Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – The war blackouts in San Francisco are much stricter and much darker than England’s.
For in England some tiny bit of light is allowed – such as dim headlights, diffused and hooded street lights, and dimmed flashlights.
But here no light of any kind is permitted. It is against the law now to use even a dimmed flashlight, or to smoke a cigarette on the street. When the blackout goes on, this city goes back to the darkness of a million years ago, and it is truly as black as the inside of the well-known goat.
The justification for this strictness is that San Franciscans aren’t blacked out all night long, every night, as England is. These coastal cities are blacked out only when the warning sirens blow, and the alerts are usually not very long. Consequently it is possible just to stop everything.
In the first few days of the war, that happened two or three times a night. But now that the people have been scared into taking their blackouts seriously, and now that Jap planes are not believed around, we go for a week at a time without any blackouts at all.
But there will undoubtedly be frequent practice ones for the duration of the war, and people know they must be prepared to live in a blackout at any moment, so everybody is getting ready and trying to adjust himself to it.
Everyone wants flashlights
There has been a terrific run on flashlights. The first day I was here there were long lines of people waiting in front of the flashlight counters. Today most of the stores are sold out. And now flashlights can’t be used after all.
Material for blacking out windows is getting the big run now. But no really definite advice has been issued about how to black out windows, so people are buying a lot of stuff they’ll have to throw away as soon as they discover that light will show through it.
Getting in the groove of blackout living takes considerable cutting and trying. For example, when I arrived my favorite hotel, the Californian, had a red candle in each room, and alongside it a card of instructions (just as in London).
The card said: “Blackouts and What to Do: Turn off all lights in rooms and bathrooms. Light candle on dresser and place it on bottom of bathtub. Leave bathroom door open – enough light will be provided. Pull down all shads. Open one window slightly.”
But now the candles and cards have disappeared, for they found that even a candle in the bathtub would make a glow through the window.
Since the blackouts aren’t permanent, the hotel does not intend to put blackout curtains on the room windows. But it has blacked out the dining room and the lobby, completely.
The dining room now has heavy black satin taped over the windows. It stays there in the daytime, too. As in London’s nicer places, it is pleated and done so neatly that it is actually attractive. On the inside hang two huge Christmas wreaths.
The front lobby windows have been hung with enormously heavy black drapes, which can be pulled the second the sirens sound.
All lights ordered out
And just this afternoon a new sign, printed in black letters on yellow cardboard, appeared in each room. It said:
“Blackout Notice: All room lights to be turned out at once. Candles and flashlights prohibited in rooms. All halls, lobby and dining room lighted. When leaving your room shut all windows. Close hall door and take your key. Elevators will be in operation. Remain calm, but follow these rules. Hotel Californian is of steel and concrete construction, so remain inside of the building.”
Since the blackouts here aren’t night-long affairs, few resident owners are blacking out their entire homes. The favorite, and sensible, custom is to equip one room for complete blackout, and then just sit in that one room until the “all clear” sounds.
As in London, each person blacks out according to his own choice of material. You can use anything you want so long as it works. Here the run is on heavy drapes, black paper put on with stickum tape, black paint on the windows, and beaverboard coverings which can be set in when the sirens blow.
So far, the city has not built any public shelters, and it is doubtful if any will be built. A survey has been made of downtown basements that would make good shelters, and soon signs will go up along the street designating the spots for shoppers or workers who get caught in a raid. They have exactly the same thing in London.
Lots of owners of private residences here are thinking about family shelters. Before many weeks, I expect a good many thousand San Francisco families will have their own private dungeons to burrow into if the bombers come.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – A small strike of welders at shipyards and other plants in San Francisco has been denounced by Sidney Hillman as “a shocking act of disloyalty” and repudiated by the national secretary of their independent parent union in Washington as an irresponsible action by officials of the locals.
These be harsh words, and the disavowal of the strike by the national headquarters puts the strikers and their leaders on a miserable spot. In fact, the strike was very unwise but, of all the strikes that have retarded the war effort, this nevertheless is one of the least reprehensible. The welders, robbed and exploited for years by the unions of other crafts, have been put in a desperate mood by the arrogance and rapacity of these other unions which have shown them not even fairness, much less mercy.
Mine strike was more destructive
Now other unions which also struck and slowed down work before Pearl Harbor will take a sanctimonious attitude toward the San Francisco welders because their strike came after the Japanese assault made war official. But the strike in the captive mines was incomparably more destructive at a time when the Japanese attack was actively in preparation and the man who called that strike not only was rewarded with a closed shop and total victory but was invited to sit in as one of the great spokesmen of American labor in the conference on unity of labor and industry.
