GE Conspired With Utility Interests to Block Light Saving for the Public
RANDOLPH, A. PHILIP
GE Conspired With Utility Interests to Block Light Saving for the Public The Negro and U.S. Democracy By A. PHILIP RANDOLPH THE problem of the Negro is a problem of discrimination, segregation...
...The complaint likewise finds GE making new agreements on these very matters with Osram G.m.b.H., Kommanditgesellschaft, in April and again in May of 1940 regarding the commercial redistricting of the world at the time the Hitler armies were marching across Europe and thus achieving the correlative political redistricting...
...The acceptance of Darlan for the moment as a collaborator in North Africa is to be regarded as taking advantage of an opportunity that presented itself...
...told, from an old Wastrel song which made fun ef the Negro people...
...Of the most important Committee on Foreign Relations—Tom Connelly of Texas, who with his Poll Tax philosophy will be one of the outstanding influences at the peace conference to build a new world for democracy...
...The case in point is a complaint just filed by the Antitrust Division in New Jersey Federal courts, with a detailed picture of bow General Electric had conspired with its fellow manufacturers and with the big utility companies to prevent the spread of fluorescent lighting in this country...
...That may come even before the actual conclusion...
...by L. C. Porter...
...Russia will force back the German hordes to the German frontier, and we hope, invade German territory...
...While it called for a budget of a million and several hundred thousands dollars, it was granted less than $300,000, which is a definite method of starving FEPC to death...
...It was natural that GE should turn its talents in restricting a commercial development to the purpose of bolstering the utilities by restricting the spread of a power-saving device...
...Because the executive order was granted, the March on Washington was called off but not abandoned...
...jmat« » « VSl Negro today constitutes the supreme test * of American democracy...
...GE and Westinghouse sell muerfef their electrical appliances through the power companies, and they sell all their big generators and other heavy eourpment to these sources...
...In this connection it might be interesting to note that General Electric has shown a phenomenal prescience in making contracts both with Osram and other German companies, and with Tokyo Shrbaura Electric Company, Ltd...
...such as for instance, the Fighting Freneh...
...We have to judge trustworthiness, with governments as with men, from past acts...
...It would seem that the United Nations will have to, for some time at least, place an international commission to govern a ravaged German land...
...It is entirely owned by the public utility-industry...
...The world has become an entity made up of many groups who depend on each other to live, grow, and make progress...
...Next, Electrical Testing Laboratories was brought into the play...
...Xfce ¦lisenith ef the underpinnings of democracy wj& make 'for a stronger national unity in America which will give force and power to our armed forces...
...Military Affairs, May of Kentucky...
...Obviously it was nothing that GE or anyone else could block entirely...
...The government sends its Negro expeditionary forces to England with its jim-crow pattern...
...A leaflet is prepared by the War Department and given to white soldiers sent to England informing them what not to do or say lest they insult their white English comrades, but white officers in the South freely insult Negro soldiers by calling them "Niggers," and nothing is done about it...
...We mast be realistic and consider all possible eawdttiosnT likely to arise...
...Vestiges and remnants of a pre-capitalist era hedge in, circumscribe and encumber the freed-men, giving them the status of second class citizens/ .," The historic mission of the old, classic 19th century revolution is to achieve a metamorphosis of the social, economic and political status of ' the serf or slave...
...It is an iiiUii imVa memo addressed to five men in the lamp department—one of them...
...GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY Nela Park Engineering Department Cleveland, Ohio November 1, 1932...
...Ward Harrison, a GE researcher charged with such things as finding new ways of making flashlight bulbs so they wont last so long...
...GE took on the job of stopping it...
...It has been suggested, for instance, in Wellington, New Zealand, that 100,000 British and European children might be taken annually for the next ten years...
...It may well be that Germany will capitulate before there is aa invasion of her terrain...
...Chairman of the Post Office and Post Roads Committee, McKellar of Tennessee...
...Hence, the status of the Negro people today is that of second class citizens, the victims of dual standards of justice, freedom and democracy...
