THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE NATION weathered its most serious labor-management crisis of the war this week. In two vital fields, steel and rail transportation, operations were proceeding at normal...
...The Senator contended that Morgenthau "knows nothing about the Renegotiation of Contracts Act and less about how it is actually administered...
...Brehon B. Somervell, commander of the Army Service Forces, struck back last week at charges that the $134,-000,000 Canol oil development project in Canada is a total waste to the taxpayers and would benefit only the Imperial Oil Company, a Standard Oil of New Jersey subsidiary...
...But so is the drafting of human life and citizens with families an arbitrary action...
...Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau touched off the explosion when he denounced the Committee bill as "worse than no bill at all...
...Light novels and non-fiction written solely for entertainment have suffered the most in popularity, while works dealing with politics and international affairs have risen most in esteem...
...He was especially furious at the decision to slash the Treasury demand for $10,500,000,000 in new taxes to about a fifth of that amount, and Finance Committee amendments recasting the Act for the Renegotiation of War Contracts...
...Roosevelt was trying to give up his "tattered emblem" and evidently believes "the leopard can change his spots...
...When the WLB reversed itself, Philip Murray, leader of the steelworkers, ordered the men back to work while the union prepared to resume negotiations with management for a wage increase which would shatter the so-called "Little Steel" formula...
...Meanwhile, President Roosevelt indicated that he might take a hand in the row when Congress reassembles...
...Joseph Guffey, Pennsylvania Democrat, and a group of Southern Democrats over the soldier vote bill...
...It announced a new Soviet national anthem to replace the famed Internationale...
...Their chief complaint of the moment had been that the War Labor Board had refused to agree to approve retroactive payment of wage increases if the unions were successful in winning more money...
...The Wyoming Democrat was sharply critical of the debate which raged in Congress in the closing weeks of the 1943 session and he urged the people generally to recognize the constitutional question involved...
...The WLB, however, backed down early this week after President Roosevelt had cut the ground from under it by issuing a statement favoring an agreement that wage adjustments would be applied retroactively to the date of contract expiration...
...Strife Over Soldier Voting The bitter controversy over soldier voting in the 1944 elections will be renewed when Congress reconvenes Jan...
...Personally, I feel strongly that we owe it to our fighting forces to eliminate as far as humanly possible excessive war profits, as well as to remove the possibility of a new crop of war profiteers...
...However, the President's expert on petroleum, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, has denounced the project as a scandalous waste...
...Tangle Over War Profits Another major controversy awaiting the return of Congress revolves around hotly disputed provisions of the new tax bill as it rode through the Senate Finance Committee shortly before adjournment...
...Defense...
...The latter law is designed to permit the federal government to recapture excess profits on war contracts by renegotiating the terms of the contract at a subsequent date...
...Steel Paralysis Averted Meanwhile, complete paralysis of the vital steel industry was averted this week when the War Labor Board backed down from a previous position on retroactive wage increases for members of the United Steel Workers of America...
...In two vital fields, steel and rail transportation, operations were proceeding at normal wartime levels following dramatic developments in Washington...
...Meanwhile, the Army has decided not only to go ahead with the development, over the objections of the Navy, the War Production Board, and the Petroleum Administration, but to expand it as an essential military...
...George apparently did not speak for the entire Committee, for Sens...
...Profits outside of what are reasonable and legitimate and necessary to prevent impairment of private industry after the war are indefensible...
...The President directed Henry L. Stimson, the aged Secretary of War, to take over the carriers, and Stimson in turn placed management of the roads in the hands of Lieut...
...The American people the day after Pearl Harbor adopted the slogan 'Win the War.' After two years, Mr, Roosevelt has caught up with them...
...The Moscow radio disclosed a shift in emphasis last week...
...Murray had remained silent during the period of work stoppage when some 140,000 men failed to report to work in a half dozen steel states, although no formal strike had been called...
...Three operating Brotherhoods, the Brotherhood of Firemen, the Order of Railway Conductors, and the Switchmen's Union of North America, had not yet agreed to submit to Presidential arbitration at the time government seizure was decreed...
...The Senate Finance Committee voted to amend the law by eliminating from renegotiation the makers of so-called standard articles and by granting retroactive exemption to sub-contractors whose goods do not enter into the final product...
...Penicillin...
...He said that "the renegotiation law is, to be sure, arbitrary, and only justified in time of war...
...From the liberals who have clung to the President as the hope of American progressivism, there was only a pained silence...
...O'Mahoney predicted that if Congress would submit such an amendment when it returns later this month, special sessions of state legislatures "can and will be held before the end of that month to ratify the amendment...
