Washington Miscellany
STOUT, JONATHAN
Washington Miscellany By JONATHAN STOUT WASHINGTON, D. C.—This Capital was deeply preoccupied this week with growing' domestic problems. leading the list of worries Is the strike wave. Washington...
...I do urge on both of them, however, that they realize the importance of this conference and that the time is short and that an agreement must be reached quickly...
...At the same time Schwellenbach went up on Capitol RID and told r. Senate Labor Subcommittee that the Minimum Wage Act should raise the floor from 40 rents sn hour to 66 cents an hour...
...He told the Senate subcommittee that many workers have never received enough money to maintain an American standard of living...
...The French elections have raised hopes thst France will soon join the parade of nations breaking relations with Franco and recognising theSpanish Government-in-exile...
...In November they also plan to launch a nation-wide organisation of small homeowners to be known as the National Small Property Owners Association...
...Public housing is socialization of real estate under the guise of slum-clearance housing for the poor...
...Despite the lip-service approval given by Spanish Communists to the new government set up in Mexico City (which barred Communis* participation in the government), the Communists actually are working to prevent the Oct...
...i • • ) t The Landlords' Lobby ia Washington has put up $600,000 fee a phoney "research" organisation calling itself the National Real Batata Foundation...
...The Communists hope to declare the convocation illegal...
...Schwellenbach also urged ending the exemption of a large number of agricultural processing industries from minimum wage and overtime pay requirements under the law...
...Wired S< hwellenbaxh: "I wish to express to the representatives of industry and labor that your meeting must not I ¦ permitted to fail...
...FoREIGN Minister Fernando lie l.os Kios of the Spanish Republican Government-in-exile, now sitting in Mexico City, was in Washington this week arranging for transit visas and transportation for members of the Spanish Republican Cortes, who were scattered by Frtmeo'a victory to the four corners of the earth...
...The idea is to bring in the smsll homeowner sa a decoy duck...
...The remainder of the increase, he said, "represents what I have described as an advance toward the goal of a minimum American standard of living...
...Most eloquent speech of the week was made by New York's Senator Robert F. Wagner...
...One evidence was the message Labor Secretary Schwellen-bach sent to Chicago where representatives of the oil companies and the Oil Workers Union (CIO) are seeking a settlement of the oilfield strike...
...12 session of the Spanish Cortes from obtaining a quorum...
...The angle that worries Washington is that a spreading strike wave may turn the unemployment of reconversion into an economic tailspin and a real depression...
...The line of the propaganda campaign planned by the new Landlords' Lobby was indicated by N. C. Hines, one of Washington's largest real estate speculators, an experienced lobbyist and the new organisation's secretary and executive director, who said the organisation will have as ons of its major aims a propaganda and lobbying campaign in Washington, in the State Capitals snd in the major cities against "ths trend toward socialisation of real estate...
...The Spanish Republican Cortes will be convoked in Mexico City on October 1...
...Mexico has already recognized the Spanish Republican Government...
...I doubt whether any testimony will show," Schwellenbach continued, "that 65 cents an hour, representing $26 for a standard work-week and $1,300 for a year of work, will be sufficient to meet the minimum budget of the average working man...
...They're looking for another chance to chisel their way into the government set-up despite the determined opposition of Giral and his new cabinet...
...One, for instance, is on his way from Manila...
...The promoters of the outfit themselves described it as a "nation-wide move againat public housing and to safeguard real estate interests...
...Washington officialdom is frankly scared...
...No hostile foreign agent could do more to wreck the fabric of ear society tbaa to tail ear people that smempbysaeV is the price we pay for free enterprise...
...The new lobbying and propaganda organisation of the real estate speculators is already organised ia 10 states end plans to extend organisation to the remaining states...
...Opening the debate last Tuesday on the Full Employment Bill, Senator Wagner told a hushed Senate chamber in ringing words: "Those who argue that continuing full employment mean* regimentation are themselves sewing the aeeds of economic and political revolution...
...The rising cost of living, he said, has cancelled part of the benefits, of the 40-cent minimum, and "a substantial part of the proposed increase is required Merely to reestablish the Congressional objective of 1038...
...We want," Hinea said, "to find out and report to the public the real reasons behind the trend for socialization of real estate...
...It ia not my purp< ,• to tell either industry or labor what agreement should be reached...
Vol. 28 • September 1941 • No. 39