...This meant progress...
...among the Germans-in-exile...
...Ending on a meek note, the Government asks that the UjS.A...
...Narrow, blind prejudices, which exist in all sections of the population, employer and worker...
...When our enemy is defeated, only the physical enemy is defeated, It would be far from correct to assume that with such a victory the ideology which is our real enemy will also have been defeated...
...That tana of derision carries over to this day in the South, where official laws and statutes segregate the colored man into separate railroad cars, separate schools, separate restaurants, etc...
...WITH whom shall we make peace...
...Interdependence economically, socially, culturally has come to be the law of mankind...
...But the question may be raised as to tfte advisability of Negroes fighting at this time for their democratic rights, in view of the war...
...We believe that the fight for democracy on the home front is a part of the fight for democracy on the foreign front...
...When the industrial and financial capitalist economy gained ascendency over the agrarian, feudal, slave pattern of production, following the triumph of the Union army over the Confederate forces, the orderly and progressive march of the second political revolution was halted, and the attention of the American national community was turned from the social idealism of consummating the liberation of the former slave to the matter-of-fact Yankee business of consolidating the Union as a political agency to subserve the interests of an incipient and nascent monopoly capitalism...
...For a generation the youth of Italy has been inoculated with the virus of a vicious poison...
...As a result of the activity of the FEPC, which investigates charges of discrimination on account of race, color, • religion or national origin, a good number of defense industries have employed Negro workers and some of the trade unions have relented in their rigid application of the closed shop contract and permitted Negro workers to secure employment...
...I think you will he interested in the attached analysis which Messrs...
...Even the so-called white elements of the South have been subdued by the lynch forces...
...It will be remembered that Russia set up a Polish government with Radek and Kavaki as the heads...
...Reduced to simple terms, it amounts to accepting help in a difficult situation from whatever source...
...The Civil War—America's Second Revolution—was uncompleted, and hence, unlike the revolutions of 19th century Europe, failed to transform the black slaves into free workers and independent farm proprietors...
...What about the post-war period...
...Doctors of color can only practice on soldiers of color...
...nor the mistake of the war with FmfiSair tfc 1940...
...Parker and Johnson now have this matter up with the battery manufacturers, and I woud urge that every assistance be given them to put it over...
...trade unions refused Negroes membership...
...That is not easy...
...The President of the United States does not seem to possess the moral courage to challenge certain elements in the benighted South, and while democracy was • being trampled-upon in the Senate by Southern dswagogan like Senator Bilbo of Mississippi, he remained silent in the White House...
...This committee has held hearings in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Birmingham, Ala., and plans other hearings for cities in different parts of the country...
...Chairman of the Finance Committee, George of Georgia...
...It was outside of tbaJbsJMMa -of the land...
...The new fluorescent light was not entirely "cold," as is neon tubing, but it was a step in that direction...
...Banking and...
...Fluorescent lighting was put on the market in 1938...
...No nation with due regard to the interests of their people can maintain an isolationist existence...
...Nor can we make peace with the military caste which will probably overthrow the Hitler regime just as soon as the breakdown sets in...
...f\N the mechanics of the House of Magic, the complaint charges that GE has used its "illegal pool of patents" as a weapon to restrain the orderly competitive developments of America...
...Although some headway has been made in the Negro receiving employment in defense industries, discriminations are still rife against them when they apply for skilled jobs...
...Gov't Data Reveal Hidden Story of Monopoly Pool By DAVID A. MUNRO "THE House of Magic, set up by General 1 Electric as the theme center of the American spirit of progress, baa been caught off base by the Department of Justice, aad it appears from the evidence that the men who actually run this House of Magic spend just as much time blocking progress as they do speeding it...
...warred upa*FMfs...
...In Japan the problem will be much greater...
...and specifications were not promulgated for certain types of fixtures . . . which the public utility companies did not want to have commercially exploited...
...What is the passdMHjp that Russia will set up a German government with Communists at its bead and eemcMtn peace...
