Differential Differences

Differential Differences

New York's brisk, bouncing Representative John J.. O'Connor, elder brother of Franklin Roosevelt's former law partner Basil O'Connor, led the House fight which killed the President's Reorganization Bill so enthusiastically that last week his picture adorned the cover of Social Justice. This paper is edited under the guidance of Father Charles Coughlin, whom Mr. O'Connor two years ago was promising to kick publicly from the Capitol to the White House. Last week, the Reorganization fight over, Franklin Roosevelt invited Mr. O'Connor to the White House to discuss something else entirely: the Wages-&-Hours Bill which, reported by the Labor Committee last fortnight, needed only a special ruling by the Rules Committee, of which Mr. O'Connor is chairman, to bring it to the floor for a vote.

Unlike its predecessor which the House voted down last December, the bill which Mr. O'Connor's committee met to consider last week had the support of both C. I. O. and A. F. of L. It called for a minimum wage of 25-c- an hour, rising 5-c- an hour annually for three years to a 40-c- an hour minimum in 1941; and a maximum hour schedule of 44 hours a week, reduced two hours a year to 40 hours in 1940. What the bill lacked was a regional differential to permit Southern industry to continue reflecting climatic and racial differences in lover wage scales. Day before his visit to the White House, Mr. O'Connor glibly announced that the new bill would pass "if it ever gets to the floor." At week's end its chances of getting to the floor this session were effectively demolished when five Southern Democrats and three Republicans voted against the six other members of the committee not to give the bill a special rule. Only remaining possibility that Wages-&-Hours would get to a vote this session appeared to be that Labor Committee Chairman Mary T. Norton, who last autumn got 217 of her colleagues to sign a petition to discharge the bill from the Rules Committee, would be able to do so again. Last week her hopes of doing so were raised by a note from Franklin Roosevelt. Excerpt: "I have no personal doubt that a large majority of the membership of the House believes that the House as a whole should pass its judgment on such legislation."

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