Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1934. RECURRING TROUBLES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 50, 28 August 1934, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1934. RECURRING TROUBLES

Strikes were blazing in many parts of the United States when President Roosevelt set out on his summer holiday, and, though the most alarming of sthem—the longshoremen's strike at San Francisco —had collapsed during his absence, he found the epidemic still raging fiercely on Ills return. It must have been the first problem to meet him on the wharf at Portland, Oregon, when he landed, but though on his journey eastward he was expected to deliver a series of policy speeches for the guidance of the electors in November we have been told little, if anything, about them and absolutely nothing about his attitude to the strikes. The report from Washington yesterday of the propaganda which, "apparently with the aim of counteracting the growing criticism of the Roosevelt recovery programme," had just been launched serves rather to advertise the gap than to fill it. As secretary of the "so-called Executive Council" organised to co-ordinate the activities of the New Deal, Mr. Donald Richberg had issued the first of a series of reports ~ describing its achievements. The re-employment of 3,000,000 persons, the addition of 36,000,000 dollars to the weekly payrolls, and the decrease of business bankruptcies by 40 per cent, were the chief points cabled from Mr. Richberg's first report. To say that such facts as these are now fairly familiar even outside of America is not to condemn propaganda of this kind as useless. The repetition of the obvious is a material part of the arts of agitation and popular education, and a repetition which outside the country appears superfluous may really be necessary owing to the interests which in the country itself are concerned to contradict and misrepresent but have no parallel abroad.

But, though Mr. Richberg's propaganda by leaflet and advertisement may serve a useful purpose, it is not the kind of propaganda that has given the N.R.A. campaign its peculiar strength and persuasiveness. In the personal charm of the President it has had an asset which by always putting things in the best light possible and smoothing over difficulties has proved of unique and incalculable value. The N.R.A. would not have got far without the President, nor would.it slay long if his inspiration and guidance were withdrawn. There is, of course, not the faintestv chance of so patent a fact's being overlooked by Mr. Roosevelt himself, or any of his advisers. But with all his powers he cannot be in half a dozen places at the same time, and he cannot work for more than twenty-four hours in the day. Subject to these and possibly some other human limitations, one may be sure that the President is using every ounce of power that he possesses in the service of the State. | If he is less busy at the microphone and on the platform than he used to be—and of this there is only negative evidence covering a very short time—we may be sure that it is because he has what he considers to be higher calls elsewhere. It is not, however, in either of these directions that there seems to us any ground for fearing that President Roosevelt is falling short. It is not yesterday's report from Washington but today's that suggests a doubt. A great strike is threatened which, if it is not averted, will put nearly half a million men out of work on Tuesday next, and perhaps 300,0.00 more in some allied industries, with, of course, the possibility of an indefinite extension in either case through the connections of business or sympathy. The trouble is one of which there has been ample notice, which is the result not of any special circumstances peculiar to any industry or place but of a fundamental defect in the N.R.A. Act itself or its administration, and which by the irony of fate affects immediately an industry that thirteen months ago was leading the van in the opening march of the industries restored to life by the New Deal. The cotton textile industry, which was the first to be ready with its code, was also one of the first of the big industries to discover that the new machinery was not as good as it looked, and that the promise that it held out to the workers was in large measure deceptive. "A lapse of public enthusiasm over the codes" was the euphemistic expression applied by General Johnson on May 2 to a phenomenon of which Mr. E. Francis Brown writes in the July "Current History": "A long-gathering storm of pent-up hostility and popular passion has broken over the N.R.A." The storm which had then burst was gathering as long ago as February, when General Johnson averted a crisis by summoning the critics to Washington to do their worst. Demands for wage increases and for union recognition were the main causes of the epidemic of industrial warfare which spread across the country iii'Mav. In tho Iwo Jiiggesl industries afTcclcd slrikcs were nar-

rowly averted. On May 30 the iron and steel industry obtained a truce by a new code, but the workers were highly incensed by the promise made to them about collective bargaining "under the supervision of an appropriate governmental agency."

This promise, says Mr. Brown, rang somewhat hollow in tho light of recent failures of the Government to uphold the right of collective bargaining. Nor did the steel workers delay in attacking the revised code. Through thoir spokesmen they declared: 'Tor eleven months tho stool workers ' union worked nnd petitioned and waited for justice under Section 7A of the Recovery Act and Article 1 of tho Steel Code. We have gained nothing. . . . Our patience is at an. cud. A general strike involving hundreds of thousands of steel workers is promised for tho middle of June." With this announcement: tho Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and. Tin Workers began to prepare for a contest with the steel companies, while N.R.A. administrators endeavoured to ward off so disastrous fi struggle.

. The other capital industry dangerously affected in May was the textile industry. For a while a general strike of from 400,000 to 500,000 textile workers was threatened, but on June 2 General Johnson effected a similar settlement to that in the other case—a settlement which postponed trouble but left its renewal a mere matter of time. In the opinion of the convention of cotton textile and other workers which was held in New York on August 16 and 17 the time has now come. Resolutions calling for a strike of all Lhese workers, numbering about 500,000, and of 325,000 others, were carried. This report is confirmed loday with some slight discrepancy in the figures, and ihe date is now fixed for September 4, "In the meantime. 1' we are told, "the Federal Government is seeking to inaugurate conciliation.' Conciliation might have been possible in February when the trouble began, and it may be possible now. But this patching up and postponement cannot go on for ever. Mr. Roosevelt will have to go more deeply into the problem if he wants a lasting settlement, but he may not care to attempt it on this side of the elections.