The welders’ strike is a jurisdictional dispute but not in the mean and narrow understanding of that term. They should not have struck but their grievances are not mere matters of petty inter-union jealousy and greed for dues. These men have been kicked around, fleeced and sneered at for years by boss unioneers who have refused to acknowledge that welding is a craft and have permitted other unions to treat them as their rightful prey.
About a month ago, a welder telephoned me from Washington, where a meeting was in progress, and said: “We are desperate. They is going to be fighting and I may get killed but I will kill some of them before I get mine. I have got a wife and two kids living in a trailer near a job in Baltimore and I have got in my pocket now receipts for more than $600 that I had to pay out to other AFL unions in the last year. Another man in this room with me now has got cards in 26 AFL unions that he had to buy so he could work on Jobs in various parts of the country.”
Whether or not welding is a distinct craft, it certainly is a distinct occupation and as much a craft as hod-carrying or ditch-digging. But, unlike hod-carriers and ditch-diggers, who have their own union, and a disgraceful racket, the welders must buy the right to work from the union having local jurisdiction in each separate job. They are skilled migrants and, being migrants, are usually, in the union sense of the word, “foreigners” in the localities where they find themselves, and are treated by the local unions about the same as an ignorant, crooked highway patrolman treats a motor tourist far from home.
Public owes welders a hearing
The welders struck an ordnance plant construction job at Morgantown, W. Va., about a month ago in protest against exactions by a steamfitters’ local which claimed jurisdiction over them. One of their representatives then declared that 17 different metal trades unions of the AFL claimed the right to fees and dues from welders and added that two welders on the Morgantown job had been compelled to take out cards in the bakers’ union when they installed equipment in a big bakery. He said the Morgantown strikers had been paying 7 percent of their wages in assessments alone, in addition to the regular dues, without any right to know what was done with their money.
In Baton Rouge, La., and Orange, Tex., big groups of welders heaped their multiple cards, transfer tickets, permits and receipts from many AFL unions, representing thousands of dollars on their earnings, and burned them publicly the day after Pearl Harbor as a gesture of protest and independence. This was unwise as they thus destroyed their evidence, but the men were boiling mad.
There are said to be 126,000 welders and the editor of their craft paper in Los Angeles estimates that they pay 27 million dollars a year to various AFL unions in which they have no effective membership rights.
Recently the welders were assured that the multiple-card racket would be waived through the kindness of the extortioners, themselves. They apprehended, however, that the hundreds of locals around the country would not respect this concession.
So, the public owes the welders a hearing and congress owes them relief as men driven to desperate folly, verging on military sabotage, by the racketeers of an archaic and dishonest union system.
Clapper: Public thinking
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – I hope a way will be found to give the widest circulation to Vice President Wallace’s discussion of the foundations of the peace in the January Atlantic Monthly. We need thinking by the public in this field far more than in the business of military strategy.
In fighting the war we must rely on the decisions of those in command who have the secret information. Back-seat driving in military matters is necessarily advice given in ignorance of many controlling facts. It is therefore useless, if nothing worse.
This is not true concerning organization of the peace. There legislative decisions will have to be made. They will be made in a setting of public discussion. An informed public opinion is necessary. Otherwise we shall be at the mercy of demagogues looking for short-range votes instead of long-range good. As Blair Moody says in a provocative book on these questions, “Boom or Bust,” the first thing a demagogue learns is that it is easier to frighten a thousand persons than to educate one. Vice President Wallace, out of a rather large experience and knowledge, is trying to throw light on a subject that is complex and yet as vital to our future security as winning the war.
Modern world is an economic unit
We know now, Vice President Wallace says, that the modern world must be recognized for what it is – an economic unit. If that fact is not clearly kept in mind from now on, we are liable to trap ourselves into short-run decisions that will work long-run harm.
It is just as if Detroit were considered an economic unit apart from the United States. Detroit is going to hit some hard weeks of unemployment while the auto industry is changing over to war work. Some officials here fear that as many as 200,000 men may be temporarily unemployed. That is a tragedy in Detroit and one that the Government must seek to alleviate in every possible way. But production of autos has to be drastically cut to win the war. The ultimate benefit must prevail over the immediate loss.
We went through this same thing nationally when we shoved up the tariff twice after the war at the very time that we should have made it easier to import goods. That short-run decision contributed to the economic collapse which hit other countries first and then backfired on us with the worst and longest depression in our history.
Raw materials will be allocated
Under the pressure of war we can make some of these decisions at the risk of the local damage that so often is an unavoidable by-product.
We have just done it in the agreement with Canada to abolish tariff walls for the duration of the war. From now on the United States and Canada will consider themselves one economic unit. President Roosevelt will ask for whatever legislation is necessary to make this arrangement effective. Milo Perkins, director of the Board of Economic Warfare, was chairman of the American negotiators.
