THE WEEK IN REVIEW
THE WEEK IN REVIEW THE Truman Administration appeared this week to have lost the first round in its battle for a New Deal reconversion program. The word "appeared" is used because it is far from...
...George won a majority of the Finance Committee to his position...
...Fulbright of Arkansas, and Radcliffe of Maryland, and two other Republicans, Sens...
...Elliot Broke...
...The UAW launched an industry-wide drive for a 30 per cent wage increase against strenuous opposition from the owners...
...Amendments designed to weaken and water down the principal provisions of the bill were defeated by a 5 to 5 tie vote, and the measure moved on to the full Committee "amended but unimpaired...
...000 Federal workers, chiefly in industrial operations, and 400, 000 maritime workers, including seamen, not now protected by unemployment compensation...
...Sen...
...Reports of the FBI this week disclosed that there has been an increase in every type of crime except involuntary manslaughter, such as deaths in automobile accidents, during the first six months of 1945...
...Payment in no case could exceed $200 and no provision is made for moving household goods...
...Any attempt to provide full employment for one group at the expense of others would be destined to failure and would end in cleavages and group struggles...
...The total may be even higher now, the investigators said...
...1, the Office of Defense Transportation decreed last week...
...Chrysler workers are scheduled to ballot Sept...
...The portion of the bill providing for Federal aid to make possible maximum payment of $25 for 26 weeks was omitted from the "essential" classification and carried only as "desirable...
...Truman which he used to help defeat that portion of the Kilgore Bill in the Committee...
...A second major portion of the Truman Administration's reconversion program—the Murray Full Employment Bill—also experienced rocky weather in its initial tests, but here the prospects were somewhat more hopeful...
...A union pamphlet charged that the industry's 200 companies are managed by the "most powerful single group of industrialists in the world" who set the nation's wage pattern...
...There were nearly 12,000 arrests of youths under 16, of whom 2,000 were 14 and under...
...Peacetime productive use of atomic power is "a number of years, in fact a number of decades, away," according to Maj...
...The FBI also noted that the criminal age has gone down as the crime rate has gone up—a direct reflection of the increase of juvenile delinquency in wartime...
...Meany denounced "the pseudo trade unions of Russia," which, he said, "have resulted in virtual enslavement for millions of peasants, workers, and professional people...
...The strikes were called in the parts concerns in defiance of UAW leadership...
...The serious national shortage of doctors, dentists, and nurses will be alleviated soon when the War Department places in operation a plan to release 40,000 medical officers and 25,000 nurses by the end of the year...
...Labor Strife...
...Officials of the UAW revealed that they would petition for a strike vote in 135 General Motors plants if the corporation failed to meet the wage demand for its 300,000 employes...
...Atomic Train...
...Names And Notes In The News Warning...
...Jobs cannot be found for veterans if they are not also found for other workers," Gen...
...The Wage-Hour Division of the Department of Labor issued a report last week revealing that at the peak of the war effort a year ago nearly 5,000,-000 American workers were still being paid less than 40 cents an hour...
...During the war," Reuther said, "Government funds financed the creation of an industrial giant which can produce untold billions of wealth...
...29-30 meeting in Detroit to decide whether to seek a strike vote...
...Wayne Morse, Oregon Republican, warned that if Congress emasculated the bill, the American people "will and should" turn those responsible out of office in next year's general elections...
...A long developing labor-management crisis, especially in the heavy, mass-production industries, gathered tremendous momentum this week...
...One tea-cupful of the mercury atoms, exploded," an official said, "would run a locomotive, pulling 120 freight cars, for 45 round trips between New York and San Francisco...
...Wartime restrictions on conventions and group meetings will end Oct...
...Bush of Delaware, and Hickenlooper of Iowa...
...Walter Reuther, able UAW vice president, said he hoped there was "enough intelligence and common sense" for negotiations instead of a strike...
...Reuther proposed that negotiations between General Motors, key concern in the industry, and the union be opened to the public and the press, since, he said, the issues were "so fundamental in terms of the economic welfare of the community and the nation as a whole...
...The split in Republican ranks was accentuated at a GOP caucus where party leaders sought in vain to agree on whether or how to fight the Murray Bill...
...The process was so complex, he said, that "I cannot imagine any civilian effort being worked on with the same intensity" as was applied to the bomb...
...Testimony placed before Congressional investigators by Brig...
...2Travel pay allowances for returning a migrant ? war worker and his dependents to his old home or a new job...
...The word "appeared" is used because it is far from clear whether the President cared enough to make a fight for what had been the number one request in his 21-point program—passage of the Kilgore Bill's principal provision which called for Federal aid to the states to permit payment of maximum unemployment compensation benefits of $25 a week for 26 weeks...
...Atomic Power...
...The national spotlight was focused on the automobile and steel industries where two of the biggest, strongest, and best-managed of the CIO unions, the United Automobile Workers and the United Steelworkers, were coming to grips with powerful segments of capital and management...
