Montana labor news., 1944-09-21
PIERCE PACKING co. SUES UNION
GANNETT OUTFIT
URGES BUSINESS TO
FIGHT EMPLOYMENT


FIGHT EMPLOYMENT
NEW YORK. -(FP)-A call to bust
nessmen to pull out the stops of COM
spany advertising through newspapers
radio, the public platform and pay en-
velopes in full scale propaganda CAM
paign against full employment, postwar
aim of labor and the Roosevelt admin
istration, has been made by Publisher
Frank E. ,Gannett'ss Constitution and
Free Enterprise Foundation.
The foundation shares offices here
with Gannett's other and better known
baby, the Committee for Constitutional
Government. The Gannett group re-
fused Sept. 12 to let the House commit
tee investigating campaign expenditures
see a list of its contributors on the
ground that it is an educational and
not a political organization.
Leaders of private enterprise all over
the country were introduced to the Free
Enterprise Foundations educational
propaganda against full employment in
a letter written on the law office sta
tionery of former Rep. Samuel Petten-
gill Of Indiana, a renegade Democrat
who became chairman of the finance
committee of the Republican national
committee in 1912.
Businessmen are sticking their heads
into moose hung by radical and col
lectivist propagandists' when they as
sumo responsibility for full employment
or else Pettengiu says, because then
the blame will clearly be on business
for the postwar depression. He goes on;
what industry should say is:'We will
employ men if you, Government do SO
and SO and So Then state the half doz-
en- prerequisites which government must
perform, and add that if these things
are not done, we cannot and do not ac-
cept responsibility for full employment.
Business would then have a defense il
indicted for non performance. Mean
time. right now and continuously Tor the
next 10 years, business should make its
position clear to those potential future
Jurors, the workers, stockholders, Gus
toners, voters
arhe thrifty, Woodworking, taX-pay-
ing Americans are still vast majority.
Tbev don't want their sons to- be COM
pelled to live under national socialism
at home after crushing it abroad, which
is exactly what full employment by the
state means. They will insist on IA
vorable climate if they know what is
needed. They have the votes"
The public education these voters
need "can be embodied in company ad-
vertising, primarily in newspapers, IN
radio programs, pay envelope slips and
taught from the public platform" Pet
tengill says, referring businessmen to an
enclosed Free Enterprise Foundation
namphlet chapter from Challenge 10
Freedom by Pres. Henry M. Wriston oil
brown university, for lines to follow IN
attacking full employment. Arguments
suggested in the pamphlet include:
0Freedom from want is a good thing
under certain circumstancess-to VIII II
it is earned, if it does not lead to stag
nancy. if it does not deliver man into
bondage. Those ifs are important. Be
cause of their vital Importance no great
civilization ever did or ever can make
full employment its predominant OBJ
iective. To do so is to put the accent
on material goods rather than vir-
tue
Full employment is a ghttering
nhrase: indeed it glitters so brightly
that it's precise outline is difficult to oe-
fine All the prescriptions for full en-
nlovment ultimately end in public own
ership. Full employment is a pollticai
slogan rather than an economic or So
cial program, unless we want war as our
normal mode Of life. &c..
aAbsenteeism is an inevitable char
acteristic of full employment. There
are many people whose desires for re-
laxation and change are Of a character
that unfits them for immediate eiIorV
thereafter. Under conditions OF tull /
employment they naturally crafty those
desires and absentee ism is the conse-
quence.
oDepressions weed out the weak, the
inefficient, the submarginal producer.
sometime the wedding seems cruel and
haphazard, but wedding there must pe'
sWhen the emphasis on rights takes
this current twist to the right to lop'
the Bill Of Rights seems to have been
along with political
i,,,,, ,o,-aouO