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Show Released by Western Newspaper Union. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO OUR 'M' DAY BILL JONES had a good job, especially for a young man. On graduation from college, with an engineering en-gineering degree, he had found employment em-ployment with a large construction concern. He seemed to have an assured as-sured future. Then came the draft law and Bill was listed as 1A. Uncle Sam said he was to go into the army. The pay-would pay-would be $50 a month with clothes and food. The hours would be whatever what-ever part of the 144 of each week might be called for. There would be no overtime. He would be on the job every day and hour unless an army doctor pronounced him 111. He would go where he was told to go and do what he was told to do. Bill did not object. To defend the country when called upon was a responsibility of citizenship. He gave up a job paying $100 a week and cheerfully accepted the one at $50 a month. Bill Brown, too, had a job, as a mechanic In a plant making airplanes. air-planes. It was a good job as measured meas-ured by standards of that time, paying pay-ing $35 a week of 48 hours. As the making of airplanes was an essential essen-tial industry Bill was listed as 4B and told to stay where he was. Because Be-cause of federal laws, to stay on the job he was forced to join a union, and the plant could work only 40 hours a week. The other 104 hours of each week were at his disposal to do with as he pleased. He did not have to produce a doctor's say-so should he fail to show up for a portion por-tion of the prescribed 40 hours. The union he had been forced to join demanded that Bill be paid $50 a week, and later that it be again Increased to $60. Then the government govern-ment decreed that, as a war emergency, emer-gency, he must work 48 hours a week, but that he must be paid time and one-half for the extra eight hours. It added up to $72 a week, approximately $324 a month, in Bill'i pay envelope. Both Bills are citizens of the United Unit-ed States. Both owe to the nation the same obligations of citizenship. While Bill Jones was losing a leg In the battle of Tunisia, Bill Brown, by direction of his union bosses, was out on strike carrying a banner in a picket line, demanding another increase in-crease in pay which the government saw to it that he received. . Had the once muchly advertised "M" bill become a law, both Bills would have been drafted. The one to wear a uniform at $50 a month, the other to wear overalls at the $35 a week he was then receiving, and with as many hours work as might be demanded. That "M" bill, had it become a law, would have drafted the plant as well as 'Bill Brown, the worker. There would have been no excessive price for the product of the plant, and. no profits. It would seem the discarded and forgotten "M" bill would have provided a real democracy democ-racy of wartime. It would have meant an "allout" war on the part of everybody, but those who seek votes were afraid of what it might do at the polls. 'OTHER FELLOW'S' INCOME IS CP IN WARTIME THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE COM-MERCE tells us the average individual indi-vidual income was 24.1 per cent higher in 1942 than in 1941 and 61.5 per cent higher than in 1939. The figures make us feel rich and are undoubtedly correct but it is hard to find the individual who will admit they apply to him. It was the other fellow who received the extraVnon-ey. extraVnon-ey. By states the highest increase was in Nevada, amounting to 66.8 per cent as between 1941 and '42. The lowest was in New Hampshire, where it was but 8.6 per cent. In the central farming states it ranged between 16.8 per cent in Illinois to 29.9 in Iowa, with a general average in those states of 21.7. Utah topped all agricultural states, with 49.6. The government is taking a considerable consid-erable portion of the increase as additional income taxes. That, with a greater cost of living does not leave most of us with any extra spending money. WRITING SERVICEMEN THE POSTMAN brought a letter from an old, old friend. It did not contain much that was news but what a vast amount of pleasure those few lines produced. When we, on the home front, can derive so much enjoyment from a letter, we can realize what the receipt of even a few lines from home means to one of our boys on a far-away battle front . . CONGRESS HAS APPROPRIATED APPROPRIAT-ED FOR WAR purposes more than twice as much money as has been spent or for which orders have been Placed. Should the war end soon the American taxpayer would not bemoan the fact that some of those billions were not used. . IF, BECAUSE of their war expert-ence, expert-ence, the manufacturers produce for us one-half the new or improved gadgets they promise, there will be no problem about postwar employment |