On Two Tracks

Asked at his Augusta news conference whether he thought that the U.S.'s longest nationwide steel strike proved the inadequacy of the Taft-Hartley law, President Eisenhower replied that he did not "think Taft-Hartley is necessarily any cure for this thing. If we can't settle our economic differences by truly free economic bargaining without damaging seriously . . . the United States, then we have come to a pretty pass."

As the steel strike moved well beyond its 100th day, it chugged inevitably toward some kind of settlement on two separate tracks. On one track was the Justice Department's petition for a Taft-Hartley injunction to return the strikers to the mills for 80 days. On the other track was a resumption of bargaining between the steel companies and the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, while pressures mounted for settlement. The strongest pressure on the Big Steelmen came from small and medium-sized steel firms impatient for a settlement. This week the West Coast's Edgar F. Kaiser, the most impatient steelman of them all, broke the industry's united front and announced that he was ready to sign a separate peace with the Steelworkers.

The stubborn, stolid disregard by the steel industry and the Steelworkers for the general welfare, as they fought their private prestige battles, had already brought the U.S. to what the President called "a pretty pass." A blight of unemployment spread across the land as industrial plants slowed down or shut down for lack of steel. General Motors reported layoffs in St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Framingham, Mass., Janesville, Wis., Norwood, Ohio and Tarrytown, N.Y. International Harvester announced that it would have to lay off workers in Springfield, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Ind. in early November. In some areas auto showrooms were empty, and building construction came to a halt. By week's end close to 300,000 workers outside the 500,000 in the steel industry nad been squeezed out of their jobs. Foreign competition was invading long-nurtured U.S. markets. The trade magazine Iron Age predicted that, even with settlement, the U.S. would still be feeling the steel shortages into next summer.

Ugly Impact. Early in the week the wheels of the Taft-Hartley law began rolling when the distinguished three-member fact-finding board reported bleakly to the President on its ten-day effort to mediate a settlement: "The board cannot point to any single issue of any consequence whatsoever upon which the parties are in agreement." Next morning Assistant Attorney General George Cochran Doub boarded an Air Force plane for Pittsburgh, steel capital, to argue the U.S.'s case for a Taft-Hartley injunction before District Judge Herbert P. Sorg.

Lawyer Doub ticked off the Government's view of the steel strike's ugly impact. With 87% of the nation's steelmaking capacity shut down since mid-July, the strike had hindered urgent missile, space and nuclear-submarine programs. If the strike dragged on, secondary layoffs resulting from the steel famine would soar to 1,275,000 by the end of November, and 2,500,000 by the end of December--not counting the 500,000 striking Steelworkers.

"Irreparable Injury." In rebuttal the United Steelworkers' chief counsel, Arthur Goldberg, argued that the strike's effects were not really serious and that the Taft-Hartley injunction would be unconstitutional. Judge Sorg overrode his argument, issued an injunction to halt the steel strike on the ground that if permitted to continue, it would "cause irreparable damage and injury to the U.S." The U.S.W.A. appealed, got a stay of the injunction pending a Circuit Court session this week. A Supreme Court appeal from the Circuit Court ruling was likely.

The only part of Judge Sorg's back-to-work order in effect was a paragraph directing the companies and the union to "make every effort" to settle the strike by bargaining in "good faith." Under this order, the bargaining teams, led by Steelworkers President Dave McDonald and Industry Negotiator R. Conrad Cooper, met at Pittsburgh's Penn-Sheraton Hotel for weekend sessions. The Steelmen, captained by U.S. Steel Chairman Roger Blough, were under pressures from steel-starved customers and impatient fellow steelmakers. Dave McDonald's hopes of defeating the Taft-Hartley injunction were buoyed by the Circuit Court's apparent friendliness, but he too was beginning to sense the nation's "plague-on-both-your-houses" mood about the strike.

Hanging over both sides was the threat that a really aroused public might prod the next session of Congress into a compulsory-arbitration law far more drastic than Taft-Hartley.

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