THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW SENATE ratification of the San Francisco charter of the United Nations by overwhelming majority became a certainty this week after the Foreign Relations Committee had voted 21 to...
...I'm not a red-baiter," Flynn said...
...Morse assailed the amendment as the "first great move in a union-busting drive," but it was adopted in both houses...
...Joseph Martin, Republican leader in the House of Representatives, this week introduced a resolution calling on Administration leaders to obtain an agreement from other nations of the world to abandon "peacetime military conscription of youth for military service...
...The measure makes $35,000,000 available to OWI, less than the $42,000,000 recommended by the Budget Bureau but considerably more than the $18,000,000 which the House voted in first passing the bill...
...Tom Paine, English-born author whose great writings, Common Sense, The Crisis, and Age of Reason, fanned the flames of the American Revolution, became a posthumous citizen of New Rochelle, N. Y., last week...
...The 10th anniversary of the passage of the bitterly contested Wagner Labor Relations Act was marked last week by members of Congress and other public officials with an impromptu party for Sen...
...Malnutrition, sickness, insufficient medical care, poor housing, inadequate clothing, bare homes, limited education, meager cultural and recreational advantages, continuous struggle, and lack of opportunity are characteristic of the lives of these Americans who are not receiving a living wage for their toil...
...But I don't want this nation to collaborate with Russia...
...Morse also fought a last-minute amendment which prohibited the use of funds for the national War Labor Board to be used in connection with labor disputes between migratory labor workers and packers and processors of food products, mainly in the Southwest...
...I don't want to starve her or attack her...
...Shipstead, absent when the Committee voted, said later he had no objection to the charter being reported "without prejudice" on his part...
...Passage of the bill Had been held up for weeks and it was tossed back and forth between Senate and House 6 times in 43 days, largely because the Southern bloc sought to destroy the Fair Employment Practice Committee, the agency charged with preventing racial and religious discrimination in the employment of workers for federally-financed projects...
...The most listened-to opponent of the charter was John T. Flynn, New York publicist, who warned that the charter is only a part of an American foreign policy embracing the world bank, world monetary fund, and other financial arrangements for which the U. S. will pay the bill—until it goes bankrupt...
...If communism can succeed, let it succeed on its own merits...
...Sen...
...Committee Hears Both Sides Witnesses appearing in behalf of the charter represented a wide variety of educational, social, labor, and women's organizations, while the opposition group came largely from peace societies and individuals who were opposed to the charter either because it was a threat to peace in that it did not go far enough in establishing world government, or that it was too internationalist and would involve the U. S. in endless intervention and war...
...Committee hearings on the charter were largely uneventful...
...Benefits...
...Wagner modestly disclaimed the tributes, and devoted himself to a defense of the famed labor act which bears his name—now under terrific attack by Sens...
...Amends...
...A bill proposing to boost maximum unemployment compensation payments to $25 a week through Federal aid was introduced in the House last week by Chairman Doughton, North Carolina Democrat, of the House Ways and Means Committee...
...I don't want to pay the bills for Russia to make her economic system successful, to enable her to tighten her hold on the millions of people she has taken over...
...Although this clearly represents a severe setback for the agency which will get less than half what it requested and will have to curtail operations sharply, the action of Congress does at least keep the FEPC alive at a time when it seemed headed for almost certain destruction...
...John Rankin, Mississippi Democrat, received a severe rebuff from his associates on the House Veterans Committee last week when a majority signed a "minority" report charging Rankin, their chairman, with "railroading through the committee" a bill exempting veterans from the closed shop provisions of union contracts...
...The investigating Senators recommended that the WLB adopt the "cost-of-living" approach in" adjusting sub-standard wages and urged Congress to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act "with a view of raising the statutory minimum wage and broadening the coverage of the act...
...He denounced both Republican and Democratic leadership for the manner in which the FEPC has been treated...
...Present WLB minimum is 55 cents an hour which the Senators said is much too low...
...Even the 15 per cent increase helps the low-paid worker little, the Committee said, because the costs of food and clothing—most essential needs—have gone up at least 40 to 70 per cent, respectively...
...Sole dissenting vote on the Committee came from California's Sen...
...The report was signed by 11 members of the 21-man committee...
...President Truman has urged passage of such legislation to provide adequate benefits for workers temporarily unemployed during the reconversion period...
...Rebuff...
...But the Administration leadership forced this compromise on the Congress and in my opinion it would be better if the FEPC had not a single cent rather than insufficient funds on which to operate...
...The Senators' case appeared strengthened by a report issued by the U. S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics...
...The gathering, ostensibly scheduled to mark the formal installation of Paul M. Herzog as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, turned into a surprise party for Sen...
...Ball, Burton, and Hatch who are seeking to wreck many of its most important provisions...
...The Committee members—Sens...
