The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-06-06


| ers. His articles serve the good purpose
| of making people Think
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
| Copyright, 1915, by King Features Syndicate)
NEW YORK.-Contnuing our study of Pres
ident Truman's proposal to buy votes and
| bride shiftless and spendthrift war workers
not to tax his courage and competence by
disorderly conduct. let us consider, among
?other items, and indiscreet open letter ad.
dressed to me last summer, Mr.. Truman has
asked Congress to provide liberal pensions
for millions who will be classified as ''unem-
ployed' during the conversion period al
though the maintenance Of the 40-hour week
and the overtime and bonus schedules ives
supposed to provide each individual with
roll of fall-money to him through the
crisis. In other words, it was agreed that
war plant workers should be greatly overpaid
and tacitly admitted that they were extrav-
agantly overpaid while the. service men were
fighting and toiling for service pay. The theo-
ry was that when the boys began to come
home the supernumerary workers would with
| draw gracefully and the unemployed would
use their saving to support themselves.
My letter is a mimeographed handout from
the organizing committee of the United Auto
Workers of the CLIO, Hercules Plant, Canton
| O., and is signed Jimmy the Sweeper" The
date is July 81, 1914
y,
about the worst record of all in the matter
of strikes in war factories 1t is moreover
| the organization which defended that unspeak-
able thug, liar and convicted criminal who
changed his identity by changing his name
to Thomas v De Lorenzo who defantly az
firmed that he would let American flyers
perish for lack of planes rather than sacrifice
any advantage won by his union
/ Jimmy, the Sweeper. advised me in his
| LATTE at hic had heon raised from,
$28 to $64 week. in other words almost
trebled, and that he had received bonuses
of S215 for reasons which he did not state.
sweeper is by no stretch of the magma
ton to be regarded a skilled worker or
hero of the production front. All he does is
sweep. If his union is alert it limits the width
of his broom as the painters limit the width
of a pantbrush lest he turn out too much
work and it likewise keeps watch lest he
kill the job by sweeping too fast. A sweeper
is of the lowest order of intelligence and
skill Production which is to say the
| amount of trash that he sweeps in a given
period, is the only measure Of his value as
a worker. At this point we have to give up
| trying to understand how Jimmy could be
worth $64 week or deserve a bonus Of
$215 and fall back on the explanation that he
was supposed to save a considerable part Of
this money for his spell of postwar unem.
ployment. Now, however, we discover through
Mr.. Truman that the people, including the
service men. OF course, have been swindled
because, whether he spent the velvet or put
| it into bonds or the bank, we still may have
to pay Jimmy a dole almost equal to the
pay that he got when he was paid what he
was worth.
| Proceeding to another item in Mr. Tru-
mans message to Congress- we find him rec
ommending emergency unemployment pay to
a class Of workers whose wartime pay was
| the subject OF furious resentment by the Of
| fcers and enlisted sailors of the Nays armed
! guard detail aboard the merchant vessels and
| among soldiers who sailed on these vessels
| to the fronts overseas There has been d
planned and directed effort to deny the very
| figures which the National Maritime Union,
Of the communist front, was boastfully adj
vertising to merchant sailors two years ago
in campaign for new members
| Mrs. Roosevelt, now resuming her political
activity recently attempted to argue that 'in
the long run, the average Navy man has as
much for himself and his family in the course
of year the merchant seaman
This line that was adopted by the Mari.
time Union when its own boasts aroused naval
enlisted sailors who sailed aboard the same
vessels sometimes inferior rations, for
painfully inferior pay and Under strict dis.
cipline.
| The fact is that the merchant sailors for
long time got $125 for each port they
touched in the on the theory that
| they were subject to attack even if hey were
not attacked. If ship touched at Liverpool
Holyhead, Swansea, Southampton, Gibraltar
and Oran and back at Gibraltar on the re.
turn voyage the merchant sailors got $l25
a port $875 in port bonuses alone, plus IS
a day for every day at sea a few miles
beyond Sandy Hook. They also got bonus
of 1C9 per cent Of their minimum base pay
of 500 month, plus overtime pay for work
after hours plus cheap insurance. They drew
bonus pay and overtime for months of idling
in foreign ports waiting to unload There were
numerous instances in New York in which
merchant sailors coming ashore with thou.
sands of dollars were jack-rolled in dumps
The disparity between their pay and that Of
the men who had taken the oath of the armed
| services finally became scandalous that
the bonus system was revised downward
Nevertheless, the merchant sailors remain a
| favored class by comparison with all the
armed services and Union representatives on
one occasion before congressional commit
! tee, objected to the adoption Of service
button because they wanted the merchant
sailors to be identified as union men, not
as American service men,
| Moreover, Joseph Curran, the president Of
this union, wrote me just two years ago that
this did not become peoples Until
the Soviet Union was attacked and it is a
fact that he and other powers in this union
were militantly pro-Axis when Russia was