Evening star., 1935-02-25
The Voice of the People.

The President and the adminiStra-
ton leaders have determined to let
recalcitrant Senate listen to the voice
of the people. This plan of campaign,
of course, is conceived in the belief
that the people will proclaim their
friendship for President Roosevelt's
security wage" averaging $50 a
month for 100000 workers on relief
projects. And when the "insurgent"
Senators, who have had the temerity
to stand out for the McCarran pre-
vailing-wage amendment to the work.
relief bill. have been sufficiently i'm
pressed by popular clamor. then the
administration will seek again to OBJ
tain a blank check from Congress for
S4,88O, 100000, to be expended by the
President for any purposes he may
see fit and in the payment of labor
at such rates as he or his agents may
deem justified.
1t is difficult sometimes to distin-
guish selfish propaganda. If the
propaganda is broadly spread and is
loud enough it is often mistaken for
the voice of the people. That is one
thing the Congress and the President,
too, should remember. The Congress
is to be deluged, according to the plans
of the administration, by messages
from those who support the Presi-
dents security wage idea. Many of
these messages will come, of course,
from people on relief who believe that
any hindrance of the adminiStra-
tion's program means cutting off their
sources of supply. Many will come
from those who fear that there will
be loss of public projects to localities
In which they live And many will
come from those who believe that the
time is at hand to cut wages generally.
Whether the workers, the millions
who are still employed in this country,
will make themselves heard in this
interesting test to which the Congress
is now being subjected remains to be
seen. This overwhelming majority of
the people is vitally interested in the
maintenance of the wage scales in
this country, and in seeing that they
are raised, not lowered. This great
mass of workers has the feeling that if
the Government embarkS on a huge
program of construction for which
labor is to be paid a low wage scale,
the effect will be lowering of their
own wages. Undoubtedly it would be
So The President and his advisers,
who demand the security wage" the
lower wage, have perhaps not thought
this thing through, nor given consider
alton enough to its effect on the en-
ployed workers. They have given con-
sideration chiefly to the unemployed.
And even there, under the lower wage
plan, the Government is put in the po-
sition Of seeking to have its work done
at what would be called sweat shop"
wages if it were engaged in manufac-
turing instead of construction work.
The voice of the people, so often
inarticulate, nevertheless becomes on
occasion a clarion call. The admins
tration should be listening for it, as
we'll as the members of the Senate
The President in letter to Senator
Glass during the consideration of the
work-relief bill in the Upper House
last week promised that nothing would
be done under the operation of the
security wage which would disas-
trously affect labor. In the so-called
administration compromise, which the
Senate committee wrote into the work.
relief bill before it reported it to the
Senate, it was provided the Presi-
dent must pay the prevailing wage"
of private industry wherever it could
be shown that the security wage was
beating down outside wage scales.
That is like shutting the barn door
after the horse has been stolen.