Deadlock

Organized labor's walkout from the defense mobilization agencies set off cries and counter-cries, conferences, viewings-with-alarm and fevered gesticulation all through the week. But Big Labor stubbornly stood fast. Its chief target, Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson, remained firm. Amid the noise and confusion, the rift over the administration of national mobilization seemed, if anything, to widen.

Wilson's refusal to waver in the face of the walkout was still unshaken when he flew to Key West to see President Truman. Before boarding his plane--and later at a press conference which followed his visit with the President--he summed up his impression of the dispute: labor had quit in a huff because it could not control manpower allocation between industry and the armed forces. Later, in Washington, he simply said: "I'm damned if I know what they want."

This set off another round of outraged complaints from the United Labor Policy Committee. Its grievance, it cried in effect, was the freeze on wages (at a ceiling 10% above Jan. 1950) while prices kept going up and Big Business went its merry way.

Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston tried to oil the troubled waters in conferences with labor's bosses. He apparently cooled labor's fever only a few degrees. But this week the Administration made one oblique attempt at conciliation. The President appointed ex-Senator Frank P. Graham, former president of the University of North Carolina, onetime War Labor Board member and labor's good friend, as defense manpower administrator in the Labor Department.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.