The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

LABOR and management combined have filled our arsenal to overflowing. But stoppages and the lack of machinery for ensuring flexibility in production have bothered the War Department. Here is the origin of the agitation for national service. It was the Army that persuaded Mr. Roosevelt at last to plump for compulsion, for the President has a high respect for the Chief of Staff.

The President consulted few other persons before he advocated national service. It is rumored that neither Justice Byrnes nor Mr. Baruch was told, nor was Mr. Nelson. None of the three feels that the need has been demonstrated, and Mr. McNutt (who was forewarned) thinks that a statute would reflect upon his work as manpower chief. The reaction of these four men came out during a meeting at which Mr. Stimson and the War Department sought to drum up the aid of civil administrators. No matter how formally any of these administrators supports national service in the future, the underlying tepidness toward the idea will remain.

Most of the arguments in favor of national service are logical. But the War Department’s examples of the maldistribution of labor as a consequence of the lack of national service require clarification. Some of the maldistribution can be attributed to the War Department’s own mistakes.

For example, the orders for ball bearings went to districts where a labor shortage existed — and the ball bearing plants paid less than prevailing wages. And some of the War Department’s order schedules appear to have been faulty as well.

Work on aircraft has been retarded by the fact that wages are still below shipyard wages, and by failure to utilize labor properly. The program for landing craft — the importance of which is testified by General Eisenhower’s reputed crack that he hopes to be buried in one — would have been expedited if the Army had had a consistent program. There would have been no need to furlough soldiers to work in the copper mines of Montana if the copper miners had not been drafted. Labor would be available for camp construction in Louisiana if the War Department had facilitated shifts from New York State.

Army administration: More or less?

But bottlenecks are ironed out by men, not by statutes. It is administration that really counts, not national service per se. The Army, of course, would like the job. But there’s just as little guaranty of efficiency in Army administration as in McNutt’s. One should keep this fact firmly in mind.

A habit is growing up of thinking that Army administration is first-class and civilian administration deplorable. That attitude encourages the Army to spread over areas from which it should be forbidden. The reason that national service is tolerable in Britain is that it is managed by civilians. Moreover, it is managed on the basis of experience derived from the last war. What lessons we have learned have been the lessons of current trials and errors.

It is regarded as unfortunate that Mr. Roosevelt pegged advocacy of national service to the need “to avoid strikes.” National service will not avoid strikes. British experience shows that. Perhaps the President was trying to head off anti-strike legislation, the demand for which was rising in Congress. In this effort he is on ground which moderate opinion regards as sound. National service is as far as we should go with respect to strikes. Equality of service might, indeed, have a good psychological effect in retarding stoppages.

Steel’s demand for higher wages

Organized labor at present is waging a campaign to break down the existing stabilization policy for wages. The test will come over the demand for a new boost in steel wages. Steelworkers got an increase under the “Little Steel” formula, which is the foundation of our wage policy. This provided for a 15 per cent increase in hourly earnings above the level prevailing on January 1, 1941. Most of organized labor has had this increase. Wage increases are allowed, furthermore, to correct sub-standards of living and to iron out inequalities.

The steelworkers, by asking for 17 per cent, are bent upon breaking the “ Little Steel ” formula. The nervousness in the capital shows that they may succeed. If they don’t get a formal acknowledgment of a change in policy, the same result might be achieved by some formula that will be held to be within the framework of existing wage policy.

The argument of organized labor is that it is entitled to a new wage policy on the ground that prices have not been kept stable. Prices were stabilized as of September 15, 1942. The index compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows they have remained stable. But labor contends, and with justice, that the index is faulty, that many items are out of line, that much purchasing has to be done on the black market, that quality deterioration is a price factor. It may be, therefore, that the new formula for meeting the steelworkers’ demand will involve a reassessment of the cost of living.

Where’s inflation?

That may or may not open the floodgates to inflation forces. The fear is that it might. However, the experts imagined that inflation could not be avoided in 1943. It was. That was one of the miracles of 1943. The credit goes in part to the Administration, but in greater part to the self-restraint of the American people. Americans, to be sure, have been spending a good deal of their war-created incomes buying goods. But they have likewise saved record sums in war bonds and savings accounts.

No chances can be taken that inflation is just a bugaboo. Prudence dictates that Congress, in addition to giving us a real labor law, should legislate a wage policy for the duration. The Administration must be backed by Congress in saying “No.”

