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Show CIO Called Wars Top Profiteers (EDITOR'S NOTE: DeWitt Emery Em-ery is President of the National Small Business Men's Association.) Associa-tion.) On January 18, 1946, Philip Murray of the CIO said: "The evil conspiracy among American Big Business has been unmasked . . .This conspiracy must be stopped stop-ped if the sacred principles for which wc fought to destroy Nazism, Naz-ism, arc to be enjoyed by the American Am-erican people in peace. . .American .Ameri-can industry, fattened with war profits, guaranteed a level of pro fits through special tax rebates under laws written at their behest, be-hest, have deliberately set out to destroy labor unions and provoke strikes and economic chaos, and hi-jack the American people through uncontrolled profits and inflation." The occasion for Murray's blast was the rejection by the steel industry of the President's compromise plan. General Motors Mo-tors also rejected the compromise plan the government prepared for it. Murray and his ClO'ers fought a very hard fight against Nazism; they suffered the great and extreme ex-treme hardships of bulging pay envelopes and living comfortably comfort-ably at home. Also, despite the great emergency, they found time to take numerous strike-vacations. rue war couia not nave Dcen won without the tools made by plants which had CIO unions, but at what price were those tools made? It was the highest price industry, with the full power of the Administration solidly behind be-hind every demand made by Labor, La-bor, could be browbeaten into paying. Labor goons, most of them working for the CIO, forced forc-ed hundreds of thousands of workers to pay exorbitant initiation initia-tion fees, or didn't you know a-bout a-bout that, Mr. Murray? It may be that you considered it highly patriotic pat-riotic for your contemptible, unprincipled un-principled stooges to take every possible and conceivable advantage advant-age of the American people while you had them over a barrel of having to produce millions of items in a hurry so their sons might at least have an even break in shouting it out with the enemy. en-emy. You and your ilk undoubtedly undoubt-edly are quite proud that you wrung the last possible drop of "blood-money" out of the war. These tax laws, Mr. Murray, that you howl about, took 95 J that's right, 95 of the profits accuring from war production contracts. These taxes were paid cheerfully. Industry did not have to be bribed to accept them. Union Un-ion labor, on the other hand, had to be bribed at every turn. One war plant was struck because the parking lot was wet. In another plant 800 men struck for one week because of a dispute of five cents per hour in the pay of just one worker. At still another war plant, with a CIO contract, 1200 men threw down their tools and walked off the job because the driver of the soft-drink delivery truck which served that plant belonged be-longed to an AFL union. Oh, yes, Mr. Murray, you and your ClO'ers fought a mighty hard fight against the Germans and the Japs. The loss carry-back provision in the tax laws, about which you are now hollering your head off, was put in them, because no other provision was made to compensate com-pensate industry for the cost of reconversion. The procurement agencies of the government allowed al-lowed the cost of converting plants and equipment to war work as a charge against war production, but refused to make any allowance whatsoever to cover the cost of reconverting the same plants and equipment back to peacetime production. Recon-; Recon-; , version is just as much a war cost ; as was the cost of converting to : war production, but it is not to be : expected that your biased think-; think-; ing, Mr. Murray, could possibly ; be broad enough to understand ! that. r There isn't any question, Mr. ; Murray, but that there was an i awful lot of profiteering during the war. The record shows that very plainly. This same record shows just as plainly that at least 95 of the profiteering was done by union labor. I'd certain- ly like to have an opportunity to debate this with you face to face, with the American people acting as judges. And now, you and your stooges want your wartime pay your "blood-money" carried over into in-to peacetime. You say, Mr. Murray, Mur-ray, "labor's take-home pay must not be reduced," which, of course, is right in line with the New Deal philosophy of paying more and more for less and less. If this line of reasoning were carried car-ried to its ultimate conclusion, it would mean that after a while everyone would have everything for producing nothing. Why don't you go whole hog and ask for that now, or at least a minimum min-imum wage of S100 per hour. In the final analysis, if as your economists econ-omists assert, high .purchasing power is all we need to insure great and lasting prosperity, then we certainly would all be more prosperous if the minimum wage was $100 per hour, or would we? The Communists in France did exactly what you are now trying to do in this country. Has anyone told you what happened to the workers in France? If not, Mr. Murray, I'd suggest that you make inquiry. Actually, Mr. Murray, what this country needs is more production pro-duction per man hour of work, with the pay of each worker being be-ing based on what he produces. Try that on your piano, Mr. Murray! |