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Show tO DAY TOMORROW ST KIKES patriotism The fight being waged between C.I.O and A. P. of L. unions- is just a tea party compared with the battle which will rage between unions and American patriots unless un-less this strike business is brought to a quick halt. When certain union leaders make It apparent that they consider the strength of their organizations more important impor-tant Mian the strength of their country, when they show that they are willing to endanger our nation by bogging down on defense production in order or-der to test their power, it looks as though the American public may have to rout out those leaders before it attacks any other enemy of demo- cracy. So far, I don't think the thousands- of union members who have agreed to strike are so much to blame. They have been blinded into thinking that they must do what th-e unions tell them or all of the progress they have made in recent years will be lost. But actually, ac-tually, they are taking a big jump In a backward direction right now by chancing the loss of the sympathy sym-pathy of the Am-erican people. GUILT sacriifice The unions aren't 100 per cent guilty for the loss of millions of man-hours on defense work. In some cases they have a sound argument ar-gument for their actions by pointing point-ing out that an industry, producing produc-ing all it is capable of producing, produc-ing, and getting a fair profit on its production, should share its increased income with labor. Take the Bethlehem Steel problem. A few weeks ago, when the union agreed to have its members go back to work while negotiations were carried on, Bethlehem executives execu-tives were highly pleased with themselves because the strike had been called off and they hadn't given labor a darned thing! stantly going on among hot-headed Europeans. We take things calmly and think them over pretty pret-ty carefully before we demand any action. We know the majority of members of unions are good A mericajisi We know those who are striking actually represent a small minority of defense workers We know employers, in some cases, would walk all over labor if it didn't assert itself AVe know President Roosevelt Roose-velt has the support of laborers labor-ers and can expect them to back liis program But we know, too, that the world's biggest fire is sweeping toward our house and we're not going to stand by and watch the firem-en stage a tug-of-war with the one hose that can extinguish the blaze. I ( But when the union finally struck in earnest, it wasn't to better bet-ter the condition of Bethlehem workers but to strengthen its own organization to get the steel company to throw out a local union and to permit an election to determine what union the men wanted. In due time, that could have been taken care of by law. Or it could even have been postponed until the appetite of a munition-hungry munition-hungry nation had been satiated. It's of no importance compared with the defense of America. And it proves, along with similar strikes, that there's a large group which is answering the president's plea for sacrifice by shouting, "Not us!" ACTION fire It takes the American people a long time to get their dander up. That's why we're able to get along as a federation of 48 different dif-ferent states without having the squabbles and wars that are con- CONGRESS .... promoting One more thing about strikes: Perhaps President Roosevelt is somewhat at fault for not taking more drastic action to stop them. But the president's job is to get all groups working In harmony for the interest of the country and it's a tough job. He can't clamp down too suddenly on millions mil-lions of union workers and then expect them to cooperate with him. He is forced to handle them with kid' gloves. Being the champion of the defense program, it can be taken for granted that he wants action taken to get rid of all obstacles Interfering with maximum production. But he might welcome, in tliis case, having the action initiated in some quarters other than the AVhite House. So if we want to blame someone for not doing something to stop strikes, it might be well, for a change, to blame senators and congressmen. con-gressmen. They are in a position to get the facts on the subject and introduce remedial legislation. legisla-tion. It often seems, these days, as if most congressmen have forgotten that action can be taken in the halls of congress, without waiting for prompting prompt-ing from the president. Congress should consider that it has mr.'e of a job than that of just voting on bills sponsored by the president. |