TRENDS: Ideas in action; events as they reflect political tendencies.
BELL, DANIEL
TRENDS: Ideas in action; events as they reflect political tendencies. By Daniel Bell [Liston M. Oak in on vacation] FDR to Scrap Little Steel Formula TlfERE were numerous indications this week...
...The news of the meat sale was reported by a HcieW Tribune correspondent: "The Argentine and British governments have agreed on the sale and shipment of the total exportable surplus of Argentine meat for the month of October...
...Japanese advances forced the abandonment of the huge American air base at Kweilin which had literally been scooped out of the soil, Dispatches indicate that a gap of only 100 milei separates Japanese forces which are seeking to split China in half...
...AFL case before WLB asks general lifting of wage restrictions...
...Argentina haa long been a British "economic colony...
...I have jutt returned from a very terrifying scene...
...Four months after the liberation of Rome, when paationt were thought to have cooled and weariness numbed the will, the mob rote...
...It was like a dart of lighting through the lowering fog, revealing the black storm clouds to come...
...The situation is China is desperate, Allied military observers admit...
...It ia significant that recent reports state that Rudolf Breftacbeid, the President of the Social Democratic Reichstag Delegation, »>¦ killed in a concentration camp, along with Ernst Thaelmann, the Communist leader, while George Avelsson reports in the N. Y. Time* of Septembei 18, tktt the Nazia have hanged Gustav Notke, the former Social Democratic Minister of the Kbert Cabinet...
...I tell you that what I saw today I shall never forget...
...An OPA report forwarded to the White House this Week in.lir.tes a 30 billion dollar slash in workers wages starting as soon as Germany surrenders...
...Leusehner mat the German delegate to the 111) and in the summer of 1933 was permitted to attend its sessions at Geneva...
...At Anne O'Hare McCormick points out in a dispatch from Rome: ". . . nobody inspired it...
...And the mob drew blood in the lynching of Dona to Carretta, one of the Fascist jailers of Rome...
...The basic idea was that of an escalator clause: as prices rose, wages would rise...
...The report alarmed the White House since a one-third cut in workers incomes promised disaster to administration hopes for continued prosperity...
...The lynching of Carretta, a brutal act if seen in isolation, it an indication of the tense of raging futility felt by the Italian people in their helplessness over their destiny...
...Only now they have started digging them out...
...It took the heat of an election campaign to reach that objective...
...The mob was not organized by Communists or Fascists...
...It it already more than a year since the signing of the Armistice, yet the really tangible evidences ot social change have not appeared...
...Lifting of wage ceiling now is calculated to win Roosevelt enough more vote* to make his re-elrcti ion safe...
...We had a ceremony at the Ardentine graves near the Catacombs where 320 hostages were first shot and then buried under' a mine by the Nazis...
...Britain Buys Argentina Meet Although c-ordeii Hull haa labeled Argentina at the fascist sores pot in the western hemisphere, Britain haa made an agreement to buy surplus Argentine meat...
...During this war, however, Argentina hat run up a heavy sterling balance which makes her a creditor of Britain...
...Not at all," he replied...
...Their argument ia that CIO is already safely in Roosevelt camp, where a« AFL is the one which needs wooing bark into Roosevelt column...
...the banked fires of hate mutt have glowed fiercely...
...However, the decision will be made not by . the WLB but by the White House...
...However, an eleventh hour effort is being made by some White House advisers to have President Roosevelt act on basis of AFL petition...
...The immediate incident that set off this flashflood was the trial of Pietro Caruso, the former police chief of Rome...
...It ia jost as likely that the Nuns art taking steps to wipe out any known figure who could provide a rallying...
...It wat a wholly spontaneous flare-up of animal rage that spread like wildfire from the few hundreds in the courtroom...
...Nozis Kill Germon Socialists To Prevent Oppoiition I IN the stories from I/ondon and Stockholm regarding the Nazi purges in Germany several significant names nave appeared which may ho an important clue to passible resistance movements inside Um Reich A London UP story dateltned September )l state* Gestapo Hangs Seven Plotters...
...If so...
...By Daniel Bell [Liston M. Oak in on vacation] FDR to Scrap Little Steel Formula TlfERE were numerous indications this week that the Little Steel Formula, the bone which has been sticking in labor's throat, will be , pulled out and discarded...
...There ia one interesting sidelight to this mob lynching, one underscored by dispatches from France when several citiea .were liberated...
...point for opposition and killed Leusehner for this reason...
...Wilhelm Leusehner oat well-known in European labor curies He was co-president of Um Allgemeiiie Deal, ache GewerkschafUbund (the German Federation „f Labor) and was the acknowledged successor of Leipsrt, the Williant Green ot the German labor movement...
...CIO case asks specifically that steel workera be given a 17 per cent wage increase...
...In France the .greatest hate of the population was reserved, not for the invader, but for the French Militia and the French Gestapo and their collaborationist actions...
...And if you had seen the agonizing scene at the relatives of the victims appeared to identify them...
