Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN It Would Be a National Disservice Act PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT »eenu to hove fallen far short of hii usual political acumen when he threw the weight...
...The Communists, as one might expect, are all for forced labor...
...Working under much greater stress, Great Britain during the ssme period increased its output only 20...
...We work 'till we drop if it ia to get a better job or mske more money for our families or to help a friend, but at the first sound of the word 'must' we go on the defensive and try to beat the slave driver before he beats us...
...Shipyards have been expanded to produce eighty times the pre-war rate...
...His anti-labor bill provides that labor unions may not contribute to party campaign funds...
...On the wrong side were 180 Republicans and 52 Democrats...
...To us a nation, to be a republic, has to have the government subservient to the people, and not the people slaves of that government...
...The President was right when he oiled the states rights soldier vote bill a fraud...
...SOME support ia perhapa attracted for the idea ef a labor draft by the belief that this would ¦top strikes...
...Henry L. Stimaon, Secretary of War, who never held an elective office in hit life, who is conditioned by his very position to think in terms of authoritarian handling of men in the mass...
...On the other aide one finds every prominent labor leader in the country, men who know how the memberthip of their uniona feels on the queation of involuntary servitude...
...The second letter to which I referred is from a soldier and is calculated to puncture the illusion that soldiers would favor labor conscription...
...Because the welfare of the working claas ia involved, the Congress of Industrial Organizations has swung into action...
...motion...
...But it is probable that we nave never had in the hiatory of this country each en open and powerful effort to disfranchise large sections of voters as that which we are witnessing aa the 1944 campaign swing* int...
...They fear to have their name* g out in the anti-vote column...
...and 1,248 strikes In the first nine months of 1943...
...Put beside thi* effort the struggle of s large number of Republican* and a amaller number of Democrata to deprive aoldien and *ailors of their votes...
...But the corporation* have never been hindered—and ahould not be—from carrying on moat elaborate and expensive political effort...
...Now Congressman Smith ask* Att torney General Biddle to cite the CIO before a grand jury for violation of hia Art...
...Stimaon knows beat and that it i* presumption, if not sacrilege, to question the judgment of the Secretary of War on this, question...
...However, I think you should know how we service men regard this 'National Service Act,' which the President haa proposed...
...An EditorialDisfranchising the Workers and Soldiers CEAR ef the voters is always the prim* quality * of a reactionary...
...Should draatir measure* of- arrest snd imprisonment be employed to bresk strikes, one may be sare thst output would go down tremendously...
...It i* a part ef our tradition...
...This overlooks the vitally important consideration that military service has nothing to do with private profit...
...Now if Mr...
...So have churches, good government organisation*, women's clubs—all kind* ef groups of citizena everywhere...
...It would be better described at a national disservice act...
...Another argument in favor, of labor conscription, specious but completely fallacious, is that civilians, aa a matter of fairness and juatice, should be subjected to the same kind of compulsion as soldiers...
...The issues are basic...
...The men in my squad, all of whom have seen acth n overseas, are of the opinion that this is the final step that would make our nation little better than the countries with which we are 'at war...
...Machine tools have been turned out in a volume three times that of the entire decade before the war...
...Apparently it waa his purpose in wording the Act to turn them into second clam eitisena, to make it impossible for them to de what is permitted to everyone else...
...it conformt very well with the practice oi their spiritual fatherland and with their liberty-denying philosophy...
...The average American knowa hia own akill, his own capacity far better than any unwieldy bureaucracy, auch as would be necessary to operate a ayatem of compulsory labor, could possibly determine these things...
...The tarn* fearful politicians are trying to rob soldier* of their votes and keep the CIO out of politic...
...It reads as follows: "It it not my custom to write ^newspapers on political opinions...
...The farmer writes...
...The vote against the roll-call was 233 to 160...
...There it the danger that the sacrifices ef war will be in vain...
...It would cauae ten timea aa much obstruction and disunity at it might be designed to cure...
...It also had I,Set atrlkes in 1942...
...quite the contrary...
...One is appalled at the thought of the number of round pegs that would be jammed into square holes if the decision, as to the kind of work a man or woman should do would be taken away from the individual and vested in tome bureaucratic agency...
...There ia nothing more inherently, totalitarian thaji the assumption by the state of the power to dictate to ita citizens where and on what terms they should work...
...Another ia a widely read columnist who tome times gives the impression of feeling that he possesaea a monopoly of patriotism, sacrifice and all the moral virtues, who burna incense at Mr...
...But the reactionaries sre willing to resort to any trickery to best it...
...Austin and Wadsworth think that they can come to me, a dairy farmer, and Joe Spelvin the office worker, end John Doe the machinist, and tell us to go somewhere else to work and what we can earn and how many hours we must work, they will find that production will take a quick and definite drop...
