...
...Stadsklev and said, "he was one of those rare and courageous people...
...a fantastic new empire...
...by the Department of AgrieaHur* that all AAA payments were to be mailed direct to farmers **·" ants and sharecroppers sartie-pating in the program...
...The Social Democratic "Neue VoHcazeitung," edited by Gerhart Seger and Dr...
...Dilling's attacks on the Scrap Aluminum drive were lauded by Mrs...
...There must be over-all coordination in industries and manpower supplies...
...IT is not an easy task to separate the wheat * and the chaff in the mass of repoitonal information flung at one's head these days...
...The nub of this industry mobilization is the concentration of production in as few factories as possible which are called "nucleus" plants...
...And we ought to wait for an answer, * * * IN that greatest of historical pamphlets, The ISth Bru.ma.ire, Earl Marx observed: "As in private life one distinguishes between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, still more in historical struggles must one distinguish the phrases and fancies of the parties from their real organism and their real interests, 'their conception of themselves from their reality...
...Her conquered resources in oil, tin, rubber, bauxite, iron, etc...
...A century ago, as Weinberg records, "Westward the course of Empire" would have been the way it would be put...
...Here were far-sighted political executives who were "recognizing the wave to enable the economic elite to ride it...
...Second, there is the farm bloc, which is making a desperate move to solve its own manpower problem in its own way by effecting a cut in industrial wages and to hold the men in the fields...
...It also asserts that certain rights guaranteed to the labor unions in the original Statement of Principles are omitted from the proposed amended Statement of Principles...
...The situation may come down to a suggestion made in Canada before a wholesale grocery convention where it was proposed that 2000 firms be consolidated into nine, one for each province...
...wood for other materials, are under investigation by the special Senate Defense Investigating- Committee, headed by Senator Truman...
...Stadsklev came to Chicago to talk on the money questions, the Jews did everything in their power to prevent him...
...There * now a prevailing wage rate of" cents an hour in every area wfce* the S.T.F.U has substantial organization...
...The other main feature of the program is the replacement of the present priority system, including the Production Requirements Plan by this Controlled Materials device...
...iKJOR is it all black and white on the American scene...
...A front of reactionaries, amalgamating various interests and motives...
...The SIU vigorously protested this "sabotage of labor rights" in a letter to the Marine War Emergency Board...
...Seven men from · the seven - agencies sit around the table and thresh it out...
...Dilling's "Christian and American stand" and expressed the hope that the meetings in Minneapolis would be successful...
...Dilling said that behind her indictment lies the desire of Jews in high places in Washington to crack down on all who expose and oppose their efforts to promote world-wide Jewish unity...
...It sees man...
Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 47
