A Fighting Clause

At 7:57 one night last week, after 76 hours of debate, the Senate passed the Burke-Wadsworth Compulsory Military Training Bill, 58 to 31. The Senate had approved peacetime conscription, but the bill provided the biggest burst of fireworks in 1940's Presidential campaign. Morning of the final day, Georgia's smooth-faced Senator Russell popped up with an amendment jointly sponsored by Lousiana's Senator Overton, ardent New Dealer and onetime Huey Long ally: ". . . Whenever the Secretary of War or the Secretary of the Navy determines that any existing manufacturing plant or facility is necessary for the national defense and is unable to arrive at an agreement with the owner of such plant or facility for its use or operation . . . the Secretary, under the direction of the President, is authorized to institute condemnation proceedings with respect to such plant or facility and to acquire it ... the Secretary may take immediate possession of such plant or facility and operate it either by Government personnel or by contract with private firms pending the determination of the issues. . . ."

Senator Russell explained that the amendment was not intended to bait industry. Businessmen were cooperating in national defense, he said, but there might be some subcontractors who made essential defense items who were not. But the debate grew hot. Ohio's Senator Taft declared: "I shall refuse to vote for any measure to draft men, and I do not propose to vote for any measure to draft property. ... In drafting men, they may be classified according to rule, and they may be drawn according to lot. However, in this case the matter is entirely within the discretion of the Secretary of War or the Secretary of the Navy. ... I say that is the most extreme delegation of authority we have considered."

Much Ado about Nothing. War and Navy Department officials smiled at the hullabaloo, did not greatly care about the outcome. Still on the books last week were most of President Wilson's emergency powers. Under them, in wartime or if war is imminent*, the President can:

> Compel manufacturers to give the Army, Navy or any other Government agency prior call on their output;

>If that is not enough, require manufacturers to make exactly what the Government wants, when it is wanted, and if necessary reorganize the factories and their managements.

The mere existence of the authority was club enough: Woodrow Wilson and his industrial mobilizer, Bernard Mannes Baruch, had little need to seize factories during World War I.

Just the same, somebody in the Administration wanted a bigger club. Into an obscure naval bill last June someone sneaked an amendment authorizing the President to commandeer "any existing manufacturing plant or facility necessary for the national defense." Congress passed the bill, the President signed it. Then sleepy Representatives awoke to what they had done, angrily tacked a repealer clause to a pending defense appropriation bill. Somehow, on the bill's way through the Senate, the repealer clause vanished. Result: the President still had his big club regardless of the fate of the Overton-Russell amendment.

Is He For It? Meantime the amendment had become a campaign issue. In Rushville, Wendell Willkie said it gave the President "absolute and arbitrary control of virtually the entire economic system of the United States. . . ." All business and perhaps all agriculture, said he, could conceivably be included; discretion as to when there was a disagreement was left to the President. If passed, the amendment "will further impede and disorganize the defense program," will also stop normal industrial expansion. It was a threat to labor, since labor cannot strike against the Government and business so acquired would be Government-operated.

Said Willkie: "I put this up to the President now and I hope that he does not answer with any quip about how Wendell Willkie loves property and he loves humanity. I say, without any personal criticism of the President, that it has been his good fortune at every stage in his life to possess and enjoy more wealth and more income than I have. This is as true today as it was in the past.

"The issue is the form of Government under which we shall live, the way of life for which we shall stand. ... I put this question to him directly: Is he for or against the Overton-Russell amendment?"

President Roosevelt did not reply that Wendell Willkie loved property. He did not reply at all.

-- *On Sept. 8, 1939 Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed a "limited emergency."

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