...It likewise appears from the evidence that the General Electric Company also has made deals with firms in countries which soon after became active enemies of the United States...
...and Negro women, although accepted if, the WAACS, are trained and maintained as segregated units...
...They who live by the sword shall perish by the sword...
...No doubt there will be thousands end maybe tone of thousands who will have to pay tht HW'li I penalty for the crimes they have fflmmjftpd We cannot in this mstauoe be fait...
...Some time ago, the battery manufacturers went part -way with us and accepted lamps ef two battery lives instead of three...
...Flagrant instances of these anti-social behavior and un-Christian practices may be seen in the position the Negro found himself in when the present World War began...
...If Germany is to continue as an entity, it is from these that a government, with whom peace can be made, is to be set up...
...Although the South is but one-fourth of the United States House of Representatives, they have achieved this under a Democratic administration...
...Unfortunately, the seepage of GE control is now so pervasive in Washington that GE has only been subjected to a civil action in this case, though only last year it was still possible to lodge criminal actions against GE...
...GE made new commercial contracts accurately anticipating political events...
...Baninae of a rotten borough system made possible by the poll tax and the white primaries...
...White Southern politicians and indifferent Republicans are the cause of this...
...The great mass of Negroes recruited for the Army are placed in labor battalions...
...It was natural that the utility companies should call upon GE when the spread of a new device seemed to threaten their profits—though there is no proof that cheaper lighting, through fluorescent fixtures, wouldn't help the utilities through raising the standard of lighting ka the home...
...Moreover, in sessions of the FEPC sit representatives of Paul V. McNutt, namely, General McSherry and Mr...
...This song, sung after tab Civil War, . carried the re-f r a i n " j u m p. jim crow...
...In the House of Representatives the control of committees by Southern race-hating politicians is distressing: Chairman of the Judiciary Committee is Sumners of Texas, who boasted i-ii"''l5'"vv<5uld never permit a hearing on the Ami l.yiitliing Dill so long as he was chairman, i." .:::nuii i:i the Ways and Means Committee, I'-jit-lilon of North Carolina...
...This presents a problem that should be pondered upon earnestly and a solution found...
...He east expects that Russia will repeat the mpmakw of 1920 when the U.S.SR...
...a jim-crow school for Negro air pilots is set up at Tuakegee, and the policy of segregation is so sharply fixed in the Army that Negro and white soldiers hardly realize that they are fighting for the same things, and hence, instead of waiting for combat on the foreign fronts, they go to war with each other on the home front...
...There is as live ment...
...It has its roots in a world movement, namely, the slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the exploitation of slave labor in the production of sugar, rice, tobacco and cotton ia the New World...
...For almost the same period of time but to a larger degree, German youth has been also so inoculated...
...It should alsb M VtSksifc-bered that in 1940 Russia again, "opportunely," set up a government outside of Finland with Kuuaeinen as president...
...He knows that the Nazis' racial theories doom him even more viciously than any national or religious group of white men...
...It does not seem possible that anything else bat to take over Japan and set up a got eminent, a commission form, fathered by a League of Nations to govern, is a feasible proposal...
...This he is giving with his life, blood and treasure...
...In the latter case, right thinking, and moreover, right action in relation to future conduct, is limited only by the dictates of what opportunity may offer itself, regardless of whether it might be right or wrong in the light of ultimates...
...of Territories and Insular Affairs, important because of the global character of the war and of t^/pout-war world, Tydings of Maryland...
...It will require a change in curricula—a complete change in the school system, and surely some effective international commission will have to be set up to supervise the reeducation...
...This condition destroys the independence of the committee and impairs its usefulness...
...6—Bestowment upon the former slave of an economic basis for his adventure into the . - . ¦ new social order...
...Negroes may yet be compelled to march on Washington not only to stop the poignant insult of jim-crow to their souls but also to save the soul of America and help make our country morally and spiritually worthy of the leadership of the democratic forces of the world...
...Certainly, " no peace can be made with otter the present German regime or a modified regime fail which present rulers have even a minor role...
