The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, March 4th, 1937. NEW DEAL INEVITABLE.

Grey River Argus, 4 March 1937, Page 4

The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, March 4th, 1937. NEW DEAL INEVITABLE.

The New Deal has come to life again. There may not appear to be any logical connection between the strikes and the Supreme Court agitation in the United States, but each movement is evidently reacting favourably upon the other. That it should be so is due, of course, to the fact that the Roosevelt Administration has been striving against great legal, industrial and financial odds to establish ithe working class upon a better status. One of those . obstacles, ( if not the greatest, has been .the Supreme Court. One can see the sense of the contention by spine members of the President’s own party that industrial reforms ought. not t o entail any radical departure from the Constitution as it has been operating. Their idea doubtless is that the new industrial codes could be inaugurated partly by negotiation and partly by am adaptation of legislation to the letter of the Constitution. Bitt the partizans of the Court, if not also of the employers of labour, are showing the" white feather. They want a compromise on the Court issue, due to the fear that it is the best thing they now can expect. There are hints that some of the Supreme Court Judges ought to resign and so enable the appointment of successors who interpret the Constitution differently! That looks rather as if the veto on the New Deal has had quite as much a political and economic as a purely legal foundation. But the most significant thing is probably the action of the great United States Steel Trust.. It appears at long last to have given up the stand against organised unionism as distinct from company unionism. One of its important subsidiaries, that had been expected to agree to other concessions, has given recognition to an independent union, as well as accepting the forty-hour week, and conceding increases in wage rates. Previously the report was that anything - reasonable was to have been expected from the Steel Corporation, with the one exception of union recognition. The Motor Corporations cannot' _ now persist in their refusal to recognise unionism. The days of bastard unionism, therefore, may soon be over in America. No doubt, -the workers have been spurred to make a stern fight against it by the New Deal legis-' lation and sympathy of the President and the Administration. The employers, on the other hand, may have been forced to foresee they cannot continue to defy the great majority of the people indefinitely, and that the President is going - to stop at nothing in order to break their resistance. He in his turn can rely,, it seems, on the co-operation of the workers, taking - , as it does, the form of the strikes by various classes of employees, with the new “ technique,” that of “staying in.” Steel workers used not so long _ ago to have a ten-hour day. Under the new terms, such a day . would give them a fbur-day week. One result of the hew agreement, which may be expected to govern others, will be an increase of employment, because the demand for steel and its products is quite as .keen in the United States today as-in every other highly in dustrialised country. The* arnia' ment competition, coupled with increased production in other directions, has given the trades connected with metals an impetus- as sudden as .decline was after the slump eight years ago; This spurt, itself must eventually wear out, but the recognition of independent unionism, not to mention the 40-hour week and the revaluation of human labour, are things which, though newly established, will not easily be relinquished. Thus, the New Deal in its essentials begins to go into effect even in advance of the statutory enforcement which the Supreme Court- obstructed, but proves only to have delayed.