So Many Voices

U.S. civilians could feel pretty certain last week that no labor draft was going to upset their lives. The Senate Military Affairs Committee,* after listening to the protests of such varied antidraft groups as the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the C.I.O., the A.F. of L., railway labor, the National Farmers Union, the National Grange, etc., had smothered the makeshift May-Bailey bill, which might have done the job.

All Secure on the Home Front. The big, soft pillow used to smother the May-Bailey bill was another bill whipped up by West Virginia's New Dealing Senator Harley M. Kilgore, whose constituency is heavily weighted with labor votes, mostly United Mine Workers. The Kilgore measure would hand the manpower problem over to Paul V. McNutt's War Manpower Commission (which has fumbled it from the beginning). It would give neither WMC nor anyone else the authority needed in the crisis. Labor and management have come out for the Kilgore bill.

Even as Senators talked on & on, Kentucky's Albert B. ("Happy") Chandler quipped that he was emphatically in favor of "hunting up another bill to kill the Kilgore bill."

Tried and Failed. This week an old, earnest and angry man--War Secretary Stimson--took the Army's appeal for a labor draft to "those who have sons or husbands or other dear ones at the front." Said Henry Stimson:

"We have never given our Government the adequate machinery to produce the equipment and weapons with which these soldiers are to fight. While we have by law organized our young fighters and compelled them to sacrifice their lives . . . we have never by law organized our workers. . . .

"The inevitable result of this failure of American democracy is now becoming apparent at this crisis of the war. Shortages, deadly shortages, are now looming up." The House, Mr. Stimson noted, rose to the occasion by passing the May-Bailey bill. But now--

"So many voices [have spoken] for special and by comparison trivial interests they seem to have stifled the voice of national interest and suffocated the bill. Enemies of the bill are beginning to boast today in the streets of Washington that they have killed it. . . ."

Hopefully Henry Stimson concluded: "I believe that the voice of American conscience will be heard."

* The Senate committee may have misjudged the temper of unorganized U.S. citizens. A recent Gallup poll reported that 53% favor a labor draft; only 39% favor keeping voluntary methods: 8% are uncertain.

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