...Governments, again like men, must learn not to repeat the mistakes...
...5—Establishment of a free public school system...
...The church of the South served as a psychological weapon to whip public sentiment into accepting the second class civil status of the Negro people, and the church of the North winked and connived at this bit of religious expediency...
...Witness the control of the South over the Senate today: Chairman of the Appropriations Committee is Carter Glass of Virginia...
...The "violent and ceaseless struggle of the white South to keep the Negro down has caused the South to become the nation's Number One Problem, and virtually an arid desert where the hot winds of hate and mob violence hold sway at the expense of culture and art, philosophy and science, and the higher reaches of religious idealism...
...It demanded an executive order to put a stop to discriminations in defense industries and the government...
...Hitler may commit suicide...
...The deal was swung at the behest of the utility companies and involved a "phony" testing laboratory, controlled by them, because the new lighting delivered more light for less money...
...When he went to defense industries for jobs, he was either flatly told that he was not wanted or given the run-around...
...the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, merchant marine and coast guard, while giving first class status to our -foreign brothers such as Filipinos and Chinese, put Negroes into segregated and jim-crow divisions...
...It would seem to me that large numbers of young German children migrating into territories and amidst people who have not been blighted by Nazi ideology, will in the coarse of time forget that degraded philosophy and accept a rational, civilized, and cultured way of life...
...Naval Affairs, Vin-ri-rit of Georgia...
...The programs of the two associations supposedly designed to secure wide use of fluorescent leghting, was supported by uniform advertising to give the symbols of the Testing Laboratory prestige, by the utilities' refusal to sell equipment without such certification and by boycotts...
...It was a "natural" since inventors had recognized for a long time that something should be done about incandescent lighting, 85 per cent of whose power consumption goes into heat and only l&«ner cent into light...
...bu^ if the FEPC is attached to a government department, as it is in the War Manpower Commission, subject to direction and supervision by its chairman, it stands to reason that it cannot carry out provisions of the Executive Order since it cannot investigate the department of which it is a part and the head of the department which has the power and supervision and direction over it...
...bar him from the job...
...We also stand for a fight not only against Hitler in Europe but Hitlerism in Washington, D. C, the South and Cleveland...
...GE, its co-defendants and co-conspirators, are charged with violating the Sherman Act "by unlawfully conspiring to monopolize, monopolising, attempting to monopolize and by unlawfully contracting, combining and conspiring to restrain trade...
...The ideology taught has become in a great many cases a religion...
...Negro soldiers are mobbed, shot and killed in Fort Dix, N. J...
...We shall have to look to the Underground movement...
...Many if not all of us in our country and elsewhere in the world hope that Russia has learned from bitter experience that she cannot stay out of the family of nations, and that because of that lesson, she will not continue to snatch at opportunities which prove themselves in course of time as chimerical...
...The church, in negation of its basic tenets, reflected the dominant economic forces in the- American scene and blessed this tragic political opportunism...
...Instead it was the GE objective to keep it out of the hands of the public and in the hands of the commercial user, who, presumably, would use-more light and .therefore consume just as much power...
...Today it is apparent that the South has practically conquered the spirit of America and compelled it to accept its ideology of racism...
...The committee is handicapped, however, because of two things: 1—It is submerged as a result of an order issued by the President a few months ago, placing it in the War Manpower Commission under Paul V. McNutt...
...Messrs...
...Indeed, no nation can long continue to develop in isolation...
...To: M. C. Sloan E. E. Plotter N. H. Boynton H. F. Barnes * - W. Harrison Two or three years ago we proposed a reduction in the life of flash light lamps frehe-tbe old basis on which one lamp was supposed to outlast three batteries to a point where the lfcfe of the lamp and the life of the battery under service conditions would be approximately equal...
...If this war does not achieve racial, economic, political and social equality for thie Negro and all of the darker races, it will have been fought in vain and will be only a -prelude to a more terrible, war 'between the colored ami white ' races of the world.1-' Color Line THE phrase -Jim Crow" comes, we are...
