The Pittsburgh Press (January 11, 1944)
Roosevelt demands draft of men, women for labor
But President links his program with four other proposals
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington –
President Roosevelt in his third wartime State of the Union message to Congress proposed today enactment of a national service law drafting every able-bodied man and woman – “with appropriate exceptions” – needed for service in essential industry.
He said his national service plan “will prevent strikes.”
Saying that the government “already has the basic power to draft capital and property of all kinds for war purposes on a basis of just compensation,” the President added that “nothing less than total mobilization of all our resources of manpower and capital” will hasten victory and reduce casualties.
Mr. Roosevelt, however, made his national service recommendation dependent on enactment of the remaining four measures of a five-point legislative program submitted today to the second session of the 78th Congress. These were:
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A realistic tax law to absorb all unreasonable individual and corporate profits.
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Continuation of the renegotiation-of-contracts law to prevent exorbitant profits and to assure fair prices to the government.
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A food cost law enabling the government to guarantee minimum prices to farmers and to impose ceilings on food prices to consumers. He also asked for continuance of subsidies on necessities at a cost of about $1 billion a year.
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Reenactment of the Stabilization Act of October 1942, which otherwise would expire June 30. This provides for control of wages, salaries and prices.
Mr. Roosevelt also demanded that Congress resolve its controversy over the soldier vote by legislation which will not leave voting machinery exclusively to the states. He said state-controlled machinery would be unworkable and would deprive the overwhelming majority of servicemen and women of the right to vote.
Mr. Roosevelt said national service legislation would “prevent strikes” for the duration of the war and make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult. He said he had hesitated for three years on such a recommendation and realized now that the United Nations could win the war without it. But Mr. Roosevelt feels that it will shorten the war and lessen the cost in blood.
He explained:
It will give our people at home the assurance that they are standing foursquare behind our soldiers and sailors. And it will give our enemies demoralizing assurance that we mean business – that we, 135 million Americans, are on the march to Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo.
Arguments had been advanced against making American men and women workers subject to a labor draft, the President said. But heads of the War and Navy Departments and the Maritime Commission who beat responsibility for the procurement of the necessary arms and equipment and for the successful prosecution of the war in the field” urgently recommended the labor draft.
Mr. Roosevelt will explain the reasons for his recommendation directly to the people in a fireside chat at 9:00 p.m. ET tonight. His message at noon was read by clerks in the Senate and House.
He said:
National service is the most democratic way to wage war – all-out war. It does not mean reduction in wages. It does not mean loss of seniority rights and benefits. It does not mean that any substantial numbers of war workers will be disturbed in their present jobs.
I would not recommend a national service law unless the other laws were passed to keep down the cost of living, to share equitably the burdens of taxation, to hold the stabilization line and to prevent undue profits.
I hope that Congress will recognize that, although this is a political year, national service is an issue which transcends politics. Great power must be used for great purposes.
Ridiculing “ostrich isolationism,” Mr. Roosevelt said that in the post-war world all “freedom-loving nations shall join together in a just and durable system of peace.” He proposed “unquestioned post-war military control” over disturbers of the peace – Germany, Italy and Japan.
For the benefit of “suspicious souls,” the President said he had made no unconstitutional commitments at his Cairo or Tehran conferences although he had committed the United States to specific military plans.
He added, “But there were no secret treaties or political or financial commitments,” or pledges which might cast the United States in “the role of Santa Claus.”
He confessed to a “letdown” when he returned from his conferences and was confronted with the situation on the home front. Scornfully, the President cited the “noisy minority” which demands special favors from Congress.
He continued:
There are pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the nation as a whole. They have come to look upon the war primarily as a chance to make profits for themselves at the expense of their neighbors – profits in money or in terms of political or social preferment.
Disunity at home – bickering, self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual – these are the influences which can undermine the morale of brave men ready to die on the front for us here.
The time has come, he said, to prepare for a lasting peace and he added a fourth category to the evils against which he has said he would protect the people – the “ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and insecure.”
In an economic Bill of Rights, he stated the “right” of every individual or family to jobs, adequate food, clothing and recreation, fair markets, fair competition, decent homes, adequate medical care, social security and a good education. And he warned against a “rightist reaction.”
He said:
If such a reaction should develop, then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
On the subject for “a realistic tax law,” the President called for legislation to “tax all unreasonable profits, both individual and corporate, and reduce the ultimate cost of the war to our sons and daughters.
He asserted:
The tax bill now under consideration by the Congress does not begin to meet this test.
The new recommended food law, the President said, would enable the government “to place a reasonable floor under the prices the farmer may expect for his production” and place a ceiling on the prices paid for food by consumers.
Continuing to fight for subsidies, the President said this plan “should apply to necessities only, and will require public funds” amounting to about 1% of the annual cost of the war. This would be roughly $1 billion.
He pointed out that the stabilization law expires June 30, 1944, and “if it is not extended well in advance, the country might just as well expect price chaos by summer.”
The President went to bat for the soldier vote attacking “alleged reasons which have prevented the enactment of legislation” to preserve for the members of the Armed Forces “the fundamental prerogative of citizenship – the right to vote.”
“No amount of legalistic argument can becloud this issue in the lives of these 10 million American citizens,” he said, saying it was the duty of Congress to remove “this unjustifiable discrimination against the men and women in our Armed Forces and to do it as quickly as possible.”