The Big Voice

A nationwide machinery for conciliation and mediation of industrial disputes has been set up. That machinery must be used promptly--and without stoppage of work. Collective bargaining will be retained, but the American people expect that impartial recommendations of our Government conciliation and mediation services will be followed both by capital and by labor.

It was the voice of the President of the U.S. Did it carry to the waterfront streets of San Francisco? There 1,700 machinists, denounced by Government and labor officials, were still on strike. Three weeks' work on almost half a billion dollars worth of naval vessels had already been lost. A Senate committee summoned hard-eyed Harry Hook, strike leader, to explain why. Senator Truman demanded to know whether he had heard the President's address. Said Hook: "No, I was busy on other matters." He hadn't read it either.

Truman read him the passage. Would Hook go back to his A.F. of L. followers and recommend that they submit their demands ($1.15 instead of $1.12 an hour wages, double time instead of time and a half for overtime, a closed-shop contract with big Bethlehem shipyard) to arbitration? Hook flopped and squirmed, finally promised to put it up to the machinists but not with his recommendation, and fled from the angry committee, wailing that he had been "accorded brutal treatment." At week's end, except for a little work performed by nonstriking workers who had crossed the machinists' picket line, the San Francisco yards were still idle.

The future of all free enterprise--of capital and labor alike--is at stake, the President had said. Did his voice reach the logging camps in the Puget Sound area?

There the National Defense Mediation Board had stepped into a three-weeks-old dispute that was blocking production of lumber needed in defense building. The board, taking on a new function, had appointed itself a fact-finding commission, and a panel which included labor's own representation had made public recommendations for a settlement of wage demands and grievances. But delegates of the striking C.I.O. woodworkers rejected the board's formula. At week's end no trees fell in the forests of the Northwest.*

Did the voice penetrate to the Southern coal fields? The Mediation Board was still trying to work out a pact that would remove the threat of another stoppage in the nation's soft coal mines. Southern operators, at week's end, still had not stirred from their position.

* But there were first signs of a break. Boom mewn in Tacoma voted to return to work at a compromise raise of 7 1/2-c- an hour, other grievances to mediation.

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