...We have been continuing- our stadias and efforts to bring about the use of one battery life lamps...
...There are probably still a great many Communists inside of Germany and some German Communists outside of Germany and in Russia...
...That is one way we might liquidate the baneful influence which Nazism and Fascism has had upon child-life in Germany aad Italy...
...While it may be true that in addition to force, resort is to be had to psychology, or as the new phrase has it, "psychological propaganda," the fact is that we will win this war because of our economic power, our ability to fashion the weapons and put them in the hands of those who are most fit to use them...
...The March on Washington movement was supported by the Negro churches of various denominations as well as the Negro workers and professional groups...
...To do this GE set up two organizations to "promote" fluorescent lighting...
...Nor has Protestantism or Catholicism or the Republican or Democratic Party of America, from Abraham Lincoln to Roosevelt's New Dealism, ever seriously challenged this socio-economic and political racial arrangement of the South...
...But this can only be effected when the following changes occur: 1—Overthrow of the slave or feudal power...
...It is beyond question a policy of opportunism...
...2—The Fair Employment Practice Committee has never received adequate funds to provide proper personnel and* machinery for policing the Executive Order...
...As far as Italy is concerned, the general post-war dinVuHty is not as great, but a government will have to be set ap hi Italy which can genuinely be trusted to carry out v)M%e*iet peace agreement will be made...
...But the complaint sounds as criminal as the Federal lawyers can make it sound...
...We can see no logical reason .either from our standpoint or that of the battery manufacturers, why such a change should not be made at this time...
...Agriculture, lullir.cr of South Carolina...
...BECAUSE of this outrageous violation of . ** democratic practice and principle and the failure of Negroes to secure jobs in the defense industries, the Negro leaders planned a march on Washington July 1, 1941, in protest of this condition...
...In the occupied countries, Germans, Italians, Japanese have committed wholesale murder, robbed and killed indiscriminately...
...OAVING practically re-enslaved the Negro ** freed-men through forms of political and economic disfranchisement, the old South sought a moral-and ideological justification for its act, and hence the Tillmans, Cole Bleases, Varda-mans, Thomas Dixons, Bilbos, and Eugene Tal-madges of today preach the doctrine of Negro inferiority, of Negro domination and white supremacy to make American public opinion subscribe to the process of dehumanization of the Negro...
...But it would be wishful thinking to believe that with the death of the false prophets, their ideology will disappear...
...There is another problem which may confront us at the conclusion of the war...
...This outfit has the power and the obligation to give certification to equipment which the utility companies want approved...
...rcrcy, Steugall of Alabama...
...That act was pure and Unadulterated "opportunism...
...But even these have not been sufficiently assertive...
...4—Provision for the participation of the freed-men in the new government...
...These are problems which stand out boldly, and they are not as easy of solution as are the purely physical problems concerned in the successful prosecution of the war...
...If this were done, we estimate that it would result in increasing our flashlight business approximately 60 per cent...
...We stand for all-out support for the war by the Negro...
...If we are to judge realistically the possibilities of a conclusion of the war or a breakup of the German army before we are at the gates of Berlin, Russia's attitude in Ha 'prior wars should be seriously studied...
...In truth, however, none of these conditions requisite to the completion of the traditional capitalist-democratic revolution was realized for the Negro...
...Southern Senators and Representatives are able to build up seniority and capture the chairmanships of committees...
...The Executive Order states that the FEPC shall investigate discriminations not only in defense industries but in the government...
...It is my position and the general feeling of practically all the Negro leaders throughout the nation that the Negro must fight against discriminations wherever they appear at this time and insist upon the status of a first class citizen...
...2—Set-up of a republican or democratic form of government * 3—Grant to the former slave or serf of the • right of suffrage...
...There are Germans who hare been exiled or who have exiled themselves...
...T*HE war and its prosecution present many * serious problems...
...Pridnaux and Egeler have worked up concerning the various points involved in going to the one battery life basis...