...Such a policy will not only not prevent war, but will enable aggressor nations to keep what they have taken and in the case of Russia, help her build a communist economy that threatens the American economy...
...Passage of the appropriations bill represented a victory for the Office^of War Information, which has been under heavy attack in Congress...
...Paine, who died in 1809, shunned and despised as a radical and a drunkard, was refused the right to vote by the city of New Rochelle 139 years ago...
...Pepper, chairman, Thomas, and Tunnell, Democrats, Aiken, Republican, and La Follette, Progressive—pointed out that 10,000,000 of the nation's 28,000,000 workers in private non-agricultural employment, exclusive of domestic servants and professional workers, receive less than 65 cents an hour, 5,000,000 of them less than 50 cents, and 2,000,000 less than 40 cents an hour...
...Officials of the War Department admitted to Senate investigators last week that the Army, which originally estimated the Pan-American highway could be constructed for $14,714,000, spent $42,715,591 on it, and then dropped the job uncompleted...
...The Committee's action came after only 5 days of public hearings and the charter was promptly scheduled for the calendar of Monday, July 23, when debate begins...
...In the form in which it finally rode through both houses last week, the measure makes $250,000 available for FEPC...
...Elimination of peacetime conscription as a policy of nations would be the greatest single act of statesmanship in the immediate present, the GOP leader asserted...
...By the Fall of 1944 that expenditure had risen to $700...
...If she can succeed, I don't want to do anything to stop her...
...In lauding Wagner's contribution to the development of a democratic labor movement, Herzog pledged there would be no change in the objective laid down in the law—namely, "protection of the rights of millions of wage earners to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing...
...The Senators contended that while the WLB showed an alert approach to dealing with below-standard wages during the early years of its existence it subsequently "inexplicably reversed itself, rejected the recommendations of the regional boards, and fixed 50 cents an hour as the maximum allowable wage rate under the sub-standard principle...
...Robert Wagner, New York Democrat...
...I do not think," he said, "that my party has lived up to its pledge made at the convention or it never would have agreed to this compromise...
...Waste...
...Colorado's Sen...
...THE WEEK IN REVIEW SENATE ratification of the San Francisco charter of the United Nations by overwhelming majority became a certainty this week after the Foreign Relations Committee had voted 21 to 1 for a favorable recommendation to the full Senate...
...Formal amends were made last week when New Rochelle conferred citizenship on Paine...
...Bureau officials revealed after a nationwide survey that in 1942 the family or individual with an income of less than $1,000 a year spent $500 a year on food...
...If a mutual understanding can be reached between nations and peoples that the policy of gigantic systems of universal compulsory military service should be eliminated," Martin said, "it would relieve the U. S. and all other nations of the necessity to assume this great new burden at a time when we must build, reconstruct, and readjust the world to peace...
...Anniversary...
...Senators Demand Higher Minimum An attack on the War Labor Board's "hesitancy and irresolution" in meeting the sub-standard wage problem and a demand that Congress act on the La Follette-Pepper proposal to make 65 cents an hour the minimum wage where sub-standard pay is the issue highlighted a significant report by a subcommittee of the Senate's Committee on Education and Labor...
...Names And Notes In The News Draft Ban...
...Hiram Johnson, aged, ailing, but still spirited veteran of the fight against the League of Nations some 25 years ago...
...E. D. Millikin questioned State Department spokesmen sharply on the extent to which the charter commits the U. S. to underwrite the policies of other nations, and the extent to which it deprives Congress of its constitutional authority to be the sole voice in declaring war, but no new evidence or interpretation was forthcoming...
...Dough-ton, a conservative who is thought to oppose such an increase, emphasized that he had introduced the bill "by request...
...Shift...
...Sub-standard rates of pay have meant poverty, ill-health, and degradation for millions of American citizens," the Senators asserted in their report...
...The study disclosed that despite all Federal efforts to hold down the cost of living, there has been a 50 per cent rise since 1942 in the outlay for food for the lowest income group...
...This figure has since been raised to 55 cents an hour.] The WLB's Little Steel formula is a hindrance rather than a help to the low-paid workers, the Senators declared...
...Wayne Morse, hard-hitting Oregon Republican, led the last Senate fight for a decent appropriation...
...I don't want to go to war with Russia to transfer Poland from under the heel of Russian dictatorship after cooperating in putting her there...
...FEPC Kept Alive-For The Moment After weeks of bitter wrangling and a revolting display of race prejudice on the part of a clique of Southern Bourbons, Congress last week completed action on the $769,000,000 appropriations bill for 17 war agencies...
...Morse emphasized the critical fact that democracy is on trial in the world, and it will be judged in part on the way it deals with its own minorities...
...Wagner...
...John W. Snyder was shifted this week by President Truman from his post as Federal Loan Administrator to that of Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion, where he succeeds Fred M. Vinson, recently appointed Secretary of the Treasury...
...Sen...
...Minnesota's Sen...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
