A Wage-Raise?

In President Roosevelt's 1944 Santa Claus bag still rests one secret weapon: the possibility of a general wage increase for all U.S. workers.

After nearly eight months of probing, the WLB is fairly close to a decision on a wage raise for the 900,000 steelworkers.

Under the famed Little Steel formula, raises have been slow and gradual, while the cost of living, by most studies, has shown a substantial jump. If WLB now recommends smashing the Little Steel formula, thousands of U.S. workers (and votes) would, in effect, get a pre-Election Day promise of a wage raise.

WLB itself is comparatively free of politics. And the White House's own Eco nomic Stabilizer, Fred Vinson, who keeps a sharp eye on inflation, is dead set against granting a wage raise, as he knows the ABC economic fact that U.S. wages and prices tend to go along with steel wages and prices. If steel wages go up now, wage scales in all industries are almost certain to follow.

But, as the New York Times's Louis Stark wrote this week: "The WLB will not be the sole judge of the issues . . . because the problem is more political, or perhaps just as political, a question as it is an economic one. And in politics the President has the last say."

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