...It is something quite different from opportunism when it is regarded as a principle, and results in a course of conduct, as a matter of principle...
...Agriculture — "Cotton Ed" Smith of South Carolina...
...Choice of Democratic Leader's for Axis Lands, Education of Fascist Youth Loom as Major Problems By JUDGE JACOB PANKEN II "/OPPORTUNISM" militated against stability of the peace concluded after World War I. What may be opportune for a moment can become disastrous in the future...
...OUT General Electric, in the matter of fluo-rescence, has been particularly concerned with keeping the benefits in power savings from the people of America, not with playing politics...
...Fort Bragg, N. C; Alexandria, La...
...That is why he is fighting hard and seeks the chances to light snd work harder...
...Thus, the freedom of the Ntgro slaves was sacrificed upon the altar of an expanding capitalistic economy...
...Democracy By A. PHILIP RANDOLPH THE problem of the Negro is a problem of discrimination, segregation and jim-crow in the economic, political and social life of America...
...Man like Virginius Dabney of the Richmond Times Dispatch, John Temple Graves II of the . Monty mery Advertiser, and Mark Ethridge of the Louisville Courier Journal utterly collapsed •fcoa the struggle to free Odell Waller and the fight for Negro rights during the-war came...
...Little Rock, Ark., and various others sections of the country...
...GE, like Westinghouse, has to play ball with the utility companies...
...That government was net a Polish government nor did it function at any time in Poland...
...What comes to mind first is reeducation...
...How are we to guarantee it...
...What peace are we to have...
...The Negro, however, realizes his stake in the War...
...This has worked out very satirfactorily...
...to the President, as it was in the beginning...
...The facts, however, should be borne in mind...
...That is not a mere gesture from the Commonwealth of New Zealand, but a carefully thought-out plan...
...GE seems to have been able to guess the coming military maneuvres correctly, particularly in the matter of the countries to the East of Germany which were to fall to Hitler, or even in the matter of the future extent of the Japanese empire...
...Defense training courses were closed to him, government departments discriminated against him as did private industry...
...In this eloquent article, A. Philip Randolph, leading Negro spokesman, gives voice to the demands of his race...
...Opportunism in some emergency, however, is justifiable...
...The Bed Cross relents and accepts Negro blood, but jim-crows it...
...The letter speaks for itself...
...The sacrifices the United Nations make, the lives that we give, will bear, we hope, the fruit of a lasting peace...
...They are to he turned over to the governments of the countries ha which, their crimes have been committed and to be dealt with by the constituted authorities according to the law or laws of these i enalilos whatever that law or laws may be...
...For example, the specifications required fixtures to provide for shielding so as to prevent lamps from being used for direct lighting and to use or operate at least two lamps...
...One to promote it to commercial users, one to promote it to the public...
...The Navy, although making some concessions to the clamor of the Negro people for consideration, still refuses to make Negroes commissioned officers...
...Defendant Testing Laboratories," in the language of the complaint, "holds itself out as an independent laboratory to test fluorescent lamps . . . (but its) specifications . . . were drawn so as to insure to the public utility companies a greater consumption of electricity than would normally have been consumed if fixtures were not manufactured to such specifications...
...Though GE, in pursuit of this aim, paid no attention to the warnings of a war-made power shortage which have been almost continuous in America since 1940...
...be given injunctive relief against the depredations of GE and associates, also that defendants pay for the suit.^ But in the case of an incandescent lamp suit previous brought against most of the companies herein charged with conspiracy, the Government introduced a GE office memorandum which explained in realistic terms GE's attitude over the years toward science and toward the actual uses of its testing laboratories...
...Moreover, the South makes no pretense of providing training opportunities for Negroes in defense industries, although federal moneys are appropriated for this purpose...
...Harper...
...Under the Executive Order 8802, issued by President Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, was established a committee on Fair Employment Practice...
...It is no longer independent with sole responsibility...
...These must be regarded as criminals...
Vol. 25 • December 1942 • No. 52
