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When Roosevelt advocated the adoption of a national service act in his message to Congress last January, he made this proposal part of an "indivisible” five-point program which included: (1) “A realistic tax law—which will tax all unreasonable profits, both individual and corporate, and reduce the ultimate cost of the war to our sons and daughters.” (2) “A continuation of the law for the renegotiation of war contracts—which will prevent exorbitant profits and assure fair prices to the government.” (“For two long years,” Roosevelt added, “I have pleaded with the Congress to take undue profits out of war.”) (3) “A cost of food law” (food subsidies). (4) “Early reenactment of the stabilization statute of October 1942.” (5) “A national service law—which, for the duration of the war, will prevent strikes and, with certain appropriate exceptions, will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this nation.”
“These five measures,” Roosevelt contended, “together form a just and equitable whole. I would not recommend a 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.” Once before, on April 27, 1942, Roosevelt had submitted an “indivisible” seven-point “economic stabilization program” which was to be applied as a “just and equitable whole.” Just as this seven-point program was sheer demagogy designed to cover up the imposition of the wage freeze in 1942, so Roosevelt’s five-point program serves up in 1944 essentially the same demagogy in order to shackle workers to their jobs at frozen wages under a forced labor law.
By his own admission, after a lapse of two years in which wages have been frozen tight by executive decree, Roosevelt is still “pleading with the Congress to take the undue profits out of war.” Profits have risen higher than ever before; the new tax law adopted by Congress is, in the words of Roosevelt himself, a measure granting “relief to the greedy and not to the needy”; wages remain fixed while the cost of living has mounted, resulting in a decrease in real wages and a constant lowering of the standard of living of the workers. This has been the net result of Roosevelt’s “stabilization” programs of the past two years.
WHY BIG BUSINESS WANTS LABOR DRAFT
The growing opposition of the workers to the wage freeze has compelled Roosevelt to unmask himself and to come out openly for repressive legislation designed to chain the workers to jobs and frozen wages by means of forced labor legislation. That this is the real meaning of Roosevelt’s proposal is made abundantly clear by one of the most authoritative spokesmen for Wall Street, Walter Lippmann, who has a direct pipeline into the innermost sanctums of the real rulers of this country. Mr. Lippmann writes:
“The reason why a war labor policy cannot be had without a universal service act is this: when the demand for labor far exceeds the supply, you cannot stabilize wages while every civilian is free to work or quit. When you cannot compel men to work in the war industries which need them, you have to bid for their services. Otherwise, you may not get them. This is what pushes up wage rates. This to what makes it impossible to refuse wage demands in essential industries like coal mining and the railroads.”
Lippmann lets the cat out of the bag! In order to safeguard the profits of Big Business, freezing wages is not enough—the workers must also be frozen to their jobs under a compulsory service act. Otherwise, it would become “impossible to refuse wage demands” to workers who follow the example of the coal miners and railroad workers. That is precisely what Roosevelt’s proposal for a forced labor law intends to do.
Having failed in his initial attempt to put over a national service act under cover of a carefully staged anti-strike hysteria following the wage dispute of the railroad workers, Roosevelt is now executing a flank attack. The contention that a national service act is needed to “prevent strikes” has been dropped.
THE PRETEXT OF THE MANPOWER SHORTAGE
The campaign now in progress is being waged under the pretext of a manpower shortage, the second motivation given in Roosevelt’s original proposal. In his testimony before the Senate Military Affairs Committee, Robert P. Patterson, Under-Secretary of War, shed some light on this question:
“When asked by Senator Warren F. Austin of Vermont it there had ever been a genuine shortage of manpower, the Under-Secretary, who has been a key organizer of munitions production since the start of the war program, replied: Of course not. We have no manpower shortage. There is plenty of manpower, both for the armed forces and for war production. If we were hard pressed we could put an armed force of 16,000,000 men in the field if we did it on the scale the Germans and Russians have done it.” (New York Times, January 27.) (The present goal of the army is 11,300,000.)
Paul V. McNutt, chairman of the War Manpower Commission, testifying recently before the House Military Affairs subcommittee on the draft, stated there was no manpower shortage that would justify a forced labor law, and added: “The job has been done on a voluntary basis. It has been done.” In addition, it is a known fact that cutbacks in war production are releasing thousands of men every day. If any more evidence is required of the spurious nature of the “manpower shortage” it is provided by the magazine Business Week, authentic spokesmen for Big Business which predicted in its December 11 issue (page 15) that there would be a “manpower crisis in March.” In the issue of April 1, the magazine, boasting of the prediction made four months previous, says: “Army and Navy have precipitated the crisis right on schedule.”
HOW THE PLAN HAS BEEN ‘MODIFIED’
The present plan to conscript labor for private industry is being advanced as a modified version of the universal labor draft proposal made by Roosevelt. It has become known as the 4-F plan in that it proposes to utilize the apparatus of Selective Service in conscripting labor for work in private industry. By this flank attack, Roosevelt is seeking to impose by administrative measures what he previously tried by appealing for legislation. This was revealed by Col. Francis V. Keesling, Jr., legislative representative of Selective Service who announced that measures had already been taken to put the plan into effect. Those men unqualified for military duty (4-F) as well as those fit only for limited serice (1-AL) will be “permitted to remain in civilian life as long as they hold jobs deemed important by Selective Service,” but will be subject to induction in military labor battalions, “if they leave such jobs without permission of their draft boards.” The plan has been “modified” but the aim remains the same—to freeze workers to their jobs at frozen wages under penalty of induction into labor battalions.
While the labor bureaucrats were compelled to voice their opposition to Roosevelt’s proposal for universal labor conscription, they have thus far maintained silence on the 4-F plan. The press has announced that the “top labor leaders” have been engaged in a series of conferences with proponents of the labor draft. According to the reports, they have indicated their support for a “modified version” of a national service law.
There can be no compromise on a question which involves the fate of the labor movement. The militants in the unions can halt such a treacherous compromise by arousing the ranks to the danger of labor conscription and its inevitable effect in undermining the organizations of labor. Every local union should adopt resolutions demanding that the “top leaders” speak out against any and all forms of labor conscription. The labor movement must take the lead in the struggle against totalitarian regimentation of the American people.
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