The Wilmington morning star., 1947-09-08
AS Pegler Sees It
Nv WESTRROOK PECI.ER.

, BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1s47, by King Features syndi-
cate, Inc.)
NEW YORK, Sept. Amy tendency to
rely on the intelligence of the American
common man should be corrected now that
he is being poked into little twitches of ir-
ritation over high prices and shortages. A
year hence, he may be goaded to violent
furies against the trusts or monopolies as
the authors of his woes. He might hurt him
self.
This initiation was started by President
Roosevelt. It had almost matured when
President Truman was stuck with it.
1t grew out of the 4o-hour week which
was advertised as a plan to spread the
work. The real purpose was to drive more
millions of the f~aceless people into Roose-
|velt's political subsidiaries, the A. F. of L.
and the c.. I. O.. This was a grant or con-
cession practically the same as those rights
of exploitation which the British govern
ment issued to development companies in
as though the government had given the
B. p. O.. E. the right to a cash bounty on
each of some II million jobs as a starter
and the first lien of anywhere from so
cents to SIS a week on the earnings of all
those people.
The intelligence and political ability of
the American citizen never nave been lower
L1ldI tllcy WGlS dL ll1S SOUlIl1SSlOl W LIl6S6
and similar ~offenses against his manhood
and citizenship.
The spectacle that he has made of him
self was the more humiliating because he
had been boasting of the fantastic amounts
which he had squandered IN test tubes,
hypodermics, white mice and white jump
ers for high school laboratories, auditoriums
with regular professional batteries of thea
trical lights and nylon football pants in
confectioners' colors for football teams
which played in colossal arenas. Education
was a major industry in the United States.
Moreover, he was peering, cross-eyed, down
his nose at the bovine breeds of Europe,
especially those with wide cheek-bones and
those with meustaches, who were being
stampeded into the pens to be fattened for
the slaughter.
The 40-hour week began to look out of
place when the government started to grab
millions of young men from their obs for
the war and shut down many industries
and stores by declaring that they were I'm
essential. If a citizen had spent Is years
building up a private business and now,
suddenly, had to junk it n offer himself
for wages at some utterly strange trade in
a war factory. he was slow to understand
why the work was still limited to 40 hours
a week for each hand.
At that stage, even some of the most bel
Igerent boss-bums of the union racket were
ready to give up IN the 4O-hour week, but
not Roosevelt. His idolators write over and
over that he knew the American people
we'll and loved them. He certainly did know
us we'll but no other ruler had quite the
contempt for his subjects. He not only
stuck to his 40-hour week wi he invoked
the draft law to compel many of us to join
his unions and pay graft to his racketeers.
a portion of which went to his party funds.
If men did not take "essential' jobs, they
could be called up for the Army or Navy.
Eleanor the great and Harry Hopkins even
had the audacity to propose in writing that
women be drafted for civilian war jobs:
subject to the usual union imposltlons, and
with God knows what alternative for re-
fusal. In order to get these jobs, however,
the citizens had to accept any union arrange
ments that had been made by Roosevelts
government and pay any amounts demand
ed of them. It came down to this, that II
an American citizen refused to bow to the
criminal dictatorship of a Joe Fay or a Jim
Bove and pay political squeeze to Roose-
velt's party, he could be impressed into the
Army, like a London cokney of 100 years
ago.
After Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor day, the
American citizen objected to strikes. In
a vague, dumb way he had a sense that if it
really was necessary to shut so many lines
of business and uin so many unoffending
merchants in order to force people to work
in the war factories, it was a sin to let goons
pull out key workers or strike, without
even consulting them, and thus make it
impossible for thousands of others to 60 on
with their tasks.
It also seemed that overtime now ought
to go by the board because we ought to
work three shifts every "a hours and seven
days a week. No work done on : Sunday
or after midnight was any more difficult
or more valuable to the country than work
done on a Monday afternoon.
Roosevelt pulled another of his fast-ones.
He made a deal with the big union takers
War Labor Board, continuing the 4O-hour
week and granting the employees vacations
with pay in return for a memorable mo
strike pledge"
"Union security meant continuation of
the closed shop and the shakedown privi-
llege, the 4o-hour week meant that the ex-
travagent rates of basic pay were almost
doubled through the in%flationary overtime
process. One result of this was silly spend
ing on junk jewelry and ~frivolity in night
resorts from the Stork down to the prairie
jukes. Some of Roosevelt's crowd said the
people would save their excess pay for the
payless paydays after the war but
Mr.. Truman soon was demanding $25 a
week for 26 weeks for each defense work
err" free. to see him through "reconversion.'
1nasrnuch as the people were not taking va
cations then, the vacations with pay"
dIlloullteu TO a Tree bonus, OF two weeks
pay per year or pro rata. Mussolini had
done this first.
The mo strike pledge was honored in
the breach more than 10000 times but
we. will never know exactly how many
strikes there were because the Department
OF Labor is supposed to keep tabs. Most
of the strikes were ''repudiated" as wild
cat" strikes but they were strikes lust the
same.
The rates of pay were idiotic. The scale
jumped more than 100 per cent from the
normal figures on the whole, and 200 per
paid for eight-hour tricks. oi"Ane was
= That is how we cot o,,r ;,f