...He wat arretted immediately un hit return and imprisoned for three years...
...It was) explained that such an arrangement was made in view of the fact that the United Nations Meat contract will not be renewed upon expiration at the end of the month...
...CftJa* Wewrfy SplW la HoH While the newspapeis pl»y up American victories in the Pacific island stepping stone chain, the dark news from China hat been "buried" in the back pafea...
...The Little Steel formula has been the cornerstone of the Administration's wartime wage control policy...
...Example: A worker getting a dollar an hour and working 48-hour week under current War Manpower «'omnii.«nnj...
...Meanwhile printed currency still has nu inner one priority in air express to China...
...D. B...
...At a time when violence and sudden death have become commonplace, this display of a people's fierce , passion caused 41 world to hold its breath...
...Caruto, a particularly brutal man, had handed over hundreds of hostages to the Nazis who murdered them...
...And the Timet correspondent goes on to point out that mob violence is extremely rarer In Rome for it is "a curiously unemotional city...
...The OPA study forecasts unemployment with an estimated drop of 10 per cent from present job levels...
...Major indications that this step would be taken are: • CIO and AFL leaders at White House conferences have been told by Roosevelt that he intends to overhaul the Little Steel yardstick and permit general wage rises...
...With the fall of Hitler his pay will drop from $52 a week to $40 a week...
...Two panels of the War Labor Board, one dealing with the Stee) Workers demand for a 17 cents wage increase, the other an overall AFL demand, submitted reports which substantiated the claims of labor...
...Nearly a year ago, at the CIO Philadelphia convention, Philip Murray called for the scrapping of the formula...
...There, in the name of the delegation, and before the weeping crowd, I spoke, a few words...
...Labor circles here, however, are looking forward to inevitable awakening alter election when workers discover that lifting the wage ceiling now is like locking barn, after the horse larceny...
...it wat a mob that-called for the- blood of the men who had gorged themselves on the body ef Italy...
...Reason: Power to move Little Steel formula either up or down Waa taken from War Labor Boards on April 8, 1943, when President Rooaecvelt froze the formula into the national wage policy in his "Hold the Line" executive order which, incidentally, succeeded in "Holding the Line"'only on wages while prices and profits kept zooming right along...
...The Mobs of Rome \J P from the seven hills of Rome Urn week came a savage roar which shook all of Italy and may find resounding echoes over the continent of Europe...
...If Leuorhner wat port of an actual plot agaiast Hitler it indicates the extent of the opposition to the Nasi regime...
...Nobody wante to enter the government in Italy...
...Indications are that White House decision to lift Little Steel formula will be slanted so as to give CIO credit for breaking through the wage ceiling...
...A statement by WI.B chairman William H. Davis indicated that the Board felt the formula ought to be ac rapped...
...The OPA study points out that immediate return to 40-hour week on the fall of Germany, as ordered by War Mobilization "Director James F. Byrnes, means drastic cut in workers' take home pay...
...Japanese forces have been pushing steadily Into ths interior, meeting little real opponitinn...
...What,hyenas the Nazis are...
...Many were buried alive as the monks of the nearby monastery heard them moan for neatly two days after they were buried...
...A letter from Luigi Antonini now in Rome graphically describes the reaction of the people when the graves were opened...
...The 386 pate fact-finding report of the steei panel stated that Um yardstick "should b« i« - examined in Um light of changed conditions...
...It was the roar of a mob which-was hungry, frustrated, bitter and rebellious...
...The formula, established in the fall of 1042 permitted a 16 per cent wage increase above the levels of January 1841...
...orders gets $40 for the first 40 hours and $12 for the remaining eight hours at the rate of time and a half for overtime...
...Among the nana mentioned was that of Wilhelm Leusehner, who was scheduled, according to the Nazis, to be vice chancellor...
...The stench of the decomposed bodies almost made us faint...
...This was a demonstration of bate of Italian versus Italian, a cleavage within the nation...
...But the cost of living rose, as a combined AFL-CIO report showed, 43 per cent while wages were held to the 16 per cent increase...
...Count Sforza, when asked why the carbinieri did not act replied: "While at an official I must condemn the Carbinieri for their failure, as a private individual I must recognize that men who make only enough to eat one meal daily can with difficulty be expected to act at they should...
...Mr, Churchill may deny that this it an ideological war, but the evidence ia otherwise in the thin, streams of Wood on the Streets of Rome...
...a 26 per cent pay cut...
...How pitiful...
...Both AFL and CfO have cases before War I-abor Bohrd aimed at breaking through ceiling of Little Steel formula...
...if the route of the parade of hat* had been longer it could eaaily, one felt, have drawn in the whole population of Rome...
...And as if under an atatvittie spell, it caught the blind fury of the Roman mobs of the Gracchi and Cola de Rienzi...
...This item plus return to 40-hour week will provide bulk of decline in worker income...
...Perhaps the most important clue to the temper of Rome and the nature of the political situation wat the reply of Sforza to the query, "Will thit have any effect on the Government...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 39
