THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE RAILROADS and the railroad workers of America dominated much of the home front news during the past week. The threatened strike, which brought strenuous if belated efforts at...
...1, FEPC issued an order directing the carriers to cease the practice and the unions to admit Negroes to membership...
...Winfred Overholser, superintendent of the Federal Mental Hospital in Washington, D. C, came up with an encouraging report last week...
...All the frantic and cheap appeals to patriotism issued by the Offices of War Mobilization and War Stabilization cannot obscure this issue...
...It is a strike against inflation for the privileged few and deflation for the many...
...The quota in the new law will permit 105 Chinese to emigrate to the United States annually...
...The Truman Committee's Report Meanwhile, the disposal of the strike threat did not by any means end the nation's critical transportation crisis...
...The "flow of traffic," Sen...
...Mustering-Out Pay The Senate whipped through final passage and sent to the House legislation providing mustering-out pay ranging from $200 to $500, depending upon length and place of service, to honorably discharged veterans of the armed services, both men and women, up to and including the rank of colonel in the Army aid Marine Corps and captain in the Navy and Coast Guard...
...Draft boards functioning in reverse to insure that returning servicemen will be placed in employment for which they are best suited is the recommendation of Henry J. Kaiser, West Coast production wizard...
...Harry S. Truman, Missouri Democrat, issued a timely report warning a transportation breakdown that would postpone victory confronts the country unless it undertakes an immediate program for re-equipping our overburdened transport facilities...
...The FEPC has taken testimony which shows that, although the railroads were short 850 firemen, the Southern roads, under an agreement signed with the operating Brotherhoods, were failing to employ experienced Negro firemen and were seeking inexperienced white men...
...I would like to see the picture a psychiatrist draws of a housewife's brain at 6 o'clock in the evening after listening to soap operas all day...
...If there is any lack of patriotism in this country, the public may look for it, not among the war workers in industry and transportation, but in Washington and in the swivel-chair propagandists of the government itself...
...FEPC has fought bravely if often ineffectually to enforce Executive Order 8,802 which forbids racial and religious discrimination in hiring men for war industries...
...While there still is necessity for sustained production," he said, "the urgent problem is to provide for the future, right now...
...Profits Soar Again A report released last week by Jesse Jones' Commerce Department revealed that corporation profits for the third quarter of this year were $5,700,-000,000 before taxes—-"the highest for any quarter in American economic history and 16 per cent above the same quarter of 1942...
...The government reported this week that United States war casualties totalled 131,098, with 29,317 killed, 40,917 wounded, 32,131 missing, and 28,-733 prisoners...
...Harrison's union is one of the non-operating group, with total membership of 1,100,000, which delayed strike action when the Senate passed the Truman Resolution directing an increase of eight cents an hour for the non-operating employes—an increase which Economic Stabilizer Fred M. Vinson has refused to approve...
...Names And Notes In The News Peak...
...Psychiatric cases have been substantially reduced in the capital city, he said, and the average person now has a better than even chance of remaining sane...
...Traffic for 1943 exceeded that of 1942 by 58 per cent, while 1942 had surpassed 1941 by 42 per cent...
...Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party, last week declared that the American people should "force" President Roosevelt to run for a fourth term in 1944...
...1, 1941, pay level...
...The Committee recommended a higher replacement priority be given domestic carriers immediately lest there be a collapse bringing "incalculable repercussions...
...Reason: The misfits have been weeded out and sent home "where it is easier to be a misfit...
...The threatened strike, which brought strenuous if belated efforts at mediation of the controversy, was the number one development, of course...
...James L. Fly, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, charged before the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee this week that the big radio networks were squeezing out network sustaining programs in favor of those sponsored commercially...
...But greatly significant, also, was the announced determination of the railroads to defy the President's power to prevent discrimination against Negroes, the Truman Committee report warning that a transportation breakdown threatens the country, and the demand for Congressional investigation of railroad accidents following the tragic wreck at Buie, N. C, where more than 70 persons were killed and 100 injured...
...Truman and his associates argued, "must remain free and rapid if we are to increase or even maintain our production and combat tempo...
...After having exhausted all the remedies provided under the law without getting any satisfaction at all, the Brotherhoods polled their members in a strike vote and last week announced the overwhelming verdict for a nationwide walkout...
...The government had agreed to the eight cents recommendation at one time, but later ran out on us," Harrison declared...
...Dies has not answered a roll call or quorum call in the House since Sept...
...Efforts to interrogate Rep...
...A Meaningful Display' President Roosevelt last week signed into law the measure which lifts the ban against Chinese becoming naturalized citizens and permits them to enter the United States on an immigration quota basis...
