THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE Roosevelt Administration's attempt to ram its foreign policies through Congress and the country without public debate fizzled badly last week when a series of disclosures...
...Joseph O'Mahoney, Wyoming Democrat who is ordinarily a warm supporter of Administration proposals, bitterly denounced the proposal soon after the President had urged its adoption...
...It seems to me a terrible, tragic thing at this 'hour, when American free men and women are demonstrating their capacity to triumph over tyranny, we are asked to forge chains to bind those very people who built this tremendous machine of war...
...Members of the U. S. Senate got some straight-from-the-shoulder advice last week from Congressional physician, Dr...
...Conscription...
...Cabling from London, Peter Whitney, correspondent for the Chicago Sun, reported that the Anglo-American rejection of the Kremlin's request has led to a "rapid and even spectacular deterioration" of the diplomatic concord achieved at Yalta...
...A Spanish missionary who has just reached Stockholm from Tokyo, via Russia, told newsmen last week that the Japanese are not invariably cruel to their prisoners and do not persecute foreign residents of their homeland, but there is a definite anti-white wave sweeping Japan...
...The close cooperation between labor and management during the war has made possible our great and unexcelled achievements in war production...
...Their hardhitting chief, John L. Lewis, signed the truce agreement only after wringing a promise from the operators that any pay advances negotiated would be retroactive to the expiration date of the old contract...
...The Nipponese, he said, hate the Germans and do not much regard them as allies...
...I hope that you will press forward with your plans and report to me from time to time the progress achieved...
...Over in London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill threw a monkey wrench into the works with his sharply worded statement that Great Britain would not tolerate discussion of Empire affairs at San Francisco or anywhere else...
...The Tennessee legislature has repealed the poll tax but the state supreme court held the repeal legislation unconstitutional...
...Biggest news was made by President Roosevelt's admission—47 days after the Yalta conference—that he, Stalin, and Churchill had secretly agreed that the U. S. and the U.S.S.R...
...Last week, however, retiring War Mobilizer James F. Byrnes (see below) let the cat out of the bag with the disclosures that the Administration wanted power to draft workers "not only for war production, but also for production of essential civilian goods...
...See editorial, Page 16) The American and British governments refused to accept the Moscow demand, leading to a further straining of inter-Allied relations...
...This bill is the repudiation of democracy...
...It is the adoption of the principles upon which Hitler regimented the workers of Germany and Stalin, the people of Russia...
...Hitler Controls' Face Defeat The prolonged and bitter struggle over manpower controls neared a showdown in the Senate this week, with every indication pointing to a severe setback for the Administration...
...Last week a Tennessee court declared the poll tax illegal and ordered the refund of money collected from a voter under protest...
...Prior to announcing his resignation, Byrnes issued a statement in which he congratulated the American people for the good spirit they have shown in accepting wartime restrictions and regulations...
...To make these workers subject to heavy penalties and to impose upon them a condition which approximates slavery at this stage of the World War is unjustifiable «md indefensible...
...I shall be happy to cooperate with you in every way possible...
...I am very pleased to learn of your plans to organize a committee of representatives of industry and organized labor to ensure the continued close cooperation between labor and management to win the war and the peace...
...Advice...
...The total included men killed, honorably discharged, prisoners of war, missing, and assignment of men to inactive duty...
...Strike Averted...
...Poll Tax...
...would get 3 votes apiece on the proposed world Assembly, partly to offset.the fact that Great Britain and her brood of Empire relations would have 6 votes...
...President Roosevelt abruptly cancelled his press conference that day to avoid questioning by newsmen, leaving Stettinius to face the music...
...The fight against the poll tax continues in the South...
...and later, to facilitate reconversion...
...The State Department, it was learned, has a million and a quarter copies of a propaganda pamphlet on Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta which it still proposes to distribute even though it contains a section describing assembly votes in the proposed world security organization as being on the basis of sovereign equality, with each nation having but one vote...
...A settlement of the entire controversy^ had seemed possible earlier in the week when Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins submitted a compromise solution which omitted the UMW demand for a royalty of 10 cents a ton to be used for medical and unemployment insurance...
...Labor And Industry Sign A Pact The terms of a "practical partnership" of American labor and management which might mark an historic step in the improvement of labor-capital relations was announced to the nation last week...
...Follow the example of the House, he advised the hardworking Senators, and take a little breathing spell— a recess...
...William Green, president of the AFL, bitterly denounced the Administration-demanded bill as "smacking of slavery...
...President Roosevelt, goaded by the brass-hats in the War Department, has continued to press for power to conscript American labor, ostensibly as an emergency, wartime device to assure uninterrupted production of war materials...
...The missionary said that "if Hitler were so misguided as to flee to Japan after losing the war, he would probably be shot...
...The working men and women of America, through their skill and service, contributed very largely to the inevitable defeat of the German armies...
