THE MOOD OF AMERICA
Miller, Albert Fowler, George Dean, Herbert Hackett, Joe
THE MOOD OF AMERICA Philadelphia Likes The FEPC Idea By Albert V. Fowler Philadelphia THE state of Pennsylvania has no Fair Employment Practices law. The last three sessions of the legislature...
...Although it certainly was the top labor story of the year in Oregon, not a line appeared in either Portland newspaper...
...Warren's report got newspaper play far beyond what it would have enjoyed ordinarily...
...Posters and car cards in trolleys and buses and commuters' trains have carried the story of fair employment across the city —a story of striking gains in race relations...
...That the conference achieved as positive results as it did can *« scribed to the patient and effective leadership of such church leaders |ts Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam and Dr...
...However, Knight withdrew when he found out he could not get the support of such conservative newspapers as the Los Angeles Times and the Oakland Tribune...
...During this time Frank Loescher, a Quaker and professor of sociology who was to become FEPC director, spent two years with the American Friends Service Committee in an attempt to help young Negro graduates find good jobs...
...At the Congressional level, the issues are set...
...The others were sympathetic and expressed the belief that there were Negroes qualified to handle a variety of jobs in his firm...
...II In the areas of basic agreement, the conference resolved in favor of: 1. Extension of social security coverage and substantial increase in payments...
...But Warren adroitly beat the Democrats to the punch in damning Samish...
...In any event, the Democrats sense their golden opportunity is at hand...
...The lead role in this movement is being played by James Roosevelt, eldest son of the last President...
...Attitudes and habits do not change overnight...
...suspected" men and women were shadowed through the store, and store president Aaron Frank called a meeting for the purpose of denouncing the Union...
...A minority report was filed by Noel Sargent, secretary of the National Association of Manufacturers, who called on the delegates to support free enterprise for;;t8B same reason "you believe that aemi vation is an individual matter...
...In addition to eying the governorship, the Democrats will try to wrest the Congressional delegation from the GOP, with the help of the CIO and the AFL, brought politically together by a desire for Taft-Hartley repeal...
...III At any rate, California voters will not be permitted by the Demo-" crats to forget those two memorable quotes...
...They are bent on drawing the battle line on strict partisanship for the obvious reason that if the people vote their registrations, the Democrats will sweep the field...
...Conciliation was successful in the end, and this Negro went to work with the permit in his pocket...
...But Warren has had less than spectacular success in getting his program through the legislature...
...The determination of the Democrats to do something about the paradox of a nominally Democratic state persistently going Republican finds expression in the best organization they have had in more than half a century...
...mitteeman, young Monroe Sweet-land, in his monthly political magazine, The Oregon Democrat...
...Not one voter in 50 could tell you if McLain is a Democrat, Republican, or Socialist, and the pensioners do not care so long as he is for bigger and better pensions...
...Stern's and Gimbel's went ahead with the experiment of hiring several Negroes in sales and clerical jobs, and were satisfied with the results...
...Rather than protest this affront, the newspaper waited submissively until the store decided on its own to resume its advertising...
...But Philadelphia went ahead by itself to set up an FEPC of its own to carry on the best tradition of William Penn's City of Brotherly Love...
...They had used the methods of gentle persuasion and unobtrusive conversations with business executives for which Quakers have long been noted...
...The minority fought a delaying action to the end...
...4. Positive action to seek full access to adequate, modern medical and other health services for all, These and other conclusions of the conference must be measured against the historic indifference of a large segment of the Protestant churches to economic and social problems...
...For example, a leading Seattle department store dropped most of its advertising in one of the city's two dailies for several months last year because the newspaper printed a ijgne-paragraph story involving a store executive...
...The GOP also controls the state senate, 26 to 14...
...Nevertheless, a representative of the "unfriendly press" (fundamentalist magazines opposed to the modernist Federal Council) charged that the conference was "loaded with labor and other leftist groups...
...Weeks before the conference, most delegates received special mailings from rightist groups...
...Moreover, Lady Luck smiled down on him in a fabulous manner...
...Why was this important news suppressed...
...Downey and Rep...
...Pension Politics himself...
