Waiting in the Wings

"There is no need . . . to point out the preposterously ineffectual manner in which the Government's labor policy--if any thing so vacillating can be called a policy--has been handled. The country is well aware of it."

Wendell Willkie blew this blistering bazoo at the White House. But the new War Labor Board heard him clearly. Labor was its responsibility now.

WLB's first full-dress act last week had shown promise: it handled the Boston fishermen's dispute with determination. The fishing fleet was tied up while fishermen and owners of the trawlers fought over whether owners should pay for war-risk insurance for the fishermen. Owners thought the fishermen, who shared the fishing profits, should share the insurance cost. Pending a final decision, the board ordered the owners to pay. When they still balked, the board cracked the whip until they complied. Act II--the old, taut problem of North-South wage differentials--also shaped up well at first. C.I.O. aluminum workers in the South wanted wage boosts up to the level of the Northern workers. The board granted a 7-c--an-hour increase, reducing the differential. But in a statement which shot a bright ray of hope into the gloomy thoughts of economists, and reassured citizens who were worrying about an inflation spiral, the board declared: ". . . Workers . . . have no right to expect . . . wage increases during this war period which will enable them to keep day for day pace with upward changes in the cost of living. . . ."

Unfortunately, while it was taking its bow, the board got tangled in its own cold feet. Board labor members decided that they disagreed with "some of the wage theories."

The big act was still to come.

Since last September, C.I.O.'s steelworkers had wrangled with four Little Steel companies over union demands for a $1-a-day wage increase--and union security, the puzzler which had baffled and finally wrecked the old Mediation Board.

Labor said that war profits warranted a wage rise. The dispute was dumped in the lap of the War Labor Board. Lights went down, the orchestra tootled. The board poised in the wings, nervously spitting on its hands. Big Steel watched keenly. So did all employers. This decision would keynote all the hundreds to come.

Members admitted they had no fixed policy on wage demands. The board's Wayne Morse, dean of the University of Oregon law school and the man who settled the railroad wage dispute, said: "The job of this board is to settle labor cases." But Dean Morse, like many another board member, found it hard to explain how labor problems could be divorced from the price problem. Many a U.S. citizen was sure they could not, knew that a wage increase in Little Steel would open the doors wide to demands all along the industrial front.

As labor & management representatives canceled each other out, the final decision would have to come from the public's four men: a patent attorney (Chairman William H. Davis) and three college professors (Dean Morse, North Carolina's Frank P. Graham, and Pennsylvania's George W. Taylor). Whether the act turned out to be juggling, tumbling, or actual lion taming, it was going to be a wow.

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