The Wilmington morning star., 1947-12-19
As Pegler Sees It
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1947, By King Features
Syndicate, Inc.)

A0 l. N5A>A WV
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1947, By King Features
Syndicate, Inc.)
WASHINGTON, Dec. IS. - Some OF our
union heads like to recall terrible time
when boke worked six days for $12 and
maybe less. That was a low-doWn living
but as good as many man can buy his
family on his take-home pay today.
A suit of clothes for a man or grown
price for shoes. Every neighborhood had a
cobbler; half-soles, SO cents.
In winter, only the rich had green vege-
tables and they were hot-house stuff Pc
cause Florida was a wilderness. ihe diet
of the little people, as Mrs. Roosevelt still
"a calls Isl us of the inferior orders, must have
been very bad from the standpoint OF a
modern case-worker. But the $l2 boys turn
ed out a robust lot and we had no rlckets
in our neighborhood either. Bread and but
ter, beef, milk, bacon and eggs and the
cellar vegetables saw us through the win.
ters. Rent was proportionate and some of
the dwellings of the working classes OF 4O
wears ago are still drawing rental income
in the big cities The old man brought home
his pay, if the loan shark didn't catch him
or he didn't fall in with evil companions,
and the wife and mother nickeled it out
and kept up the instalments on the sewing
machine I doubt that the expense OF llq-
uor was as important, relatively, as it is
today. The women drank little or nothing.
We fear inflations with awe, as we fear
the great pranks of nature. The bearded
elders rumble and we fling our arms
around their shanks and try to get reas
sured In our country, down to now, our
money has always come back, but we who
respected the 2O-cent franc and later got
francs for two or three cents know there is
nothing in nature to forbid that here.
Sometimes in life it is possible to cure
n, cit,1o+ior, I,v 11n6Oino the acts that caused
Our initiation was caused by Roosevelt's
ignorance and his brash flippancy and we
can't undo that
His only idea was to print money and
put it in the peoples pockets He poured
it out and the debt went up and up and
still the people had little more than they
had had before, and that little, counterfeit
He kept up running patter like tail
board faker selling Tiger Marrow Fat to
yokels long ago while his agents went
among them picking their pockets. He kept
them laughing and hoping but still he
couldn't answer the big question until the
war program came.
Tom Dewey said, over and over, in 1914
that Roosevelt couldn't get the people back
to work until in reality, the government
hired them to work for private contractors
in the war effort.
'In heavens name" Tom used to hol-
for our people?"
He kept insisting that Roosevelt's only
solution was to send the boys out to die
and to pay the people at home blood-money
to manufacture their weapons. Except that
still think we were doomed to implication
in that war by our own bigotry and saw
age aversion to the truth of Germanys
case, l agree with Governor Dewey.
In all those years. the great ,noUntebank
had done nothing but putter and trifle and
now we were going over the falls in bar
rel. We were going to spend so much
that no arithmetician, economist or even
astrologer could pretend to foresee any re-
demption.
A thousand billion dollars! A thousand,
thousand thousand, and thousand dollars of
debt. That is hopeless figure. We will
never return to the kind of financial sys-
tenn that we had when we got Roosevelt.
Initiation only means that the dollar isn't
worth a dollar. 1t is worth about quarter,
according to my goose-bone psychological
and economic tests. Hand dollar to any
one in the class of people whose income
is chiefly tips and his appreciation is about
the same that he would have shown for a
quarter in a normally prosperous time Say
Harding's time. 1t will buy about as much
as a quarter used to buy. Meanwhile if
we retire any debt we are retiring it in
two-bit dollars.
There is nothing that we can undo there.
welt refused to rescind the 40-hour week.
This decision cost us billions absolutely
without excuse. 1t was favor to the union
bosses of his own political machine 1t was
terrible thing to do. 1t meant that mil
lions of War-Workers got premium pay OF
so per cent, 100 per cent, or even more,
not for overtime worked as boss driven
slaves, but as sheer graft. They got an out
right gift of $25 week, or more, or little
less, sometimes, from the government,
through the medium of war contracts,
through dozen thieving tricks, worked out
War Labor Board and the contractors.
The contractors didn't mind. Mind? They
loved it. 1t ran up their profits based on
la percentage of the costs. The more the
workers were allowed to graft the more
the contractors made.
Mondays or Tuesdays unless they were
guaranteed work for Saturday and
Sundays. The work done on overtime days
and on overtime hours at night was worth
no more than any other work 1t was
raw racket and the people who squander-
ed this ill-gotten loot on brass jewelry will
deserve any hardship that is put upon them
by the initiation.
That can't be undone.
Then Philip Murrays steel workers
struck for a month in the winter of 1916
and we lost production in hundreds OIL
things that never will be made up as long
as we live. It was lost at terribly criti-
cal time when we should have been re,
suning our industry. The strike was settled
by raise of 18 IL cents an hour IN pay
and an S. a ton to the companies. That called
for other raises for people who had to pay
the higher price of steel products. These IN
cluded farmers, of course, who therefore
raised the price of food. Meanwhile, Muir
rav's auto workers, whose war record in IN
industry nd was just about the worst Of all
struck General Motors for 100 Gays & and and
other big producers for other peIlodSs, os zna Anp
that production, too was lost ana e olu Ju11n JUN
cold Of fah111o11e nriceS and the IeW new