Alarums & Excursions

At almost the moment the massive Baruch report on reconversion problems (see p. 79) reached Franklin D. Roosevelt's desk last week it turned into a red-hot issue in the running fight between Congress and the President. This was the last thing that Author Baruch had expected. Though his report came out as opposed to a separate Office of Demobilization, the proposal of the Senate's Postwar Planner Walter F. George, Baruch had honestly and significantly buttered up Congress throughout his 120-page tome.

To Walter George such talk was just cover-up stuff. (Baruch's literary interest in Congressional cooperation did seem at a minimum in sections recommending creation of two new high Federal reconversion posts.) All the Senator saw was that Franklin Roosevelt had at hand a ready-made new opportunity to by-pass the Congress.

Thus, after a cool compliment to Baruch's free-enterprise ideology, Senator George warmly advised the press that he and Baruch were unalterably at odds on "the question of whether the economic destiny of the country is to be settled by executive directives or by . . . the elected representatives of the people." Grimly he added that his bill to make Congress the postwar boss would be introduced early this week. The bill's coauthor, 100% New Dealer James Murray of Montana, merely mumbled something about "Mr. Baruch's admirable report" and "the need for broad legislative action by the Congress."

Offense. To make matters worse, it became apparent that Baruch, Hancock & Co. had inadvertently offended another potent political force. Their warmhearted words about "the human problems" of reconversion contained no mention of consultation with labor, no specific recommendations on dismissal pay for workers, etc., though it did contain a detailed blueprint for paying off war contractors.

To the White House came angry we-want-in letters from union leaders. Nonetheless the Soldier's President this week signed a sheaf of papers designed to implement the Baruch report by strictly unilateral executive order.

These alarums & excursions were ironic wormwood to Elder Statesman Baruch, whose political philosophy is a good deal closer to Old School Democrat George's than to Franklin Roosevelt's. Throughout his report Baruch had repeatedly cautioned the U.S. against divisive pressure-group politics. He had labored valiantly to present a set of policies that would impress Congress and the nation without depressing the President, to whom his report was of necessity addressed. But he forgot the one great issue that transcends all others in 1944 Washington, D.C. Implacably Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg blurted it out at week's end: "It would be very tragic if we had to detour into that sort of fundamental conflict between the Legislature and the Executive. But I see no insuperable conflict between them - unless the Fourth-Term dynasty has ideas."

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