The Daily Alaska empire. [volume] (Juneau, Alaska) 1926-1964, 1944-07-26
White Collar
washington POST

washington POst)
To most of America the war has brought little of
the economic hardship and tightening of the belt
which President Roosevelt warned that must
expect The income of the average family has in
creased more than enough to absorb the 234 per cent
rise in living costs registered by the Labor Depart
ments cost-of- Living index since January l941 But
averages often obscure the plight of large mnorites
Some 20 million Americans nearly one-sixth of our
entire population-have been living static incomes
since the beginning of the war The serious plight
in which they find themselves has been effectively
portrayed in report to the Senate Committee on
Education and Labor by special subcommittee on
wartime health and education under the chairman
ship of Senator Claude Pepper.
AS the subcommittee put it, they dwell con-
stantly in q borderland between subsistence and
prvation where even the utmost thrift and caution
do not suffice to make ends meet" Included among
them are many families of servicemen, largely or
wholly dependent upon fixed allowances, and aged
disabled persons living pensions social insurance
or public assistance incomes. These the most
helpless victim of our wartime initiation. Almost
equally disadvantaged, however, have been all the
white collar wage earners whose pay envelopes have
not been thckened along with those of organized
Industrial workers.
These whe-colar workers, in large part are
employees of Federal State and municipal govern
ments. They unable, therefore to bargain .ef-
fectively for pay increases and they outside the
scope of the War Labor Boards little steel formula
According to the Bureau of the Census, nearly two
million nonschool State and local government en-
ployees had average weekly earnings of $28.85 in
october of last year AS nearly be estimated at
the present time, the average salary for all public
school teachers during the 1943 "A school year will be
between $1,000 and $780, or about $32 week on an
annual basis Such incomes do not permit enjoy
ment of even the basic requirements of wel-being.
They impose on the groups who receive them hard
ships which greatly exceed those borne by other
segments OF population, 1t is scarcely possible
to dissent, in Judgment, from the conclusion of
the Pepper subcommittee that such inequality of
sacrifice is unjust, unnecessary and detrimental to
the health, morale and efficiency of nation at
war"
The sole remedy for those white-collar workers
who in the employ of State and local governments
must lie in legislative action in States, counties and
cities to increase their pay. Nongovernmental en-
ployees can be relieved only through liberal
and energetic WLB policy for raising substandard
wages. We are not fearful that any such increases
will have dangerously inflationary effects. "Infa-
tion' the subcommittee cogently points out, lis
augmented by overspending the part of those
who have more money than they need for the es-
sentals of life, not by the purchase of necessities
by the poor or near-poor' To grant low-income
white collar workers decent standard of living
matter of elementary justice.