Slow Burn

Any old hand could have told Mike DiSalle that a newcomer to Washington should never turn his back until his possessions are nailed down. Mike turned away for only one day last week, to make a speech in his home town of Toledo.

When he got back, somebody had made off with a big chunk of his powers as boss of the Office of Price Stabilization.

As originally set up, DiSalle's OPS was supposed to lay down price controls and presumably enforce them. But ever since DiSalle's big price freeze, Attorney General Howard McGrath had been licking his chops over all those potential lawsuits. Suddenly, last week, the Administration trotted out a provision in the Defense Production Act which everybody seemed to have overlooked and gave the enforcement job to McGrath's Department of Justice. DiSalle's men could look for black marketeers and other violators, but when they found them they would have to turn them over to Justice (which still has on its calendar 2,000 unfinished OPA cases from World War II days).

Protest. Labor also got its feelings hurt last week in the grinding of mobilization gears. For weeks, big labor leaders had been pressing the President and Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson to place a big labor man up there among all the big businessmen in the mobilization high command. They got no satisfaction. Then they discovered that Wilson was fixing to take control of mobilization manpower away from labor's friend, Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin.

Again the labor leaders protested. Again they got no satisfaction--Mobilizer Wilson made Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, president of Ohio Wesleyan University, his new assistant, and gave him authority over all mobilization manpower problems. The job given to Flemming, who has served in several Government posts, including the Civil Service Commission, was one Secretary Tobin had proposed with himself in mind.

Salve. To soothe labor's slow burn, the mobilization high command quickly made a salving gesture. Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston appointed George M. Harrison, president of the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, to be a special assistant, specializing in price and wage issues. It was a salve--but not enough to quiet union leaders' grumbles.

With wages frozen, prices rising and their demands for a voice in the mobilization high command unheeded, labor was in a disgruntled, resentful mood. Its discontent was not eased by the Wage Stabilization Board, whose nine members were still unable to agree on a formula for letting wages catch up with prices--and whose Board Chairman Cyrus Ching let it be known that as soon as the board does agree, he is going to quit and return to the more relaxing job of U.S. mediation chief. Probable successor: W. Willard Wirtz, Northwestern University labor law professor and acting executive director of the wage board.

Grumbled President Emil Rieve of the C.I.O. Textile Workers: "As far as the American people are concerned there is no stabilization program--except wage stabilization. Wages have been selected for control while other areas of the economy have sufficient freedom to go their merry way."

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