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Show News "ax Behine By PaulMallon Released by Western Newspaper Union. RECONVERSION PROBLEMS FACE OFFICIAL WASHINGTON WASHINGTON. A lively fuss is being raised against the government failure to provide for reconversion. The Mead committee said only half what it thought about the job being bungled, the senators privately conceding con-ceding they were just trying to prod Mr. Truman gently into more forceful force-ful action. They really exposed nothing which has not been apparent for many months, as Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt had no announced program, and Mr. Truman has been busy with San Francisco and Potsdam. Behind the failure to make a plan (and this is apparent, if it has not been fully reported) is the scrapping between the various va-rious government departments. The army has never forgotten i its scare at prematurely anticipating an-ticipating the end of the European Euro-pean war. , The army is keeping its production produc-tion going at a terrific pace, and told . the Mead commttee (although this was not published in the report) that it is drafting 3,000 men a month while discharging 4,000 a month for a net discharge of only 1,000 a month. To add fury to this plain muddle, the CIO, New Dealers and some others oth-ers have been increasingly agitating for a vaster government spending program, like the old PWA, to take up a slack in employment, which has not yet developed, and is not immediately forecast in view of the national starvation for consumers goods and services, unless perchance per-chance chaotic management of the problem disrupts production. INTERNAL BICKERING To the problem, Mr. Truman put his best new man, John W. Snyder, who found it to be a nest of economic eco-nomic and political boa constrictors, and his grappling so far has not indicated in-dicated whether he will throw them or they him. So we have had such a condition as this following incident discloses: A business man came to Washington Wash-ington seeking authority to build a plant to supply parts for the automobile auto-mobile industry, admittedly the key in reconversion. He was told he could go ahead as his effort was immediately desirable. He then went to the steel manufacturers who informed him he could have no steel unless he had a priority. Washington Wash-ington thereupon refused to give him a priority. This, as I say, Is a known condition, con-dition, but behind it is a truly major threat to reconversion, to the relationship of the unions and management, a fact not observed ob-served by the Mead committee, or fully reported. The administration adminis-tration has detected the importance impor-tance of this all - controlling phase, as is evident in Labor Secretary Schwellenbach's promotion pro-motion of a labor-management conference to plan a workable substitute for the no - strike pledge and perhaps a new labor board setup or at least to provide pro-vide a sensible agreement, under un-der which men may work and the nation produce in the brave new world. A show-down between labor and management is coming, I am sure, before much reconversion can take place, I think it is planned. With the threat, publicly brandished by CIO leaders for a wave of strikes, the key automobile and other indus. tries which CIO controls can hardly go far with much reconversion, even if the government requires the army to be reasonable and loosen up on men and materials. Involved legitimately are the problems prob-lems of prices and wages. These related re-lated problems are in a far worse muddle than the Washington reconversion recon-version machinery. UNIONS SHOW GAINS . The union war worker is the man who made the biggest wage increase in-crease during the war. The Little Steel formula was shot so fuD of holes by the unions (upgrading pay devices, vacations, pay for portals to portals and back again to portals, por-tals, etc.) that it stands only as a sieve against the largest group of the people, the middle class non-factory non-factory workers. There are only 15 millions of people peo-ple in the unions and 45 millions outside the unions. Their wages were rather effectively frozen by the government formula, while the unions went on up. But prices went on up also, through the sieve of the OPA (black markets, and especially deteriorated goods and services). In my non-factory town, for instance, in-stance, the last bond drive could not meet its baby ,-bond quota because the average man just did not have anything left after buying his family fam-ily the necessities of life and paying his taxes. Those prices will not come down until reconversion has proceeded to the point where competition com-petition is restored in both goods and services. Not until quality of goods and work are restored, and both become readily available, can the government do anything effective on price control, which is the essence es-sence of economic control. |