Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1933-05-24
CONTROL

GOVERNMENT CONTROL
The wave of agitation for government control of indus
try which swept over the country seems to have subside1
somewhat. In the place of this we are told that the ad-
ministration plans to permit private business to work out
its own problems with the national government to give
advice and assistance where necessary. This will doubt
less relieve the tension of many who thought, a few weeks
ago, that government regulation of private industry was
to be made almost complete.
The first welcome news which the public had was the
intimation from official circles in Washington that the
so-called Perkins bill, advocated by the secretary of labor,
providing for a thirty-hour week, a minimum wage, and
other things, would not be passed by the present congress
as written, but that there would be substituted a bill
which would give private industry wider powers to elm
mate waste, extravaganza and cut-throat competition.
The speech of the president over the radio a few nights
ago explained the plan of the administration.
1t was not difficult to see trouble in the offing for in
dustry in America if the originally planned thirty-hour
week, minimum wage bill were put through. Industries
which were limited and regulated would have found their
products coming in competition with foreign-made goods,
manufactured under conditions where there was no time
limit and no minimum wage. The effects would be dis
astrous. Many of the conservative labor leaders of the
country were not favorably disposed to the so-called Per-
kins bill.
While approving the general idea of a thirty-hour
week, Matthew VOL, vice president of the American Fed
GRAFTON of Labor, announced himself as strenuously OPP
posed to the minimum wage and the importation of goods
Haue ny foreign workers not on the tnlfUy-n0uf ScneQule.
Furthermore VOL said in his statement. to the
house labor committee, "the proposals submitted by Sec
rotary Perkins would permit criminal prosecution of
those who refused to abide by the findings of the secre-
tary of labor, without any opportunity for a review by
any tribunal, thus denying to the workers the right to
strike. They would penalze domestic producers for do
nestle and export trade while favoring products of for
eign countries, thus stimulating production in branch fac
tories in foreign countries. They would abolish the right
of collective bargaining; they could be used to set aside
present contractural relations existing between organized
workers and employers of labor.
1.-The minimum wage PLAN" Woll asserted, "would
make the low wages of unorganized labor a maximum
which organized workers might be forced to accept and
would place In the hands of the secretary of labor author
ity to sociaize all American industries. Because the bill
nnjustly and unwarrantably discriminates against Amer
lean industries and favors foreign industries. While it
restricts the parent corporation in America, it grants
special privileges to foreign branch factories. 1t likewise
encourages American corporations to seek foreign sources
Of manufacture and production to avoid the restrictions
placed on home production and manufacture. 1t is diff
cult to understand how such legislation could be kept
from endangering, h%ampering and even destroying free
dom of trade. 1t will further freeze and demoralize indus
try and commerce.
We believe that most Americans are of the opinion that
the government can help industry more by permitting in
dustry to help itself, than through a federal control of in
dustry which smacks strongly Of socialism.