Wants $60,000 back –
Lewis drops his wooing of AFL
UMW leader is bitter in denunciation
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
…
Wants $60,000 back –
I DARE SAY —
It isn’t brotherly love
By Florence Fisher Parry
The other night on the radio, I heard one of the most depressing prophecies I ever heard uttered in regard to post-war Europe. The commentator offered the horrifying speculation that Hitler and his gang realize that their only hope lies in the complete and utter demoralization of Germany and that the only way they can hope to survive is to bring about complete collapse of the German people. That is why they are prepared to fight until they are indeed destroyed.
They see that the German people must be reduced to such a state of abject despair, hopelessness and demoralization that in their desperation they will be willing to turn again to another false prophet, to another diabolical Hitler. Thus do they hope to perpetuate their evil power; for they know that when human beings are desperate enough, they will turn to anything.
Cynical and sinister as is this theory, it is a reasonable possibility. The iconoclasts in history always fed and fattened upon the failure of beaten men. The beaten man, bereft of strength and sanity, no longer able to discriminate between the spurious and the gentle, invariably turns to a false prophet for his redemption.
These false prophets invariably have adopted the same sinister plan by which to conquer and enthrall. They have immediately set about innovating a system of petty authorities giving into the hands of their disciples some semblance of power, setting them up over each other in an intricate system of policing, giving them rank and title and office; and thereby investing them with a sense of importance so that each man sees himself lording it over someone else still lower on the scale of human importance.
Paternalism
It would be well, I think, for us to examine some of the measures we are ourselves now employing, lest this war, too, prove a boomerang, and we find ourselves at its end imprisoned within another immortal nightmare.
For in our own country the shadow of this same sinister philosophy has been working under the guise of a benign largesse. The same dangerous exploitation of man’s defeat and despair has been subtly encouraged. The same artful system of erecting myriad petty authorities has been taking covert root. The same system of elaborate bureaucracies with their petty appointments and abnormal authorities has become woven into the fabric of our government.
A vast paternalism has extended its all-enveloping warm blanket of benefits over the failure segment of our population, until today our own federal government, outside its frank handouts, has a payroll of $522 million a month. For every three men now in our Armed Forces, there is one employed by the government in a federal job.
Never in the history of any one nation has there been such a wasting and hoarding of manpower specifically for the business of running the government. The number of bureaus now sapping the manpower strength of our nation is practically uncountable.
It is more than overstaffing. It is overstuffing. And by the report of our Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, who headed the inquiry into non-essential federal expenses, at least one-third of the civilian personnel of the federal government could be dismissed and absorbed immediately into the war or essential industry.
Assumption of power
The OPA is typical. When it began in April 1941, it had a staff of 84. A year ago, it had 90,000. I have not at hand the figures on its expansion in the last momentous year.
You will say that this is a far cry from the methods used by other tyrannies who increase their powers and perpetuate themselves by setting up arbitrary bureaus authorized to rule by executive order. Examine, then, The Congressional Record, which will reveal to him who chooses to investigate, that almost one-half of our federal laws today are being created by the administrative and not the legislative branch of the federal government.
Those who originate executive orders are not elected by the people. They are appointed by the administration. They do not represent anybody. They stand for their own personal, peculiar ideas. They are free to promote their own philosophies and enhance their own powers.
The assumption of such administrative power is a snowball which gathers momentum, size and destructive menace as it rolls down the slopes of history. It always starts with a snowflake – a soft, white, gentle snowflake. A snowflake of brotherly love.
This is to help you, brother. This is to lift you up from slavery.
That’s how tyranny begins, with a snowflake.
But as history has proved and will until the end of time – it isn’t, it isn’t, brotherly love.
Workers vote at Ward Company NLRB election
Union hands employees Orson Welles letter
…
Foremen place bargain fight before WLB
NLRB ruling offers only union protection
…
Murray urges fourth term
Steel union roars Roosevelt approval
Cleveland, Ohio (UP) –
CIO President Philip Murray today endorsed President Roosevelt for a fourth term amid thunderous applause of 2,300 delegates attending the opening session of the second biennial convention of the United Steelworkers of America (CIO).
Mr. Murray, who also heads the steel union, said that “the overwhelming majority of the people of this nation… regardless of political affiliation… demand his [Mr. Roosevelt’s] reelection.”
He said:
No man in our lifetime has rendered greater service to his nation than the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces – the President of the United States.
In an attack on the “Little Steel” wage formula, Mr. Murray recalled that when it was formulated two years ago, he said then that it was “unworkable, impractical and that time would prove its application would develop wider discrimination in the wage structure of the nation.”
Without specific reference to the union’s current demand for a 17-cent-an-hour wage increase over the formula, Mr. Murray said:
I attended its baptism, I participated in its confirmation and with the grace of God I hope to attend its wake.
Mr. Murray reaffirmed the CIO’s no-strike pledge and said his organization would never justify a strike “while an American is in a foxhole.”
In Washington –
House slated to act on flood control bill
$800 million measure includes dams for Youghiogheny and Cheat Rivers
…
Pittsburgher’s skill saves crew of crippled bomber
Pilot uses ‘muscle power’ on damaged controls to elude Jap ack-ack over Rabaul
…
Justice warns of antisemitism
…
Simms: British worry no longer over U.S. election
Roosevelt or Dewey, they’re confident
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
London, England –
The feeling no longer exists among the British, as it once did, that Roosevelt and the Democratic Party somehow owned a copyright on the American war effort.
It is now clear to them that the will to see this thing through has nothing to do with personalities or parties, but is 100% American.
This new attitude is of recent date. The past few months – in fact, the past couple of weeks – have witnessed a remarkable shift regarding the American political scene. It began when both parties in Congress gave their overwhelming endorsement not only to war measures, but to a post-war peace setup based on the pacts of Moscow. It gathered momentum as GOP leaders, one after another, made it plain that the conduct of the war was not an issue.
But perhaps the most noticeable change has taken place since New York’s Governor Dewey made his forthright speech approving the basic principles of American foreign policy as enunciated by Secretary Hull.
Still root for Roosevelt
British leaders are no longer worried over possibility of a Republican victory in the coming elections. They know now that Britain’s partner in the war is America, not merely the Democratic Party, or more specifically, the President.
However, assuming as most everybody does that Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Dewey will be the candidates, British officials are still rooting for Mr. Roosevelt.
No responsible British authority was willing to be quoted on the subject though privately they talked readily enough. They are scared lest they be accused of meddling in the American elections.
But if Britain could vote, she would go for President Roosevelt.
He is hauled over here as a “sincere internationalist.” People say he entered the war before the United States did. they recall his shipment of arms to Britain at the time of Dunkerque; his destroyers-for-bases deal; his moral declaration of war long before the “shooting war” began. They thank him for Lend-Lease.
Dewey’s stock rises
Governor Dewey, the British feel, is less committed. His stock has risen tremendously since his New York speech and no one doubts that a Dewey administration would have one with less determination or ability than a Roosevelt administration to push the war to a successful conclusion.
The only question concerns his post-war policy.
On that point opinion has not crystalized, but this week’s Economist warns that it won’t make much difference which is elected. American public opinion reacting on Congress after the elections, it said, is what will determine whether the United States collaborates fully with the rest of the world or not.