...On Dec...
...In a copyrighted interview with the United Press last week, Kaiser declared that America has hit its production peak of war materials and it is now time to begin the task of shifting back to peacetime economy...
...The enormity of the strain placed on the railroad system can be appreciated from figures released last week...
...It is this order which the roads have refused to accept, while the Brotherhoods have remained largely silent thus far...
...It was disclosed this week that although Great Britain has refused to ship surplus grain to Believe famine stricken India on the ground that there is a-shortage of available shipping, several hundred thousand tons of shipping are being used to maintain British South African gold mining at higher than prewar levels...
...17, thus making certain that the fight over subsidies will be resumed shortly after Congress reconvenes Jan...
...Fourth Term...
...Catholic opinion, he said, blocked an attempt on the part of NBC to shift the Catholic Hour to a less desirable time in favor of Amos And Andy, but the Town Hall and the Chicago Round Table programs had been relegated to obscure spots despite protests...
...Squeeze...
...Declaring that NBC carries only 105 minutes of sustaining programs and CBS only 235 minutes during the week, Fly said, "I wish that this Committee could hear the NBC programs from 10 in the morning until 6 o'clock in the evening...
...Martin Dies, chairman of the House committee to investigate un-American activities, concerning the committee's expenditures in excess of its appropriations proved futile again this week, because of Dies' absence...
...Joseph B. Eastman, director of the Office of Defense Transportation, issued a report which showed that the "railroads are handling today's vastly increased traffic with actually one-fourth fewer cars, one-third fewer locomotives, and nearly one-third fewer employes than they had in the last war...
...Good News...
...The President characterized the legislation as "another meaningful display" of friendship between two great powers fighting a common enemy, and said he signed the bill "with particular pride and pleasure...
...Warning To The Administration An indication of how hopping mad the railroad workers were, and doubtless still are, was available in the testimony of George M. Harrison, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks...
...Railroad workers do not believe that swollen railroad earnings, larcenous profiteering, soaring prices, and depressed real wages are necessities of the war effort...
...Piled high on President Roosevelt's desk when he returned from his conferences and inspections abroad was a staggering collection of neglected home front problems...
...Accounting...
...The FEPC and the executive order it is charged with enforcing have been under sharp attack from Southern Congressmen, and Washington observers wondered if President Roosevelt would risk their wrath by backing up the FEPC and moving to break the defiance of the railroads...
...Defiance Of FEPC's Order The railroads made major news last week, also, when they defied the Fair Employment Practice Committee's order prohibiting continued discrimination against Negro employes and challenged President Roosevelt's authority to create and empower a committee, by executive decree, to tell the railroads whom they must hire...
...In a ringing statement issued to the country, the officials of the five Brotherhoods declared that they were "thoroughly aware" of a strike's "immediate effects," but that in the long run such action "will redound both to the military success of the war and the present and post-war welfare of the common people of this nation...
...The Senate War Investigating Committee, headed by Sen...
...Kaiser recommended that servicemen fill out questionnaires to determine their vocational preference and that a great risk credit pool be created by business, government, and labor unions to provide the necessary employment...
...After deducting taxes, the Department said, corporation profits were "slightly more than $2,000,000,000, six per cent above the same quarter of 1942...
...30 aAd the three succeeding days as the dates for the progressive walkout...
...Top priority was given to the railroad labor crisis when it was revealed that 97.7 per cent of the 350,000 members of the operating Railroad Brotherhoods had voted to strike and that their leadership had fixed Dec...
...Shipping...
...Other Home Front Developments Other major developments on the home front during the past week were these: Subsidy Showdown Delayed Anxious to adjourn for the holidays, Congress voted last week to postpone a showdown on the bitterly controversial issue of food subsidies...
...Casualties...
...Any other course means the postponement of victory and the increased expenditure of lives and material...
...Appearing before a House committee to press for concurrence in the Senate-approved Truman Resolution, Harrison, long an ardent supporter of the Roosevelt Administration, asserted that the railroad workers were "thoroughly disgusted" with the way Roosevelt Administration officials had been handling the wage dispute and would "tell them so at the next election...
...The Brotherhoods' Ringing Statement In proceedings which were launched nearly a year ago, the five Brotherhoods of operating railroad workers had asked for pay raises of 30 per cent...
...Both houses voted to extend the life of the Commodity Credit Corporation, subsidies and all, until Feb...
...The government had rejected their demands and had awarded them, instead, a four cents an hour increase under the "Little Steel" formula which limits increases to 15 per cent above the Jan...
...Established by the President on June 25, 1941, the...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 52
