Problem Tackled

All Washington last week was finally stirred by the growing seriousness of the manpower muddle (TIME, Oct.5), but while others vacillated a man from Minnesota spoke out. Startled by the acute shortage of farm labor in his own State, Governor Harold Edward Stassen took the bull by the horns. He ordained an emergency manpower program for Minnesota.

Core: Within 90 days private employers in nonessential industries are to reduce by 20% the number of men they employ; so will the State. Where necessary they may hire women as replacements. The men set free are to be eased into farm work, backbone of Minnesota's economy, by means of State-financed urban & rural farm labor recruiting offices and rehabilitation of skilled oldsters.

Birthplace of this program was Washington, but the baby is strictly Minnesota's. Governor Stassen went to the Capital, he explained, in an attempt to get manpower action from Manpower Boss Paul V. McNutt and Draft Boss Major General Lewis B. Hershey. Getting promises but no action, Governor Stassen scribbled an eleven-point plan in a borrowed notebook, telephoned it from his hotel to St. Paul. Said he: "Either we are going to have . . . more women employed ... or we are going to have disorder. That's what we've been having."

He expects the program to release 30,000 Minnesotans for farm work (1,200 of them State employes). The catch is that except for the power to fire a few State employes the Governor cannot insure success for his program; it is not compulsory. But he expects it to be "backed by the force of public opinion."

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