Because top war production by both countries is necessary, it does not make sense to obstruct the exchange of materials by imposing tariffs. If we have something Canada needs or Canada has something we need, the important thing is to get it where it is needed. Each country will fit its production into that of the other country. Scarce raw materials will be allocated between the two countries in any way that will contribute to the maximum combined war output.
This is not a specific pattern for postwar relations, which will be governed by other considerations – economic well-being rather than actual survival. The same attitude of mind, however, is the pattern needed – a flexible, realistic wrestling with the actual problems, rather than incantations that have come down to us from the McKinley administration, which may have been all right for quite different days.
Maj. Williams: Fair warning
By Maj. Al Williams
If destiny ever handed a nation a warning to take stock of itself and its military and naval fitness, we have been handed such notice. Until we Americans begin thinking of modern warfare, of national, defense or national offense, in terms of air fleets capable of traversing any ocean and reaching any continent – on their own and without surface forces – we will continue to tempt destiny.
The true conception of airpower in all its current and future significance must permeate and sink through each and every layer of our social, political and economic system. In each and every heart there must be an abrupt awakening. In each and every mind there must shed that light of pure, logical thinking which will turn to doing first things first and making us into an airpower nation.
National defense forces or war machines for aggression do not just happen. From somewhere near the top of the nation, from some position demanding attention and even obedience, must come the command and the plans for building our air forces to dimensions overbalancing all other such forces in the world. We have all the raw materials. We have production facilities equaled nowhere else in the world. We are a motor-conscious nation, made so by the mechanized age originated by our people.
We have the tools
Nowhere else in the whole world are there so many people of all ages familiar with the general principles and handling knowledge of internal combustion engines. Approximately one-fourth of our American people can drive autos. I know it is a long stretch from driving motor cars to flying airplanes, but the essence and heart of the airplane is its motor, and the nation that operates 25 to 30 millions self-propelled land vehicles can certainly outfly nations where only 5 or 10 percent of the people can steer or drive self-propelled vehicles. We Americans have everything but the will to build and operate an American airpower which would dwarf that of the whole world combined.
In capital letters – yes, in neon lights if necessary – it must be sold day and night to the American people. I doubt whether the word “sold” is the proper term. We are not even tapping the overflow of young Americans eager and clamoring to man this airpower. In short, we have everything to do the job, except the command and the plans (the latter to be supplied on a moment’s notice after the command). I know it might have been the way of a powerful, rich nation to indulge in academic debate and waste time arguing in support of the status quo of armament, but this is war and we are at war.
I know there are some who will evade the absolute necessity for facing stark facts by pleading that this is not the time to revamp our national defense system. But against this I insist with old-fashioned logic that “there is no better place to start from than where you stand.”
What price do you think France would count too high to be able to turn back the pages of time and translate her Maginot billions into French airpower that would have darkened the skies of Europe?
British revamped her system
What would the British give today for a chance to build their warship fleets into air fleets? England revamped her defense system in the last World War when she was in far worse straits than we are today. It was then, with her back to the wall, that England tore her air services from the army and navy to build the Royal Air Force.
Hold the Philippines, Wake, Midway, and Hawaii if we can. But to beat Japan we must do it by bombing Japan. And we can only bomb Japan with air fleets taking the high road to Japan, from Alaska along the Aleutian Islands to Kamchatka and thence to Japan.
And to get the necessary air fleets to do this job, we must provide an air command (call it a “United States Air Force,” or call it what you will – as long as we get it) and win this war.
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
Millett: 1942 will test women of United States
By Ruth Millett
The year 1942 will test the loyalty, the courage, the patience of the American woman. And it’s my humble bet that she will pass the test with flying colors.
1942 will show whether, beneath her smart coiffure, the modern woman has as much old-fashioned common-sense as the women who helped their men build America. It will show whether her carefully cared for hands are just as capable of performing any task that comes her way as were the work-hardened hands of her great-grandmother that could hold a rifle, guide a plow or rock a crying baby.
It will show whether a woman used to standing beside her man can step back to stand behind him – strengthening him with her own courage, her own faith, and her own serenity of spirit.
Yes, 1942 will test American womanhood. Have we as much courage as those earlier American women? Have we their pioneer spirit?
We’ll soon know. For there will be great sacrifices asked, of American women in 1942. The greatest, of course, will be the cheerful, courageous sending of our men into the fight that has been forced upon us.
And always there will be the worry, the anxiety, the fear we must learn to control.
Our role in national defense at least – at first – will not be spectacular.
1942 will show us up for what we are underneath our make-up.
Knowing that, let’s give an account of ourselves that will make our grandchildren as proud of us as we are proud of America’s pioneer women.