The Wilmington morning star., 1943-12-31
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER


NEW YORK.-Have it your way but there
is something wrong with people who will strike
such vital industries as the manufacture of
arplanes or their component parts, tires and
other rubber products, anc steel and the min
ing of coal and the manning Of the railroads.
mean not only the union officials but the
workers, themselves. There is something
wrong with them because practically all of
them have someone in the war who will be
let down by the lack of some weapon, vehicle
or tool and may be killed for the lack of it
and, anyway, all the men and women in the
services and especially those overseas and
under the guns are sure to wonder whether
the people back horne, their own pople, are
with them only for them in the way that
baseball fan is for the Yankees or the Giants
who seldom goes out to see them and takes
out his enthusiasm IN arguments.
Now it is true to certain extent the union
officials are responsible and Ii you want to
go way back to origins, the President Roose-
velts labor policy is to blame; but when you
find thousands of workers willing to knock off
to win some dispute over working conditions,
OIL up-SIdulIlS VI Tile OT TeIeQClOQ
of disagreeable foreman. or jurisdiction, or
even a raise, the final decision rests with
them. If majority of them are of mind
to carry on regardless they can bull it through
and Keep things moving. Of course one or
two, or ten workers out of hundred are
helpless; or five hundred out of ten thousand,
because the jobs are mostly complementary,
on reduced but still effective scale but can
exert psychological effect on the others and
win some or all of them back
In San Francisco last spring a professional
labor relations man tried to explain this to
me. He said that even in some cases where
the union officials wanted to keep the people
on the job pending the settlement of squabbles
the workers would go out of control and quit
anyway not for meanness nor for lack OF
patriotism, but because, as he figured it, they
were too close to their own particular, mo-
notonous tasks to realize how important they
were. Living conditions were pretty bad for
many of them, thousands were uprooted
strangers from other arts of the country and
felt footloose, irresponsible and individually
unimportant in the great whole effort and,
of course, some were just ignorant and ornery
and felt independently rich with little fold
ing money in kick.
case was reported from England, in the
terrible days when England and Greece stood
alone against the Nazis, of a meeting of ma
chinists or shipbuilders VINO semeed hell-bent
for a strike at which one lone man finally
hoped on his chair and told OF his who
was off somewhere fighting appealed to the
others who hOd sons or brothers in the same
fix, and won the day. That may have hap
pened in some similar minute case in the
United States but On the whole the workers
who have been involved in strikes have turned
thumbs down on the fighting men and the
record is simply awful. Laoor's no strike
pledge has been violated a thousand times
even though American labor knows that it
occupies the most favored position politically
and even though the hold-the-lne program has
been intended to maintain the buying power
of the workers dollar.
1t is no answer to point out incompetence
or to charge profiteering On the part of man.
agement. Incompetence in management is no
more intentional than the Incompetence of
idividual at a certain task Sometimes it is
tardily discovered and tardy corrected but.
generally speaking that is just hard luck for
our side. The strike, however, is intentional
and deliberate and can be prevented with all
its consequences, by the will of the workers
themselves. AS to profits, they are recover
able to the Treasury by nigh taxes and re-
ducible by the renegotiation of contracts; and
the personal incomes of profiteers are so linn
tied that it is difficult to see how any indi-
vidual can possibly get r;cn out of this war.
A little mare light and information of these
subjects might help by persuading the people
that they are not being exploited by men who
use the phrase "our brave boys overseas
to shame them to their tasks
At any rate the final answer lies with the
workers themselves who have the right to
say, if they really feel that way, that by
God, no, there will be no strike in any war
industry.