Evening star., 1945-02-25
War Prisoners Present
Hard, but Paying, Problem
Employment at Useful Labor at Prevailing Wages
Brings Net Profit of $1OO, 900, O,0OO-C -Coddling
Charges Held Unfounded
Bv Charles G.. Ross

found 800 available skills among the
prisoners are in private employment
mainly, like the group at Chesterfield,
in farming.
Thrown into areas of manpower
shortage all over the country, prisoners
have picked cotton in the South, cut
pulpwood in the North, harvested wheat
in the West, canned fruit in the East.
To prevent unfair competition, con-
tractors to whom prisoners are assigned
are required to pay the prevailing wage
rate for free civilian labor. Before
prisoners are furnished to contractor,
he must submit a certificate from his
local War Manpower Commission office
stating that free labor is not avail
able in his community.
The prisoners are paid the regular
wage rate of all prisoners who work
80 cents a day-but the payment is only
in coupons which may be used in the
camp canteens The money received
from the contractors goes directly into
the United States Treasury. During
1914 profits to the Government from
this source were more than $22 ,O00,-
900 after deductions for tranSpor-
tation, housing and subsistence. OF the
1O,1S1 273 man-days of work for private
contractors during the year, 5,705, 300
were in agriculture.
Treated as Rules Require.
In addition, the War Department has
computed that the labor of prisoners
on Army posts, ranging from such highly
skilled work as watch repairing to COM
mon maintenance, amounted to 1851
719 man-days, from which the Army
realized an estimated saving or over
$4,000 000 The cash received from
private contractors brings the total re-
allied from war prisoners labor for 1914
TO more than S100,000000.
There has been some complaint that
the war prisoners have been ''coddled.'
In reply to this. the War Department
points to the Geneva Convention Of
1929. to which both this country and
Germany are parties. This treaty-a
part of the supreme law of the land
as the Constitution says-provides
among other things that prisoners of
war must at all times be humanely
treated and protected" that they shall
be lodged in barracks affording AL pos
sible guarantees of hygiene and health
fulness"; that their food ration shall be
equal in quantity and quality to that of
troops at base camps: that canteens
shall be installed in the POW camps
where the prisoners may purchase food
products and ordinary objects at the
local market prices that prisoners shall
not be used at unhealthful or dangerous
work; that intellectual diversions and
sports" among them shall be encouraged.
Any deviation on our part from the
terms of the Geneva Convention, the
War Department says, probably would
result in instant retaliation by the Ger
man government against the thousands
of American prisoners of war held by
Germany. There is abundant evidence,
the department adds, that our treat
ment of German prisoners has had
direct effect in bettering the treat
ment of American prisoners
The House Military Affairs Commit
tee in a recent investigation found
that the department was adhering
strictly to the terms of the Geneva
Convention and declared that "it is
we'll indeed that such is the case The
chance of retaliatory measures on the
part of our enemies, the committee
said, must not be overlooked for a
single instance"
Printed by Special Arrangement With the
st. Louis Post-Dispatch.