...Sen...
...Of the American-Soviet grab of extra voting strength on the Assembly, Whitney said that "the news has come as a shock to the governments of the small nations here whose representatives express disillusionment that the United States, traditional champion of the sovereign equality of nations, now is demanding representation as if it were triply sovereign...
...This admission by Byrnes that regimentation of labor was proposed for the postwar period weakened the Administration's ease virtually beyond repair...
...Lewis limited the truce to 30 days because the mine owners had placed a limitation on their financial obligations under the pledge of retroactive payment...
...Appointed to succeed him is Fred M. Vinson, who in less than one month has been shifted from Economic Stabilization Director to Federal Loan Administrator to the vacancy left by Byrnes...
...But instead we get a bill which imposes the heavy hand of government upon the head of every man, woman, and child who has contributed to the superlative work which has made this nation's.achievement the glory of all history...
...The Senate seemed set this week to kill the revised manpower control bill which squeezed through the House of Representatives by a vote of 167 to 160...
...Although Stalin had agreed at Yalta to "broaden" his Polish regime with more democratic representation, the Polish government for which he was demanding a voice at the conference was precisely the same made-in-Moscow regime which formerly operated as the Lublin government...
...The War Department disclosed last week that 1,716,000 men have been separated from the Army since the war began...
...Lewis accepted Miss Perkins' plan, but the operators rejected it because, they claimed, it would increase the basic earnings of miners $1.61 a day...
...Byrnes will stay on his job until Vinson is broken in to his new duties and until V-E Day, which the retiring official said "is not far distant...
...This secret agreement was effectively suppressed until one day last week Bert Andrews, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Herald-Tribune, broke an exclusive story spilling the beans...
...Moscow contributed its share to the upheaval with the demand that its puppet government in Warsaw be permitted representation in San Francisco...
...Secretary of State Edward R. Stet-tinius frantically got in touch with President Roosevelt, and the two of them, aided by their staffs, threw together an official statement admitting the truth of the report...
...The Secretary of State was subjected to a merciless examination by the press, but postponed answering every one of the more than two-score questions fired at him...
...That close cooperation must be continued to make possible the full employment of labor and capital under our system of free competitive enterprise when hostilities cease...
...George W. Calver...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE Roosevelt Administration's attempt to ram its foreign policies through Congress and the country without public debate fizzled badly last week when a series of disclosures touched off national discussion that was sharply critical of many a recent development...
...Agreement on a 30-day truce averted a strike in the nation's coal fields this week after the 400,000 members of the United Mine Workers bad voted 8 to 1 to strike...
...Names And Notes In The News Byrnes Out...
...Tokyo Report...
...Johnston, Murray, and Green unveiled a 7-point charter calling for (1) a peacetime program based on high production and employment, (2) protection of "the rights of private property and free choice of action, under a system of competitive capitalism," (3) safeguarding of management "from unnecessary Government interference or burdensome restrictions," (4) the recognition of "the fundamental rights of labor to organize and engage in collective bargaining" which must be kept "free from legislative enactments which would interfere with or discourage these objectives," (5) the building of an economic system which will "protect the individual against the hazards of unemployment, old age, and physical impairments, beyond his control," (6) the development of vastly increased foreign trade, (7) the establishment of a security organization with full participation by all the United Nations, capable of preventing aggression and assuring a lasting peace...
...President Roosevelt hailed the plan for postwar industrial peace and termed such cooperation essential to full employment when hostilities cease...
...The National Education Association, representing 300,000 of the nation's 875,000 teachers, last week joined other religious and educational organizations in opposing the enactment at the present time of legislation making peacetime military conscription compulsory...
...This measure would have given the Government vast authority to freeze men to their jobs, set employment ceilings for individual plants, and regulate or forbid the hiring of new workers...
...He promised that Vic-tory-In-Europe Day would bring the curfew, the brown-out, and the racing ban to an end and would release more automobiles, refrigerators, and gasoline in 9 months...
...Rapid Deterioration' The leak of the secret agreement was not the only development to harass the Roosevelt Administration in its conduct of foreign policy...
...Separations...
...We were originally asked to pass a bill imposing a labor draft on slackers between the ages of 18 and 45...
...It seems inconceivable that having reached a war stage when it is clearly evident that the German armies are decisively defeated, that Congress would even consider the passage of a bill which smacks of slavery...
...Eric Johnston, smooth, able president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, and William Green and Philip Murray, presidents respectively of the AFL and the CIO, signed their names to a "new charter of labor and management" designed to bring about high postwar employment and production "under a system of private competitive capitalism...
...War Mobilization Director James Byrnes, whose official duties around Washington carried with them such power that he was frequently referred to as "Assistant President," quit his job this week...
...With a tremendous burst of publicity, the Messrs...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