...This chef tried to advertise for another Negro cook as he used to do before the law took effect, but the papers would not run a discriminatory ad...
...On the registration rolls, three out of every five voters have sworn they are Democrats...
...This lighter touch expressed the more somber sense of the majority, which was chary of the "leftist" tag in its advocacy of a program of democratic opportunity for all...
...This happened recently in a large Philadelphia firm which had a stated policy for promotion on the basis of seniority...
...McLain has been in temporary eclipse since the special election last November when his pension plan, adopted in 1948 by a 37,000 vote margin, was wiped off the books by a 400,000 majority—a serious blow to the man who had become Mr...
...Although it is the largest mercantile employer anywhere in the West, organized labor by-passed it as an impregnable citadel of the open shop...
...All sorts of intimidations confronted employes...
...The registration: Democratic 22,264...
...The staunchly Republican Oregonian has a long and honorable record...
...Forty years ago, Hiram Johnson became governor on the pledge to throw an arrogant railroad out of California politics...
...On the other hand, the Warren supporters assert that the generally nonpartisan political outlook of Californians and their free-wheeling method of choosing candidates have prevented the rise in this state of backroom machine politics and bosses...
...They are well organized...
...they could not afford to act as guinea pigs in any such risky venture...
...But it is an old axiom that the smell of victory has a way of healing political scores...
...yet most working newsmen know that there is such a thing as advertiser domination...
...A skilled Negro who had worked for several years on non-union jobs was in a tight spot when the company accepted a contract calling for all union labor...
...What happens when a newspaper refuses to submit to the pressure of big advertisers...
...Finally the union charged Meier & Frank with anti-union practices in violation of the Taft-Hartley Act...
...Lieut...
...It is undeniable that the chief opponents of the more liberal phases of the Warren program have been Republican members of the legislature...
...Walter Reuther, UAW-CIO, threw the challenge at the church to "find the moral equivalent of the H-bomb" by creating "the kind of social, economic, and political mechanisms to secure both economic security and a full measure of spiritual and political freedom...
...The rise and fall of McLainism is only one of many examples of the lack of clear-cut political direction in California along traditional major party lines...
...When they heard of this successful bid, others applied, and several were promoted...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt carried the state all four times and Harry S. Truman won in 1948, although by the narrowest of margins...
...Philadelphia Quakers, through their own agencies and with many other groups, had made extraordinary efforts in a long campaign to win over the large department stores to the policy of hiring Negro clerks and sales people...
...But the Commission doesn't exist lor only one group...
...For one thing, they obtained a list of conference delegates...
...An NLRB hearing was held in the U. S. Courthouse at Portland for eight days last fall...
...All are eligible to be voters...
...II The time of guinea pig experiments and pilot projects was at an end...
...The participation of spokesmen for business and industry was perhaps the most significant aspect of the meeting...
...These wounds have not healed...
...claims one of the two U. S. Senators, and, most amazing of all, has nine of the 10 elective state officials...
...When they had finished, they had demonstrated that religion need not be "the opiate of the people," that Christian "charity" can do much to reconcile opposing views, and that the church has a big job of self-education in economic matters...
...It should be noted, however, that the Journal is now receiving more advertising from M & F than it did in the past, and the Oregonian less...
...With the Commission's backing the Negro was moved up to a better position, and within a few months he received two more promotions...
...With his right arm held high in a cast, he felt called upon to explain, "I am not really a left-winger —this is a temporary arrangement...
...asked Oregon's crusading Democratic national comGEORGE DEAN is associate editor of the Sacramento Bee...
...So measured they are significant...
...Though the citizens of Philadelphia put teeth into this ordinance, they made sure that its teeth could be employed only when all conciliatory and persuasive attempts at settlement had proven useless...
...Helen Gahagan Douglas...
...The most spectacular development in this field has been the appearance of George H. McLain, erstwhile public relations man turned pension messiah...
...But the conference majority rejected this type of bombast...
...It was passed by unanimous vote the following March after an impressive public hearing...
...In Meier 6 Frank, the Oregonian was tackling Oregon's No...
...The doctors think about as much of Warren as they do of a streptococcus germ because of his stand on public health insurance...
