The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-09-23
Federal Machinery
By ARTHUR KRocK

BY ARTHUR KROCK
WASHINGTON, In huge governmental ma |
chine especially one that like ours is laboring !
under sudden and violent stresses, it is al |
ways easy to point out confusions, conflicts and
lapses of ordinary controls. These are inherent
in such spraying structure. guided to some
extent by vote-seeking politics as the govern |
ments Of deomocracies always are. But just
now the Federal organization of this country
appears to contain much greater number of
clashing cogs and idling turbines than are
justified by the heavy peals load and the inter.
ferences of normal politics.
I. The State Department sees and resents in
General Macarthur s statement about the prob
able force of Americans that will be needed to
OCCUPY Japan an intrusion onto its own field
of foreign policy-making, with the general
seeking to be 'determinant' Of policy instead
of combining himself to carrying it out. But the
President has now twice spoken approvingly
General MacArthur's expectation that he will
need far fewer American troops than he or
anyone else had supposed. And neither the
President nor the State Department seems to
have given him any clear policy to carry out.
This is partly because, as the news from the
Foreign Ministers Conference in London
makes amply clear, the Allies are having diff
ficulty in arriving at agreement on overall
policies toward our late enemies, and the Unit
ed States cannot make them alone. But the
United States could devise its own section o
policy and it begins to appear that General
Macarthur entered Japan on his great and
successful "gamble'' without the detailed in
formation about conditions and persons in that
country which good and unified military in
tellgence should have supplied him.
It may be that the general would not put
himself position to obtain, it; this suspicion
is subject Of But the fact seems to be
that one of his troubles is that ne arrive in
Japan without that special intelligence which
coorinated and forceful Washington author
ity would have insisted upon as his guide,
whether or not he was receptive.
2. The labor troubles now centering at De-
troit have been freely predicted by informed
persons including spokesman of labor, ever
since the end of the war was evident. But not
until the threat to reconversion had material
lied did the President take steps to concentrate
Government machinery in this field. Yet the
step he took were neither ingenious nor diff
ficult, and they have long been proposed.
3. John W. Snyder. 'the business manager
of the Government has now been given sut-
ficient scope to prevent and settle such policy
disputes as those that have long divided the
War Production Board and the Office of Price
Control, the latest action being Mr. Snyder's
decision to release controls on building The
President also moved very constructively in
this quarter when he covered the Office of Eco
nomic Sterilization into Mr.. Snyder's OMWR
and thus left jobless Director William H. Da-
Wis. Mr.. Davis has repeatedly siad that the
real income of workers should rise 30 per
cent to 40 per cent with no important price
advances and this has intensified and advanc-
ed the current demands of labor, since for
real income almost everyone reads
wages"
But the Government is still stated in high
places with New Dealers who hold with Mr..
,orso, - oy,,t4 rnAl1
in their own offices and at the Capitol and
managed quite recently to get some Of their
ideas into Mr.. Trumams recomm endations
to Congress. And the Administration, in d.
vance of the labor-industry conference that is
scheduled for October, has shown no signs OF
being less a labor-favoring Government than
Mr.. Roosevelts was.
T. The President in promoting Robert P.
Patterson to be Secretary of War has kept the !
hand OF party politics off the department at
time when that approach to its tremendous
problems would have been disastrous. But
there is good reason to believe the report that
before reaching this creditable decision, Mr..
Truman out of old Capitol friendship offered
the portfolio to ex-senator Minton of Indiana,
whose record here and at home has been that
Of partisan on the ground-foor of politics.
1t is said only (Justice Minton's state of health
prevented this calamtous appointment.
These are few OF the aspects of
disorganized and confused government when
organization and clarity are acutely needed,
and the times permit no yielding to mere
personal friendship against the calls OF COM
petence and continuity. But there are balancing
factors in these situations and outside them
the latter notably exemplified by he Presi.
dents choice of Senator Burton of Ohio to sue
coed Justice Roberts on the Supreme Court
1t is absurd as well as petty to argue that Mr..
Truman's selection was controlled by IN e
thought that the Democrats would gain Sena-
tor thereby. Evidently he chose the best-fitted
Republican he could find outside the lower
courts themselves with a mind alert and re-
sponsive to the social march of the ages. And
in naming Mr.. Burton the President declined
to be influenced by the assaults OF union labor
on the substitute for the Wagner Act Of which
the Ohio Senator is co-author, although Mr..
Truman once went farther for labor in the
Senate than any other Senator ventured until
he led.
The balancing factors support the hopes Of
many that somehow, though late at times and
with occasional lapses, the President will re-
convert the Federal machine into an engine
suitable to and worthy of it's task New York
Times.