The Pittsburgh Press (January 15, 1946)
Ferguson: Speak up, Mrs. America
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
WAKE UP, Mrs. America! The alarm is sounding. It’s time to write your congressman about what you think of these industry-labor squabbles. Maybe the initial strikes haven’t affected you directly, but now that the packers have called a nationwide walkout you should realize that your dinner table soon may be meatless again, as in the lean days of the war.
When a group threatens to cut off the food supplies of a nation, it becomes a touchy matter for the homemaker.
Living expenses already are higher than a cat’s back, and we know how hungry the people of other countries are. So I think it’s time we expressed ourselves on this strike situation. Everybody else tries to push Congress around. Big business keeps powerful lobbies in Washington. So do the unions. These two groups have tremendous financial and political power.
But if the housewives of the country ever make up their minds to speak in their own defense, some of that power would melt away.
A Congress that takes the authority to order my boy and yours into uniform, and to send them off to fight all around the globe and to deprive them of years of normal life, ought to have the authority to tell these fighting groups to get back to work.
There are three sides to the labor rows – industry’s side, labor’s and the people’s. the day has come when the people ought to speak. Something must be done to put a stop to these strikes. Talk about the weak-kneed Germans before Hitler’s Elite Guard! How much resistance do we plain non-union Americans put up before the “might-makes-right” theories of both big business and labor?