Eastern Connecticut news., 1947-03-15

with the market as 1t IS, where IS the incentive to produce the mill lion and a half. In other words in- centive means only profit, and profit can be the incentive to re- tard production.
 When workers go on strike to keep up the purchasing power of their wages without increasing the cost of the product they make, they are, to degree, forcing the ex- erciSe of business acumen, and im- proved production methods by the manufacturers, which in the end will mean increased production. Production responsibility is almost entirely in the hands of manage ment today.
 Praise for success is only per- miSsible if blame for failure, is also acceptable when mass produc- tion methods or keen business in- genuity turn out successful, we are always asked to hero-worship a Carnegie, Ford, or Kaizer, but when failure is registered it is always those terrible workers who strikes (slurred as "Commies' and "Un-American") who are respon- sible!
 Maybe I am daring to be biased from below, rather than from the lookout balcony of Ivory Towers. Experts aplenty are on that bal cony, but I know of no field in which the expert prophets are more consistently wrong than in the economic field. They are like horse racing tipsters, they sell you the tips, but they don't back their own horses. If they did they would be making millions on Wall Street, and not shining their pants sitting at desks writing theories on econ- omic values that are considered safe for the interests of their paying sponsors.
 Production itself is not the prob lem. Production without a market is not staple and is of lasting bene- fit to neither labor nor manage Sment. We do not need production if we do not have purchasing pow CT.
 To get the balance between pro- duction and purchasing power we need more and more honest to God Labor Management Production Co., operation. How do we get it, by switching back to the Gay Ninety methods? I don't believe so. The only way I can see to get it is by cooperation.
 There is no reason in the world why labor cannot understand pro- duction difficulties, and the eval- uation of fair profit, and for one would welcome from management any suggestion that would help me to buy the same value today for my wages that could buy in 1937- l 1930-1939. Unless this consumer purchasing power is held all the dreams of boom times with benefit l to workers and manufacturers alike are nightmares of wishful thinking. However, cooperation cannot beneficially mean monkeying for l power, but must mean the same thing that it meant during the war just finished. It must mean that racket interests outside of the teams are shorn of power to call the plays. It must mean the recognition of the fact that this age does not neces- sarily have to follow the exact pat tern in labor management relations that was followed in ages gone by. It must mean that free Enterprise is only justified when it can pro duce economic security for all who are willing to work. It must mean further, that free enterprise, or to call it by its real name Capitalism in a world seething with economic diScontent must find way, or gam ble with possible destruction!
 You remember we tried to talk ourselves out of a depression by self-hypnotism in the early thir- ties?-"Prosperity is just around the corner" and "That was an aw- full depression" was cute salesman ship for Laissez-Faire, but it got us exactly nowhere If today we list en to the tradition WorShippers and status-quo salesmen of the radio and press, labor and management are going to have the skirmishes of collective bargaining turn into the red hot hatreds of class war. Collective bargaining can get us the greatest production the world 1aH