...Certainly not to James Roosevelt...
...Incidentally, United States Senator Downey also gave lip service to McLain...
...One of America's largest insurance companies which could not be won over to hiring Negroes for clerical work before the law went into effect now puts them on the payroll without comment...
...Within a short time this one incident had wrought a significant change in the company's attitude toward its workers and in the workers' psychology itself...
...what this position should be is a question of H-bomb proportions, inviting the comment, "Fools rush in...
...But they have to vote for Warren or stay home from the polls because Roosevelt would outdo Warren on this issue...
...Many of them will vote as he tells them...
...Into the state picture will be injected the further issue of lobbyist Artie Samish...
...Only at the Presidential level have Californians voted the way they are registered...
...Various organizations, including the AFL, CIO, and the county Democratic committee, passed resolutions praising the pro-Taft-Hartley, Republican Oregonian for its stand...
...II Early this year the Northwest's largest department store, Meier & Frank Co., reportedly informed the Oregonian and its rival, the Oregon Journal, that it would be wise for them not to publish the details of a national Labor Relations Board decision finding the store guilty of unfair labor practices...
...Less than a month after it had attempted to freeze out the Oregonian, the store quietly resumed its full-scale advertising...
...Taking advantage of the municipal election in the fall of 1947 when the incumbent Republicans faced unusually strong opposition, the FEPC forces mobilized for action...
...3. Federal aid to public education, with a maximum of local and state controls...
...Neither he nor his employer could get the necessary work-permit from the union, so he filed a charge of racial discrimination against union officials...
...Reinhold Niebuhr, labor representatives like Victor Reuther, cooperative leaders like Jerry Voor-his, and to the best of the business contingent...
...There is the bugaboo of an in-traparty split between Roosevelt and the George H. Luckey forces, and" between the adherents of Sen...
...HERBERT HACKETT, a member of the English department of Michigan State College, attended the Detroit conference which he reports____ALBERT V. FOWLER is a free-lance writer who has been covering the operations of Philadelphia's FEPC for nearly a year . . . JOE MILLER is a freelancing correspondent for liberal journals...
...Richard Nixon of Uri-American Activities Committee note, who is running for the U. S. Senate, whether their primary choice is incumbent Sen...
...One argued this was a matter for the concerted action of the Philadelphia Merchants Association, and the Association batted the ball back saying that such a decision was outside its jurisdiction and rested with the stores themselves...
...He filed charges of racial discrimination, but the Commission found he had been fired by a Negro chef for unsatisfactory work...
...Moreover, Warren threw another' strike on Roosevelt by picking the right horse in last November's pension election issue...
...Although Meier & Frank spends almost $500,000 a year in the Oregonian, the newspaper refused to be bullied and carried the story of the store's labor difficulties in full...
...And the smell of victory in California in 1950 is very strong indeed to the Democrats...
...Then M & F got busy...
...They are jobs, land, water, power, and small business, with the Taft-Hartley Act a special sideshow in the districts where the labor vote is strong...
...The case should be a beacon light for more timorous newspaper publishers faced with pressure from advertisers...
...He is putting all his chips on the Democratic label...
...Catholic, Protestant, and Jew...
...For years its trucks have snarled traffic in a principal downtown area, but no one dared to do anything about it...
...Charles Taft told a press conference that "this assumption is wrong...
...Everybody just loves a winner...
...Flynn said that "the preacher-politician [naming such men as G. Bromley Oxnam and E. Stanley Jones] has been the curse of history...
...While Warren is standing on the nonpartisan appeal which served him well with the voters in two elections, Roosevelt is boldly making his bid on a strictly partisan basis...
...Advertising Heat And A Free Press By Joe Miller Portland, Ore...
...After all, there are about a quarter of a million Californians on the pension rolls...
...There are 66 representatives of business and 44 from labor...
...The store cancelled 14 pages of advertising already in newspaper forms and all its future contracts but a token half-page...
...They can count on powerful support from the national Administration, the CIO and AFL, the Grange and Farmers Union...
...Its purpose is to insure fair employment for all, colored and white...
...DO BIG advertisers influence the editorial policies of newspapers...
