Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1949-04-15
The Marshall Plans
First Birthday
BY BRADFORD ". CARTER
LPA Columnist

LEW one -year-olds have received the wealth
of congratulations that poured in to the
Economic Cooperation Administration on the
first anniversary of the Marshall plan for
European recovery Among the most fervent
well-wishers of the healthy infant are the
democratic leaders of organized labor both in
Europe and America.
ECA itself issued most encouraging prog
ress report. 1t pointed out that the emer-
gency phase of the Marshall plan is over and
that from here on the overwhelming emphasis
in ECA shipments will be on goods for per-
manent recovery, not relief
Quite as important as its material contri-
button to European recovery has been the po-
litical effect of the Marshall plan ERP fur
nished the material basis for the claim of Eu-
ropes democrats that western cooperation, not
Communist rule and subservence to Russia is
the surest way towards a decent standard of
living 1t has proved that to the freedom of
the west there can be added the prop of ma
terial well being.
While turning back the Communist often
sive in Europe the Marshall plan has--or at
least should have-convinced people here in
America that the best way to fight Commun-
ism the economic political way, not the mill
tary way. More potent than the threat of
the Red Army was the strength of the Com
munist fifth columns within number of Eu-
ropean countries.
Of course the Red Army exists, and who
can deny that the crowd in the Kremlin would
order it to march westward if they thought
they could get away with it? 1t was for this
reason that the State Department together
with democratic governments of Europe-sev-
eral of them governments based primarily on
trade union support-decided to draw up the
North Atlantic Defense Pact. Under it, in ad-
dition to Marshall plan economic aid we will
be sending military equipment to Europe.
All this makes sense, as the AFL and CIO
recognized in ther statements adding their en-
dorsement of the North Atlantic pact to their
support of the Marshall plan.
But with the epublican-Dixiecrat coali-
tion the Taft-Hartley crew, threatening to ex-
tend its operations into the field of foreign
policy there can be trouble unless American
labor which did so much to push thru the
Marshall plan is on the alert to protect it.
Pretty soon you're going to hear the Re-
publocrats screaming that its wasteful to ad-
minister two European aid programs-one un-
der civilian ECA direction, and the other under
the Defense Dept. and its high brass. They're
going to want to combine the two, and cut the
civilian n-economic Marshall plan. They're 60
ing to want to eliminate ECA, or at least trim
it down in favor of Army management of
European aid.
The Taft-Hartleyites can't be expected to
understand that free labor movement accom-
plishing its trade union goals as the Marshall
plan improves European productive capacity is
the most effective single check to totalitarian-
ism. They're not really very smart people,
and so are ready to take the "easy way OUT of
relying primarily upon the military to defend
Americas interest in democracy abroad
We who understand that an expanding
economy and functioning democracy are the
best checks to Communism can't afford to let
the Republocrats cripple ECA It's up to the
American union movement to watch this play,
to keep military aid in its proper place-as
supplement, not a substitute, for the Marshall
plan