...Aa one might imagine, this inault to the good neighbor policy, to historical truth and to common sense stem* from the current issue of The Sew Republic, which deserves a negative Pulitzer Prize for its extraordinary ingenuity and assiduity in misinterpreting the historirsl, political and moral issaes involved in Stalin'a projected land-grabbing in Eastern Europe...
...Imagine the headachea and bitternees that would ariae in connection with the fixing of wages and aalariea under a forced labor system...
...Oldstock Americana are like that...
...The American industrial production of 1939, largest in the world at that time, waa doubled in 1943...
...Lippmann and the Messrs...
...Such a measure, I am convinced, would be an obstruction, not an aid to the war effort...
...Bat all experience points in a different direction...
...I believe that this represents the mood of the overwhelming majority of American soldiers, who would not like to return home and find one of the most drastic forms of totalitarian control, destruction of freedom of the individual to work as he chooses, imposed...
...There may be some countries where, aa a reault of conditioni of historical development, or establishment of totalitarisn methods .of government, people enjoy or passively accept a syatem of being regimented, ticketed, labelled, ordered about by the will of aome omnipotent ruling data.or bureaucracy that supposedly knows what an individual can and ahould do better than that individual himaelf...
...But they are not numerous or influential enough to constitute even s small rift in the united labor front against the suggestion...
...We have been led to believe that we are fighting to preserve our Republic...
...I recently clipped from a Philadelphia newspaper two letters that express very well what the average American thinks of this proposition...
...And when, under the "good neighbor" policy, have we aet up in Washington a stooge regime, resdy to be imposed by armed force on Mexico, Brazil or the Argentine, on the model of Stalin's "Union of Poliah Patriots...
...It would be a crass violation of the American ideal of free labor...
...A labor draft would be a glaringly one-sided measure unless the government were alto prepared to take over the whole productive mechanism...
...It ia the machinery whereby democracy function...
...Now enters Congressman Howard W. Smith, of Virginia, and says that the CIO must not de it...
...The Chambers pf Commerce have done it and will do it...
...But there hat been no such collapse...
...Its Political Action Committee is raising money and organizing ita forces...
...He it a far better judge than some impersonsl bureaucrat could be, of where he will be most useful, in factory or shipyard, on the farm, in some other apecialixed trade or occupation...
...They want to kill the aoldien' right of franchise in the dark...
...Oh Tuesday they managed to whip up a majority against a roll call...
...At what time, under our "good neighbor" or even under our "not so good neighbor" policy toward the Latin American countries, did we commit an atrocity comparable with the mass deportations from Eastern Poland...
...Great Britain has a national service set...
...A aimilar provision of the Corrupt Practices Act theoretically prevents corporation* from making auch contributiona...
...One hopes that labor and progreaaive forces will carry on auch a relentless campaign againat thia inaidious attempt to bring forced labor to free America that no public man .will ever want his name associated with auch a proposal again...
...It passed the Senate and ia now before the Houa...
...IF our war production had been a flop, if we were not turning out munitions in--adequate quantity and quality the case for experiments in compulsion might be stronger...
...It ia evidently his intent to prevent labor from going into politics...
...I believe the whole tradition of America ia for free labor and against forced labor...
...One it from a farmer, one from a soldier...
...This providea for an effective distribution and counting of votes under all the possible safeguards which any atatea rights man could ask...
...There would certainly be little popular support for such a drastic measure...
...The workers fear the kwa of all their* New Deal gains...
...Fighters and workers have the same enemies...
...But what American free labor and technical akill have done ia one of the productive miracles of all time...
...It ia interesting to observe the line-up of advocates and opponents of the meaaure...
...Only a complete collapse of the free labor system, from the productive standpoint, would justify such a measure...
...There the Worley Federal Ballot Bill has now been introduced as a possible substitute...
...Our soldiers are civilians in uniform, not professional militarists or totalitarian robots or marionettes...
...COVIKT policy is no more 'imperialistic' than oar own 'good neighbor' policy...
...Let us send the news far and wide...
...Of course we realise that some government control is an absolute necessity during war, but certainly there is no need to subject our people to a total dictatorship...
...But that ia emphatically not the American paychology, the American way of life...
...One of its leading champions ia Mr...
...What the CIO is doing the National Association of Manufacture™ has done and will continue te do...
...The President is trying to force them into the qpen, to make it necessary for them to stsnd up and be counted on this measure...
...Who are the Ehrlichs and Altera we have killed in Latin America...
...Aircraft plant equipment has been increased forty times...
...Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN It Would Be a National Disservice Act PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT »eenu to hove fallen far short of hii usual political acumen when he threw the weight of his personality and office, however halfheartedly, behind the idea of a national aervice act...
...Free labor can always beat slave labor...
...Stimson's shrine and backs up hia caae tor'labor conscription with the argument that Mr...
Vol. 27 • February 1944 • No. 6