...Roosevelt is opposing Warren, who is the second governor in California's century of statehood to win reelection and now may be the first to win a third term...
...The Commission checked his qualifications and references, found them satisfactory, and got in touch with the union office...
...James W. Fifield, Jr., of Los Angeles, a leader of Spiritual Mobilization, a well-heeled if ineffectual pressure group composed of such churchmen as Roger W. Babson, Ely Culbertson, and Rupert Hughes, sounded a discordant note throughout, pleading in the last session for a return to what he called "spiritual values...
...The battlecry in '50 will be to throw put Samish...
...In 1946, Warren performed the political miracle of winning the Democratic as well as the Republican nomination...
...Both dailies denied suppression, but the Oregonian went further...
...Douglas discreetly kept her tongue...
...That's all there is to it...
...Yet, when they go to the polls, they have a chronic habit of electing Republican office holders...
...Spiritual Mobilization sent each delegate a bound copy of John T. Flynn's The Road Ahead...
...Superior ability in this case happened to be found in a white skin...
...Ill The Commission has never had occasion to order a public hearing because the process of adjusting charges of discrimination by conference, persuasion, and conciliation has so far proved a complete success...
...Only one employer refused to see him...
...The Philadelphia press and its advertisers did a fine job in removing from the newspapers "Help Wanted" notices mentioning race, religion, or national origin...
...The Democrats seem confident, too, that they can snow under Rep...
...But the other stores held back...
...But during the time Knight was gamboling throughout the state, he said some uncomplimentary things about Warren, aod* Warren replied in kind...
...If a Negro seeking promotion is forgotten and a white man with less seniority is boosted ahead of him, he can call on the Commission for help...
...Lest his audience be lulled by his generalizations he spelled out some of these mechanisms: pensions, a guaranteed annual wage, and extension of collective bargaining so that "economic decisions be based on economic facts and not on economic power...
...In 1942 Republican Earl Warren defeated incumbent Democrat Cul-bert L. Olson for the governorship midway between two thumping Roosevelt Democratic victories...
...Sheridan Downey or Rep...
...After a week of waiting the newspaper reported the controversy to its readers in a front-page box which concluded: "As a matter of traditional policy, The Oregonian strives to report the news completely, impartially and without fear or favor...
...Whites and Negroes applied for the job, and the chef hired the best qualified cook...
...The attitude of the two newspapers and their different political complexions provides an interesting footnote to the case...
...They laid . their plans much more carefully for the Detroit conference this year...
...Its city editor wrote Sweetland to explain that the omission was due to reporter negligence and promised that the Oregonian would fully cover news of the controversy in the future...
...In the third Congressional District, in 1949, the voters gave Truman a 2 to 1 margin while electing a Republican Congressman by 3 to 1. The first District also went for Truman, but named a Republican Congressman so reactionary even some members of his own party could not take him...
...The AFL Retail Clerks Union provided organizers, and many employes began to join...
...The report of his special commission on organized crime linking Samish with Mickey Cohen, the Los Angeles gambling king, was already in the hands of the press for advance release when Cohen's home was bombed and focused public attention on the mobster...
...For years editors and publishers have denied the charge...
...The lines were drawn early...
...But they were afraid their employes would object and that the business would lose money...
...The more complaisant Journal was not affected by the company's action...
...Warren has been sufficiently liberal on occasion to have led President Truman to remark he belonged in the Democratic Party...
...He has advocated compulsory public health insurance, public generation and distribution of power, liberalized workmen's benefits, and other assorted ingredients of a progressive program...
...Many patrons of the store personally protested to M & F. Charles A. Sprague, former Republican governor of Oregon and publisher of the Salem Daily Statesman, devoted a frontpage column to the controversy, which concluded: "Some friends of Aaron Frank ought to tell him that he is not only being quite small townish but is striking a blow at one of the most precious items in the American heritage, freedom of the press...
...California politics have been consistent only in their inconsistency...
...By the time each delegate returned from Detroit, however, he found in his mail a 32-page pamphlet entitled, John T. Flynn Replies to His Critics (available from Flynn at 210 East 43rd Street, New York 17...
