The Pittsburgh Press (November 5, 1944)
Davis warns labor ‘to shed shackles’
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania (UP) – (Nov. 4)
U.S. Senator James J. Davis, seeking reelection on the Republican ticket, warned labor and industry tonight that they must “prepare to throw off the shackles of regimentation imposed by the government, as soon as the peace has been won.”
Mr. Davis said at a United Mine Workers Republican rally:
The present national administration has discouraged business ventures, and, under the guise of assistance, is progressively encasing labor in a straightjacket.
If that administration continues in power four more years, labor will be entirely beholden to the federal government, and business will be hogtied.
Impeded by bureaus
The Republican nominee said the nation must have a government “that has faith in the productive capacity of America and its workmen,” and does not favor “the creation of endless bureaus to regulate and control the economic life of our people.”
Freedoms extinguished
He said:
It is the joint obligation of management and labor to keep free from government control, for when the economic life of a nation comes under rigid control of the government it is not long until the individual and political freedoms of the people are extinguished.
If American labor and American management are to remain free and enjoy the benefits of a progressive and unregimented economy, they must establish and sustain mutual machinery for industrial peace.