The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-11-12
Fair Enough
sv wEsTBRoOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1915, by King Features Syndicate


NEW YORK, Nov. 11.-President Truman's
completely unfair denunciation of the House
Ways and Means Committee for its failure to
comply promptly and fully with his unem-
ployrnent compensation plan is reminiscent of
the Roosevelt demagogery which abused all
dissenters and appealed to ignorance, avarice
and the mob spirit He assumed complete vir-
tue for his plan without even discussing its
obvious faults.
Here is a proposal which would repudiate
the basic principle of unemployment comensa
ton and substitute a dole. Unemployment
compensation at stated legal rates is not a
favor from a generous state to subjects whose
political gratitude the ruling party desires IN
exploit at the polls. It is legal right of the
individual clients. Mr.. Humans proposal ;s
not legal but emotional and is based on desire
rather than right.
The President offered this plan while the
war with Japan was still in progress The hid
den purpose was to persuade large numbers
of transient war workers then employed in
shipyards and aircraft factories on the Pacific
coast to stick to their jobs and not drift awav
Production, unimpaired by OBJECTIONS of work.
ers who might pull stakes and head for home
was the chief consideration. After VT Dav
the plan still was pushed however, the pleas
now being that these workers would have
hard going during conversion.
This flouts the propaganda of the Roosevelt
government, and particularly of the Treasury
during the war production years, which held
that the maintenance of time and one-half
and double time pay, under conditions Of labor
shortage, was justified because the workers
would invest their surplus in bonds and use
some of the money to supplement their legiti-
roo fo onrfc
version. This was one cause of the present in
flation. These rates had bbeen established
during time Of labor surplus and unemploy-
ment, ostensibly as mere expedient to dis
courage employers from operating in over
time periods and to spread the work. Actually.
of course, there was no intention ever that
they should be revoked. One political effect
of this maintenance Of this overtime rate was
that Roosevelt's henchmen in the unions were
enabled to boast to the workers that they had
wrought great benefits for them. Actually they
had nothing to do with it. Roosevelt did it all,
and the unions levied veritable income taxes
on these high wages and used much of the
money to elect him the fourth time.
During those years the entire union political
movement boosted of the high wages of the
war workers and Haunted the figures in their
propaganda to argue that reluctant workers
in open shop plants were deadheads who had
a moral obligation to pay dues, fees and as
sessments in appreciation of their lavish bene-
fits.
Mr.. Truman is right, Of course, to the extent
that living costs, the housing shortage and the
income tax in many areas of work left the
workers with little if any more than a living
wage.
No opponent Of his compensation plan has
denied this and it is unfair to the people to
them hv Incl of yfo1,1 10
public men, such as Chairman Doughton of
the Ways and Means Committee, had no
decent motives in their attitude. If need was
to be the basis of qualification for his dole,
and our laws do not recognize mere need as
such basis, then provision should have been
made to judge each case apart arbitrarily on
the basis of need. A family unit of three, each
OF whom had been earning an average of say
$50 aaweek and lived together with reasonable
economy would have come to VI Day we'll
heeled Another worker, the sole Garner, with
a wife and three dependent children in another
section OF the country, also earning $50 week,
would have wound up broke and threadbare.
MIR. Humans proposal, however, would have
regarded these two cases as equally needy,
and moreover would have exaggerated the
disparity by granting the prosperous unit first
cited SIS week and the other only $685.
But that is not all there is to. the case
against MIR. Truman'S dole. An employer with
a $40 week job available for half-skilled
youth, previously employed in war industry,
would find that he was actually offering only
SIS week, the margin above the Truman
dole. One employer who did have such job
in state with high unemployment rates was
unable to fill it for this reason, frankly stated.
The available candidates were hardly to
blame either, when they could earn $40 or $50
week on the odd-job basis which is not re.
garded as employment, or just relax on the
$25 a week.
One company presents correspondence ex-
changed with the State Unemployment Com
mission in two cases which illustrate the
abuse of such laws, even at their best, and
before the addition of the proposed Truman
dole. In one case a boy of IS worked part
time for about three months and quit rather
than take full time job. His earnings were
$144 and he was awarded compensation OF
1888. In another an employee who earned
$32.55 at part time work, which he quit, was
deemed to be entitled to $572. In each case
the employer argued that, all other considera.
tons apart neither of these clients was en-
titled to compensation because employment
was available.
Mr.. Truman is not ignorant of such CON-
plications which present legitimate objections
to his plan. And considering the extent to
which the democratic majority of the Ways
and Means Committee recently debased them.
selves as personal sacrifice, in whitewashing
Elliott Roosevelt and his late father, and even
py trying to conceal the record surely thew
deserved better of their new chief