TWO OTHER STRIKES
Two Other Strikes ACOMBINATION of press distortion and political demagoguery has given the nation the totally erroneous impression that strikes by organized labor are entirely responsible for the...
...O'Toole of New York described the new draft as "the most ambiguous measure I have ever read," and added: "It is like John Randolph's classic mackerel—it shines in the moonlight, but it stinks as it shines...
...When, labor withholds its services for higher wages, it's a strike and news...
...A dozen or more bills designed to speed reconversion and to dispel the basic insecurity which haunts the country have been kicked around t u' legislative halls for months without decisive action...
...But when the same person mentions how badly he needs a refrigerator, a washing machine, a stove, or a radio—fields in which there have been no significant strikes—nobody bothers to tell him a management strike for bigger profits is responsible for continuing scarcity...
...When industry withholds its goods for higher profits, it's good business and not worth recording...
...The-House hatchet squad—Democrats and Republicans alike—struck out all mention of Federal responsibility...
...When the average American talks wistfully of a new car, someone is sure to tell him that strikes have ruined his chances of getting a new number for a long time...
...THE fate of other progressive legislation has been pretty much the same, except that in some cases the dominant Tory clique hasn't even bothered to do a rewriting and watering-down job, but has merely frozen the bills in committees and refused to permit them to come to a vote...
...31—when the excess profits tetx disappears from the statute books...
...Three months ago the Senate passed a greatly diluted version of the original Full Employment Bill, but even this watered-down proposal has been bottled up by a bi-partisan coalition of Tories in the House of Representatives...
...Anyone who bothers to dig behind the misleading headlines will find that although labor strikes have inevitably slowed the wheels of reconversion, two other strikes, one by industry and the other by Congress—rarely if ever mentioned in the press— have played decisive parts in maintaining scarcity in America...
...CONGRESS, too, has been staging a strike of its own...
...This strike by Congress has intensified the feeling of insecurity which is clearly one of the driving forces behind some of the nation's critical labor disputes...
...Perhaps when the Senators and Representatives get away from the corrosive atmosphere of Washington and mingle with the people of America, they may find that their own strike strategy has boom-eranged badly...
...Congress will soon recess for the holidays...
...Two Other Strikes ACOMBINATION of press distortion and political demagoguery has given the nation the totally erroneous impression that strikes by organized labor are entirely responsible for the painfully slow reconversion to a peacetime economy...
...Every labor strike is automatically news—often front-page news—but the fact that large segments of industry are systematically withholding goods from the market in anticipation of greater profits doesn't rate a line in your daily paper...
...In fact, the House measure omits all mention of full employment as a major goal for America and points instead to-watd "high levels of employment...
...After more than 10 weeks of haggling, the House Expenditures Committee came up with a substitute proposal which is little more than a pious fraud...
...Certainly the country has a more courageous conception oi its possibilities than has Congress—or more accurately, the ruling crowd of Tory Democrats and Republicans...
...Gene entirely is the basic theme of the original bill—that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to do everything' possible to stimulate production and employment in private industry, and if that proves inade-q nate, to create a sound program of useful pub-He works for those willing and able to work...
...Reports last week disclosed that warehouses are bulging with manufactured goods which are not available to the public—mostly because the makers are anxious to profit from depreciation of inventory allowances and because they want to sell and make their profit after Dec...
...The new version—scheduled for consideration this week—retains virtually nothing of the Senate's Full Employment Bill...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 50
