Where Is Peace?

Henry Agard Wallace spoke casually. Labor, he said, in an extemporaneous radio speech, should get half or more of the 30% pay increases it demands; if necessary, prices should be increased. This, the Secretary of Commerce theorized, would advance the U.S. cost of living by only 3 or 4%. Anyway, he was more afraid of deflation than inflation.

Was bareheaded Henry Wallace announcing Government policy, or was he talking through his hair?* Only a few days before, Harry Truman had reiterated his unchanging opposition to wage increases affecting prices; those who fear higher prices remembered it with comfort.

But others remembered that Wallace and Labor Secretary Schwellenbach have recently been in frequent consultation over the forthcoming labor-management conference, beginning on Nov. 5. Had Henry Wallace deliberately tossed up a debatable idea to test public reaction?

Whatever the answer, peace was not likely to descend suddenly on the troubled U.S. industrial front. Beyond wages, there were other reasons for striking. One of them had tied up 242 ships in New York's harbor, another had closed nearly half the nation's bituminous coal mines, and a third was still stirring up bitter battles in Hollywood.

The Road? The plain citizen watched these and other uproars on the labor scene with helpless anger and dismay. Was this the road to reconversion, 60,000,000 jobs and all the other fine promises of peace?

Labor's attitude seemed to be: "The public be damned; let's get ours." Management, long since disarmed in labor strife, stood by, waiting for Government to do something. Government was almost as helpless; it had no firm policy and no means of stopping strikes, except plant seizures; it would lose even that inconclusive weapon six months after the official end of World War II was proclaimed.

This week the public was still taking it--and not liking it. Long accustomed to labor's getting its own way, it waited for the Government to add up the bill and present the check. Not so the soldier. Angered before by strikes in wartime, he boiled over again at the longshoremen's strike, which was slowing down his return home. This week the New York Times printed soldiers' bitter letters on Page One. Typical excerpt:

"If labor unions believe they are doing something for their cause they are certainly mistaken. . . . They are losing a prestige among 6,000,000 troops which took years to build up."

*For a comment on Mr. Wallace's hair, see PEOPLE.

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