...We have done everything we can to get a balance, but we have found that it is difficult to get business men who can speak with a knowledge of the facts equal to that of our labor friends...
...The incidental music at the Democratic Party's San Francisco pow-wow last Fall was the Brannan Plan, the 160-acre limitation on reclamation project water, and jobs through the full development of the West's natural resources, particularly water and power...
...On the international level, the conference went on record as favoring the Marshall Plan stripped of political coercion and economic nationalism, Point Four of the President's program for development of "backward areas," and a sense of "stewardship" in the use of American resources...
...Roosevelt took the McLain side on the question while Warren bluntly opposed McLain...
...No one had ever done that before...
...a former store president once was governor of Oregon...
...It was an editor of the staunchly conservative Oregonian who said, "Hell, we had to print that story even if it cost us every line of advertising...
...Representatives of the clergy and laity, of business and labor, of farm federations and co-ops, sat down to discuss the issue, with great determination and some unanimity of opinion...
...And the 400,000 margin by which McLainism lost may mean something as a portent...
...Of the 23 Representatives in Congress, 12 are Republicans...
...Warren conceded that on some matters affecting legi«£j^S Samish is more powerful tha*^|l Whether the governor's remark was especially politic is debatable, but it was true...
...The program of the church itself, it was agreed, must include not only economic and social training of the clergy and laity through active participation in labor unions and community organizations, but it must conform to the "highest ethical standards" in its own economic problems, wages of church employees, use of invested funds and rentals, and the elimination of racial and economic discrimination in church membership...
...But like the respectable woman who has been raped and is ashamed to report it to the authorities, the newspapers seldom utter any protests when they are thus outraged...
...native and foreign-born...
...The Chamber of Commerce sent out to its 2,100 members the Commission's interpretation of what questions an employer is permitted to ask an applicant...
...But there is a definite feeling that McLain cannot be counted out and that pension politics may be something like a stump fire—one can never be quite sure if it is out...
...outnumbers Democrats in the assembly, 46 to 33...
...A recent experience of the Portland Oregonian shows that a newspaper can win itself widespread public support from liberals and conservatives alike and force even the most arrogant advertiser to capitulate...
...The FEPC measure was introduced by a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and a Negro early in January 1948...
...Gov...
...Conservative forces had been completely out-maneuvered at the first conference of this kind in Pittsburgh three years ago...
...1 sacred cow and perhaps the most powerful institution in the state...
...All the big department stores have joined Stern's and Gimbel's and Wanamaker's in hiring Negro sales clerks, and the city has accepted the innovation with a feeling of relief...
...The Democrats claim this results from the fact that Warren is a lone wolf, that his program was advanced by him as an individual and did not have the force of a political party behind it...
...One of the most conservative members of the state senate comes from the 24th District...
...The newspaper that doesn't respect the wishes of its advertisers is liable to find itself disciplined through loss of advertising revenue...
...Warren has internecine troubles which may prove troublesome...
...To them McLain is something of a 20th Century Moses...
...Here it was met with vague answers and evasive tactics...
...The Commission has approached the problem of discrimination in two ways—through the settlement of charges brought before it and through a broad program of public education...
...Yet, two years later Warren could not carry the state for the Vice Presidency...
...The union was given a copy of the law which provides that if a satisfactory adjustment cannot be reached through conference and conciliation, the Commission has the right to order a public hearing...
...Some newspapers might have capitulated or submitted quietly, but not the Oregonian...
...Churches Face Up To Social Issues By Herbert Hackett Detroit THE argument that the church must take a stand on economic problems is an explosive enough position in itself...
...So will their relatives, because Mc-Lain's pension plan included the neat gimmick of relieving them of financial responsibility for their kin...
...Douglas...
...California's Double Life By George Dean Sacramento FOR TWO decades California has been leading a political double life...
...Republican 11,743...
...The next day the blow fell...
...Conditions prior to the passage of the FEPC ordinance seemed to defy solution on a voluntary basis...
...The Federal Council promptly called these charges "replete with misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and falsities" in a pamphlet entitled The Truth About the Federal Council (297 Fourth Avenue, New York 10...