Do soldiers vote?

The President demanded the Federal ballot as the servicemen’s Commander-in-Chief. According to some, this was a campaign speech intended to influence the servicemen’s vote. His approach, it is said, should have been as Chief Executive. However that may be, the issue was oversimplified in the press beyond hope of understanding, and the President did not help to clarify it. He said the 1942 Ramsay Act facilitating the servicemen’s vote provided for a Federal ballot prepared by the states; in another place, he called the Act “the Federal absentee balloting statute.” But his words compounded the confusion.

The Ramsay Act provided for a state ballot, but waived the qualifications to vote laid down by the states. The dictum was advanced that every serviceman over twenty-one was entitled to the vote. Under the so-called Federal Ballot bill in behalf of which the President intervened, there would be a Federal ballot, but the votes would be sent to the states to count or not as they think fit.

Will the votes of the servicemen all be counted as a result of this law? Of course not. Nothing is clearer in the Constitution than that the states determine the qualifications of voting. The privilege to vote in a state is within the jurisdiction of the state itself, to be exercised as the state may direct, and upon such terms as may seem proper — provided, of course, no discrimination is made between individuals in violation of the Federal Constitution.

The advertisements that the soldiers are fighting for the right to vote were thus specious and misleading and dangerous. What the soldiers are fighting for is the preservation of constitutional government. And the debates in Congress showed a high degree of responsibility in this matter, though the pressures upon Congressmen to close their eyes to our organic law were terrific.

The State Department cleans house

The State Department has now streamlined its organization. Reformers contend that only the furniture has been shifted. Certainly there are no new faces in the setup. Nor is there any indication that anything drastic has been achieved.

The State Department overplayed the extent of the reorganization by listing innovations which were eighteen months old. These were the committees on post-war policy. Sumner Welles set them up, and they were one of the causes of the Welles-Hull clash. One of the committees, incidentally, laid the groundwork for the proposal that Mr. Hull took to Moscow. The only difference between plan and result was that an Advisory Committee was set up in London instead of the United Nations Executive Agency so dear to Welles’s heart.

The State Department’s radio program is a species of soap opera that has been roundly criticized for its lack of both dignity and significance. The trouble is that the department is still confused and tentative in its policy-making.

Principles there are in plenty, hut they always seem to be qualified when concrete situations are met, as in the case of Victor Emmanuel, the father of supranational Fascism in Europe, who was rethroned in Southern Italy. The time has come for laying down policy in conformity with our principles. We are stiffening toward Franco, and when Rome falls, Victor Emmanuel will be allowed to fade out. There may be an approach to realism toward France now that the Committee of National Liberation is recognized.

The emphasis on economics in State Department reorganization warrants hopes of a practical program dealing with conditions, not theories. Secretary Hull is out of his depth in economic matters unrelated to trade agreements — which are the specific for all the economic ills that Mr. Hull sees. However, the world after the war will require particular answers on particular problems — for instance, cartels, the future of shipping, air transportation, and oil.

Mr. Crowley has the slows

Policy in these matters must be evolved by the State Department. But they are carried out by the Foreign Economic Administration under Leo Crowley. This is the composite body evolved out of the half-dozen agencies having to do with economic relations abroad. It is still in process of organization, with skeptics wondering whether it will ever function.

The FEA illustrates that leadership, rather than blueprints, is required to make an organization work. Granted that Mr. Crowley took on a Herculean job in making one agency out of half a dozen, there is restiveness in Washington over the slowness with which he is proceeding.

Elmer Davis also has his troubles. Like Mr. Crowley, he took over several agencies and tried to make them into one. He could not do it. He had to contend with the vested interest of the heads of the constituent agencies, some of whom — notably Robert E. Sherwood, head of the OWI overseas branch, had a special pipeline to the White House. Mr. Davis, who has spent much of his life solitarily pecking away at his typewriter, is not a natural administrator.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

Washington is full of uncertainty about the impact of the invasion upon the American people. Heavy casualties are expected. Will they harden the home front or start a movement for a negotiated peace? There would have been no such wonder if this war had been reported without reservation and explained in terms of principles. The sooner these principles are restated in policies, the better. There would then be more likelihood of a strong demand from the country at large for a parity of service with the fighting fronts. All of us would know what we are fighting for, why, and the reason we must extend ourselves to the limit to win the peace as well as the war.