...Brehon Somervell, commander of the Army Service Forces...
...Acting with a suddenness which stunned the nation, President Roosevelt ordered government seizure of the railroads just when a settlement of the rail labor controversy seemed near...
...The new anthem hails Russia as a "republic of the free," omits mention of world revolution, and refers to "our free Motherland...
...Coupled with the previously granted four cents an hour general increase, the White House award would give the operating employes a net gain of nine cents an hour...
...I predict that if they are enacted into law, they will come back to plague not only the Congress, but the war goods manufacturers who get temporary gain from these amendments...
...The fear of many an American liberal that President Roosevelt has abandoned the New Deal—a term used to describe the home front fight for the common man—was confirmed last week by the President himself when he announced that "New Deal" has been outmoded as descriptive of his Administration and should be replaced by "Win the War" or some other slogan reflective of the war effort...
...The new wonder drug, penicillin, has saved the lives of six men and a seven-year-old boy who had been doomed by a fatal heart disease, Reading Tastes...
...Labor-management contracts in hundreds of plants expired Christmas eve and more than 140,000 men stayed away from the mill after the holiday because no new contract had been signed...
...The President's retreat became the subject for gleeful comment by Republican opponents...
...The latter had rallied around the Green-Lucas bill which proposed to have the federal government send a federal ballot to American service men and women around the world—the whole procedure to be administered by a bi-partisan electoral commission...
...Agreeing that the project was uneconomic and of little value as a commercial undertaking, Somervell insisted, however, that it was dictated by desperate necessity "when the Japs were knocking at our doors...
...He might also have been referring to the group of 25 members of the House who denounced the Senate measure as "a substitute for democracy" and "a slap in the face" for those in the armed services...
...His proposed amendment to the federal constitution would provide for the "participation of soldiers in the coming election and for counting in every state of the ballots which they shall cast under such law...
...Morgenthau asserted that these provisions "open the way to truly extortionate profits...
...Names And Notes In The News Confirmation...
...Walsh, who is also chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, declared that "when tha record of profit-making on war contracts is disclosed, the American people will, in my opinion, be shocked...
...Southern Democrats successfully fought the measure on the ground that it was an unconstitutional invasion of the right of the states to conduct elections...
...The President arbitrated demands of the operating unions by providing for a wage increase of five cents an hour in lieu of overtime pay after 40 hours a week or layoff expenses between train runs...
...Also awarded them was a week's vacation with pay at basic hourly rates each year...
...Walsh Exposes Profiteering Sen...
...He told his press conference last week that federal machinery should be provided to permit every serviceman to cast a ballot in major elections next year...
...Morgenthau's denunciation of the Committee's action brought an angry reply from Sen...
...Actual operation of the roads remained in the hands of private management, and the Army announced it would make no attempt to police the roads unless there were untoward developments, such as violence...
...Sen...
...But the spots still remain," Spangler said...
...Shift...
...Under the law, more than five billion dollars have been returned to the Treasury...
...The issue will confront the House of Representatives in the form of a Senate-approved measure which recommends to the states that they provide the electoral machinery to permit soldiers to cast absentee ballots from their stations anywhere in the world...
...This is conscription without representation," the House bloc had charged...
...David Walsh, Massachusetts Democrat, and Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, announced they would fight the decision of their colleagues...
...Early Ratification Predicted Sen...
...Joseph C. O'Ma-honey, Wyoming Democrat, called on Congress to "act in a constitutional manner" by adopting a constitutional amendment which would end the current muddle...
...Harrison E. Spangler, chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared that Mr...
...Walter George, Georgia Democrat, who is chairman of the powerful Finance Committee...
...O'Mahoney's reference to "heated epithets" was doubtless meant to include the boiling exchange of insults in the Senate between Sen...
...This bill passed the Senate after a sizzling row which saw the defeat of Administration forces...
...Army operation of the railroads was regarded largely as a paper device designed to smash the threat of a strike...
...President Roosevelt ordered the government to take over the roads after two operating and 15 non-operating unions had agreed to submit to his arbitration...
...President Roosevelt chimed in with the observation that he had approved the Canol project at a time when it appeared there might be great military action in the Alaskan and Aleutian area...
...Lieut...
...The American Library Association reported this week that while there is a general decrease in reading, there is an improvement in reading taste...
...operation for the offensive against Japan...
...Congress, he maintained, "instead of hurling heated epithets at one another, should undertake immediately to abolish all constitutional obstacles that may be deemed to stand between the soldiers of this country and their right to vote in the next election...
...Last week, concerned about the imminent outbreak of new and more bitter strife, Sen...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 1