...Murray maintained that the steel industry charged the American people more than $2,000,000,000 in "open and concealed profits" in five years of war production...
...Murders were up four per cent, rape nine per cent to an all-time high, and robbery, assault, and burglary increased 10, 11, and 12 per cent...
...Party Lines Scrambled Both political parties are deeply split on the Full Employment Bill, just as they are on many another measure, such as the Kilgore Bill...
...In the form in which it cleared the Committee, the Kilgore Bill provides, in addition to extension of benefit payments to 26 weeks, for: 1Unemployment compensation coverage for 3,000...
...Amendments by Sen...
...Tobey, New Hampshire Republican...
...an additional amount would be used for a social security fund for death benefits, health, accident, hospital, surgical, and medical coverage, while the balance of the 30 per cent increase would be distributed in the form of a blanket raise in the hourly rates of all employes covered by the union agreement...
...George a memo dividing the provisions of the bill into two categories, "essential," and "desirable...
...Bitterness between the rival houses of organized labor increased last week when George Meany, vice president of the AFL, charged before the British Trades Union Congress that "prominent unions" in the CIO "used every possible means to interfere with and sabotage America's defense program...
...The Revamped Bill Armed with this memorandum, according to Washington correspondents, Sen...
...Convention...
...The $25 for 26 weeks section was stricken from the measure by a vote of 10 to 8, and in its place went a provision simply requiring extension of the duration period to 26 weeks...
...Philip Murray, president of the United Steelworkers, was equally firm in leading the fight for a $2-a-day wage increase in pay throughout the steel industry...
...Representatives of Ford workers throughout the country have been summoned to a Sept...
...Duration periods vary greatly among the states, ranging from a maximum of $15 a week for 14 weeks in Arizona to $28 for 30 weeks in Connecticut...
...Wagner of New York, Murdock of Utah, Taylor of Idaho, and Mitchell of Washington, all Democrats, and Sen...
...Elliot Roosevelt revealed that he borrowed more than $600,000 to build a Texas radio network, that he never knew how Jesse Jones, former Commerce Secretary, settled his huge debts until he read about it in the papers, and that his net wealth now was "zero...
...The measure, which would declare the "responsibilities for everyone willing and able to work, had a narrow escape in the subcommittee of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee...
...The New York Central Railroad announced last week that it would soon fit a locomotive with a mercury turbine employing a formula for disintegration of mercury and steel atoms...
...Walter George, Georgia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had before him a confidential memorandum from Mr...
...Soviet spokesmen struck back with the accusation that AFL leaders are connected "with pro-fascist circles" and are doing "the international reactionaries' work...
...Most of the 5,000,000 are in retail trade, service occupations, agricultural jobs, and local industries not covered by the 40-cent minimum established under the Wage-Hour Act...
...Robert Taft, Ohio Republican, to change the basic features of the legislation had the support of two Democrats, Sens...
...UAW officials contended that they were anxious to bargain with the automobile industry, but had received no counter-offers to their 30 per cent increase proposal...
...Washington correspondents for metropolitan dailies like the New York Times and the New York Herald-Tribune, as well as Drew Pearson, Washington gossip columnist friendly to the Administration, revealed that the President had sent Sen...
...Harley Kilgore, West Virginia Democrat, announced that he would carry his fight for the original provisions of his bill to the Senate floor...
...Meanwhile, however, more than 50,000 Ford workers were idle when Henry Ford II, executive vice president, ordered a shutdown in Detroit as a result of what Ford said were "unauthorized and crippling strikes" against firms which supplied Ford with certain parts...
...Unless we maintain take-home pay, and thus maintain our fast shrinking ability to absorb the goods we have the capacity to produce, we shall be forced into an economic crash that will make 1929-1932 look like a minor recession...
...Wages...
...J. Edgar Hoover, FBI chief, has pointed out that some 270,000 arrest records show almost one out of every four arrested was under 21, and the 17-year-old offender topped the list...
...In a corporation in which some executives receive more money in one day than the average worker receives in a year, our demands are not unreasonable...
...Prospects that the Senate would reverse its Finance Committee are not very bright, unless the Truman Administration shows ¦ a far more aggressive determination to rally Democratic Senators in behalf of the original bill...
...23 as to whether they will petition the international UAW for a strike vote...
...Crime...
...Voting against the amendments were Sens...
...The situation at the Ford Motor Company was somewhat more complicated at mid-week...
...The proposed increase would be divided, the UAW explained, by applying an "appropriate part" to an equalization fund to achieve uniform rates throughout a corporation...
...Omar N. Bradley, chief of the Veterans Administration, warned last week against efforts to pit veterans against workers in competition for jobs...
...Doctors...
...Taft called on his colleagues to follow his leadership in opposing the measure, but Sen...
...Leslie Groves, who headed the nation's atomic bomb department project...
...Bradley declared...
...Publicly President Truman endorsed the plan, but even as he was assuring newsmen at a White House press conference that he wanted Con-press to adopt that provision, Sen...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