...But where else would the conservative vote go...
...Last year, however, M & F's employes made an attempt to organize a union...
...He was supported by Frances Perkins, former Secretary of Labor, who insisted that "ministers should teach a knowledge of God" instead of politics, economics, and sociology, "nor should time be wasted in Sunday Schools on this kind of folly...
...The publisher of the supposedly more liberal Journal blandly said, "We printed a story...
...So the notice appeared "Cook Wanted...
...Its political influence is widespread...
...The last three sessions of the legislature were unconvinced that an FEPC was needed...
...Public opinion immediately rallied behind the newspaper...
...II In the latter category are pension politics, which have grown to important proportions in California because of the high percentage of oldsters in the population...
...While it has no crusading militancy and sometimes expresses opinions—on its editorial page— which are to the right of some of Robert A. Taft's, the Oregonian is highly and widely regarded for the fairness with which it reports the news...
...The conference reached substantial agreement on almost all topics—except the problem of "freedom of enterprise and social controls...
...It has won the reputation of being the best newspaper in the Far West in its 100 years of publishing...
...Frequently a man would say: "I would welcome a fair employment law because then I would know everyone would be doing the same thing...
...These changes were initiated by Wanamaker's without any intervention by the Commission...
...The store never had been touched by criticism, always had been given special consideration in assessments, city policy, and planning...
...Negroes no longer have to buck the color line unaided...
...Promotion for this man put heart in the company's other colored workers who for many years had been convinced they had no chance for better jobs and should not apply for them...
...In the recent Collier's expose by Lester Velie, Samish was credited with saying he is the governor of the legislature—"to hell with the governor of the state...
...The more conservative wing of the Republican Party does not like him...
...2. Extensive use of taxation to reduce inequalities...
...When the NLRB decision arrived, the newspaper kept its word...
...More angels than fools, however, attended the four-day conference on the Church and Economic Life of the Federal Council of Churches, Feb...
...rtj| talked fearfully of "big govern* ment," extolled the virtues of "ec% onomic incentive . . . more profit for more performance," and contended there is no "important difference between Communism and Socialism, which use different methods to achieve the same economic ends...
...To this the Democrats reply that the absence of party responsibility has permitted the rise of such phenomena as Artie Samish, the super lobbyist, and the emergence of a variety of unorthodox political movements...
...Directed by a former FBI agent, supervisors quizzed workers...
...The Oregonian will continue to do so...
...16-19, in Detroit...
...Another stood firm in the belief that a Fair Employment law was the best way out because it would relieve the individual store of any unpleasant reaction from its customers or employes...
...Wanamaker's hired its first Negro in the personnel office right after the law went through, and for the Christmas rush of 1949 had 20 colored sales clerks...
...A Negro short order cook was Seed by a restaurant and re-a- white cook...
...Goodwin Knight was brought out of the stable as a stalking horse, with the blessing of Her-, bert Hoover...
...This contains a bitter attack on the Federal Council of Churches, charging it with promoting "the interests of a Socialist revolution in America," with "humble communicants of countless little churches all over this broad land . . . paying the bills for this propaganda drive...
...There are several other curious . examples of the low estate to which party labels have fallen...
...He interviewed more than 100 top executives in business, industry, banking, and education...
...However, if the Democrats have their way, California's centennial year of 1950 will be remembered as the year of the big political revolution...
...The main emphasis is to bring about a change in attitude, and this is primarily a matter of education...
...The Philadelphia FEPC not only helps people directly, but gives them the chance to help themselves...
...Complaints come in against unions as well as against employers...
...III Not even an institution with the power of Meier & Frank could withstand the rising tide of public opinion...
...What happened when the public learned of Meier & Frank's attempt to discipline the Oregonian...
...The Fair Employment law applied to 46,000 Philadelphia employers, and everybody was now in the same boat...
...It concluded that spiritual values must be implemented through a "brotherhood" of all men—a brotherhood to be achieved only through the elimination of economic and social injustice...
...Through the careful editing of the Bell Telephone Company, discriminatory ads of employment agencies were eliminated from the Classified Directory...
Vol. 14 • April 1950 • No. 4
