THE AMERICAN WAY
The American Way THE Roosevelt Administration's renewed demand for power to conscript labor was dealt a double blow of knockout force last week when its two principal arguments were riddled by...
...Thus, it would seem that if Mr...
...Just as the House of Representatives has an exceptional opportunity to rescue the Senate from the disastrous amendments which would wreck the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Senate is now presented with a chance to rectify the mistake made by the House in failing to provide for the school lunch program...
...The Illinois Democrat has a lot of questions he wants to ask Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and his associates...
...McNutt asserted on the basis of all the official evidence that voluntary manpower mobilization "has been a success" in providing "the vast majority of war plants with the manpower they needed" and that the job was done in a democratic, American manner "with an unprecedented degree of participation by labor, management, and local communities...
...The presence of a compulsory labor law did nothing to prevent the work stoppages...
...ADOLPH J. SABATH, Illinois Democrat, deserves a hearty round of applause from those who have wondered why the War Department is beating the bushes for more men and talking darkly of forcing the physically and mentally handicapped into labor battalions when its own ranks are jammed with idle manpower...
...Examining only one phase of the War Department's swollen personnel, the forthright Congressman announced he had secured "reliable information" that 30,000 Army officers "are sitting around with nothing to do...
...He found, he says, that you can't shout slogans like "Make the World Safe for Democracy" or "The War to End War" at the soldiers...
...We've come a far way since 1917...
...He is especially interested, he said, in knowing "how these cocktail-lounge officers got their appointments and why they are being kept in service when experienced officers with Army careers behind them are being let out...
...The almost incredible indifference of House Tories to the school lunch program, so vital in eliminating the nutritional defects in the diets of six million American school children, brought sharp protests from Sen...
...The job has now been done on a voluntary basis...
...During March, for instance, nearly one million working days were lost—greater than the strike total for the entire year of 1941—despite the presence on the British statute books of precisely the type of legislation demanded by the President...
...There is some hope, though, that Rep...
...We have so many of them they are just getting in each other's way...
...If you do, he reports, they merely retort: "Bunk...
...At last, thank heaven, we have an authentic War to End War Slogans...
...Pointing to the heavy draft rejections for physical defects, many of which are traceable to inadequate diets during the childhood days of the inductees, both Senators asserted that neglect of this program would have tragic consequences on the future health of our people...
...The "me too" press followed this Presidential explanation with learned dissertations on how Britain had all but abolished wartime strikes by its national service legislation...
...Roosevelt has faith in the facts presented by his own manpower chairman and if he will heed the experience of our friends and allies, the British, he will recognize that his two reasons for demanding dictatorial controls over manpower have no validity under present circumstances, and he will be converted, as McNutt was, to the democratic, cooperative, American way of dealing with the problem...
...Roosevelt has told us we need compulsory controls over labor in order to banish strikes— which are virtually non-existent, by the way...
...Sabath may succeed in getting at the facts about the cocktail-lounge colonels since he is an incorrigibly stalwart supporter of the Roosevelt Administration and may thus be in a position to break through the secrecy which surrounds the War Department like a medieval moat...
...Two Opportunities THERE'S a chance for a double play in Congress whereby each house can prevent the other from committing a serious blunder...
...The first argument, that voluntary recruitment of manpower has failed, was refuted by the War Manpower Commission's Chairman Paul V. Mc-Nutt, who testified that the manpower situation has improved greatly in recent months, and that while he would have "welcomed something like" a National Service Act 18 months ago, he saw no need for it now...
...This powerful, official reply to the false charge that labor, management, and the country generally have failed to deliver under a system of democratic volunteer methods came during the same week that the Administration's second argument for totalitarian controls over manpower was shattered by actual developments in England...
...Others who have sought this and similar information have been trapped on the Pentagon treadmill...
...In recent weeks labor unrest in Great Britain boiled over into a series of crippling strikes of far-ranging significance...
...We are spending billions to destroy life and property all over the world and additional billions to help feed our Allies...
...I want to know why the Army doesn't put them out in the field to get experience instead of letting them sit around in cocktail bars and swivel chairs...
...He wants to "find out how many officers we have, where they are stationed, what their experience is, what jobs or functions they are performing, and, in general, how they are being used to win the war...
...Why undo it...
...Supporters of TVA in the House appear to be gaining strength in their drive to kill the crippling McKellar amendments, while in the Senate forces favoring the retention of the school lunch program are preparing for a showdown fight to restore appropriations for the lunch program knocked out by reactionary forces in the House...
...William B. Pugh, Philadelphia, representing the country's Protestantism, recently returned from a 40,000-mile tour of the principal battlefronts...
...Richard Russell, Georgia Democrat...
...The American Way THE Roosevelt Administration's renewed demand for power to conscript labor was dealt a double blow of knockout force last week when its two principal arguments were riddled by actual developments...
...Sabath declared...
...George Aiken, Vermont Republican, and Sen...
...The cocktail lounges all over the country are full of them," Rep...
...Cocktail-Lounge Colonels REP...
...Isn't $50,000,000 a trifling sum to spend to help safeguard the health of a whole generation of Americans ? Progress Since 17 DR...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 16
