Evening star., 1944-10-29
Roosevelt Offers
Postwar Plan for
so Million Jobs
Outlines in Chicago
Program for Great
Prosperity in Peace
/Terf IN Dana lfoI
(Tert on Page A-I2.)
BY j. A. FOX,
Star Staff Correspondent,


CHICAGO, Oct. 28-President
Roosevelt tonight pledged his
administration to program
calling for 100000 productive
jobs" for American labor and
said the Government would en-
courage private industry to pro-
vide them.
The President, speaking at huge
rally at Soldier Field and asserting
his belief in free enterprise laid
down this blueprint for the post
war Nation:
An adequate program must pro-
vide America with close to $4,000 900
productive jobs.
Il foresee an expansion of our
peacetime productive capacity which
will require new facilities, new
plants and new equipment-capable
of hiring millions more men.
Il propose that the Government
do its part in helping private en-
terprise to finance expansion of our
private industrial plant through
normal investment channels.
Business Must Be Encouraged"
For example, business, large and
small, must be encouraged to ex-
pand their plants and to replace
their obsolete or wornout equipment
with new equipment. And to that
end the rate of depreciation on
these new plants and faeiilties for
tax purposes should be accelerated.
And that means more jobs for the
worker, increased profit for the
businessman and lower cost to the
consumer
Mr.. Roosevelt made it pretty clear
in his speech that there would be
no relaxation of the wage controls
which labor has bitterly opposed,
short of the ending of the war,
Explaining it had had been neces-
sary to limit pay increases to halt
runaway imitation" the President
said his audience knew how sue
cessful" this policy had been, and
added:
However, at the end of the war,
there will be more goods available,
and it is only common sense TO see
to it that the working man is paid
enough, and that the farmers earn
enough to buy these goods and keep
our factories running.
Pay Restrictions End With War.
1T is a simple fact that a greatly
increased production of food and
| fiber on the farms can be con-
sumed by the people who work in
industry, only if those people who
work in industry have enough
money to buy food and clothing.
If industrial wages go down, farm
| prices will go down, too. After the
war, we shall, of course, remove the
control of wages and leave their
determination TO free collective
bargaining between trade unions
and employers"
| The President repeated his sup
port for legislation to make the Fair
EMPLOYMENT Practices Committee
permanent.
Mr.. Roosevelt spoke here just
three days after the visit of his
Republican opponent, Gov. Thomas
E. Dewey. and the speech, in large
part, obviously was designed to
answer Republican charges that the
administration is hostile to busi-
ness and would have no adequate
employment program for the post
war era.
In it he described the Republican
party as me too" organization
which he said was calling for a
chance in administrations while at
the same time indorsing the things
that had been done by the Demo-
Gratis both in peace and in war.
Recalls Depression of 1888.
AS for the often-repeated Dewey
assertion that the Roosevelt ad-
ministration did not solve the un-
employment problem until the war
created a demand for labor, Mr..
Roosevelt recalled conditions at the
depth of the depression in 1888,
when he took Office, and added:
by 1e40-before Pearl Harbor-
we had increased our employment
by 10000 900 workers. We had con-
verted a corporate loss of $780,
000, 900 in 1882, to a corporate profit,
after taxes of nearly $4,000, 900, 900
in 1910"
The re-armament program was
started in midyear, l940
The President built up to the out
line of his postwar business pro-
(See ROOSEVELT, Page AID