Pe er

reser eT Wa _ 1 n i

Truman admits need for wage boosts--but? |

by GLADYS CARTER

an oo a - ——

NEW YORK—A national budget of $37.7 billion, nearly four-fifths of which would go to pay interest on the national debt, tax refunds, national
defense and international commitments, was recommended to. Congress January 10 by President Truman. The remaining one-fifth, he proposed should
coyer the running of the U.S. government and national social services. Truman also called on Congress to continue the present high level of taxation.
The Republicans are seeking an overall 20 percent reduction
in taxes in a demagogic appeal for votes in 1948. A 20 percent
cut would mean practically nothing to the average worker

but it would represent a substan-
tial slice fer people in the top
income brackets.

In an economic report to Con-
gress, Truman acknowledged the
need for simultaneous price re-
ductions and increased wages if
national purchasing power is to
be sustained, However, he offered
no recommendations except that
business reduce prices and raise

wages. At the same time, he
cautioneqd workers not to seek
“excessive” wage increases.

The Truman report shows
that 1946 net profits for cor-.
porations were about $12 bil-
lion, which is $3 billion higher
than in 1945 and represents the
highest corporate profit figure
in U.S. history. At the same
time, the report shows that
total compensation for workers
was about $109 billion, which is
$5.5 billion below 1945 and $7.5
billion below the 1944 wartime
peak,

The president’s report set a
goal of 58 million jobs for 1947
but abandoned totally the concept
of full employment. The present
figure of two million unemployed,
Truman said, is “the minimum
unavoidable in a free economy.”

The Truman report came as

congressional wheels started grind-
ing at full speed to enact labor-
shackling legislation, A new ver-
sion of the Case bill has already
been introduced in the House of
Representatives, going even further
than the one vetoed by Truman
last year.

The new bill would provide for
a 60-day cooling-off period —
which by technicalities could be
extended to 155 days — before a
strike could legally be called. It
would also prohibit political con-
tributions by unions and penalize
unions participating in sympathy
strikes.

In the Senate, Republicans of-
fered a bill which would ban the
closed shop and place other re-
strictions on unions,

The new flood of anti-labor bills
drew sharp reactions in both the
AFL and CIO. AFL President
William Green lashed out partic-
ularly at the bill to outlaw the
closed shop, charging that its
sponsor, Senator Joseph Ball, “‘is
using as the agent for big cor-
porate interests who are out to
destroy the trade union move-
ment.” Because of its craft struc-
ture, the AFL has several entire
trades under closed shop agree-
ments.

‘Portal-to-portal’ back-pay suits continued to be filed
by American workers, the totals now running into bil-
lions of dollars. Officials of the United Auto Workers
(CIO) are shown: filing suits against General Motors,

Ford, and the Chrysler Corp.

totalling about $400 million.

Meanwhile the monopolists are seeking to move heaven
and earth to circumvent the ruling of the Supreme Court
which precipitated the ‘portal-to-portal’ avalanche.

Aleutian, Alaska, US bases

directed against Soviets

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—The Aleutians, Uncle Sam’s next-
to-one nearest possession to the Soviets, are the scene of
intensive military activity these days. The whole area is
blanketed by almost impenetrable censorship but enough has

leaked through to indicate that
operations Williwaw and Frigid,
and others even less publicized,
are being taken seriously indeed
by those bodies of the United
States Army Command that have
to deal with the future.

Ali men attached to units op-
erating in the Aleutians have re-

‘ceived a special course of indoc-

trination as explanation for the
extreme hardships they are under-
going, But only the officers have
been told in so many words the
rea] meaning of the operations.
The officers have been told
point blank that the operations
have to do with Russia. Denying
that the units in the Aleutians
were “striking forces,” one high
ranking officer told his group
that everything in the Army was
represented on the islands with
the aim of testing all equipment
and organization under conditions
as “similar to those encountered
by the Red Army along the Rus-
sian-Finnish border’ as possible.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 2

Col. Joseph D. Raney, command-
ing officer of Task Force Willi-
waw has received instructions to
so train his men as to make each
a nucleus for training of future
northern fighting forces in an
emergency. Here, at Fairbanks,
Task Force Frigid with its 1,500
men has been testing army ve-
hicles, weapons and other equip-
ment under conditions of Alaska
cold which is similar to the
weather along the Russian nor-
thern coastline.

Instructed to camp 10 days in
the field each month in Decem-
ber, January and February, Col.
Raney’s force will deploy almost
to the westernmost Aleutians, as
close to the Russians as possible.

One. of the major tasks of both
forces is to study the effects of
intense cold on gasoline, oil and
gasoline and diesel engines,’ It
is precisely these that failed the
Germans in their‘attack on Rus-
sia in the winter of 1941.

President Truman delivers his ‘state of the Union mes-
sage’ to a joint session of Congress, as kingpin reaction-
ary Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, president pro tem
of the Senate looks down from above. Truman’s recom-
mended labor legislation was termed ‘not substantially
different” from the notorious Case bill by leading repub-
licans.

Sabotage of
Romanian oil

by CHARLES KORMOS

‘ BUCHAREST—Two of the
biggest foreign-owned oil
companies in Romania—Astra
Romana (Royal Dutch Shell)

and Romano-Americana (Stand-
ard Oil Co. of N.J.)—are sabot-
aging production, in the ’ opinion
of oil workers here,

In the oil center of the Pro-
hava valley alone, it is report-
ed, 1,000 wells have been aband-
oned and with them. valuable
tubing and other boring equip
ment which could be employed
profitably in the opening up of
new resources.

Aim of the companies, accord-
ing to Romanian progressives, is
to cripple one of the nation’s main
industries,

_ While Royal Dutch Shell and

Standard Oil complain to the
British Foreign Office and the
U.S. State Dept. that the Rus
sians are preventing them from
importing boring machinery to
exploit their holdings, their
managers on the aepot refuse
to use g00d available equip
ment. ,

The Romanian oil workers’
union recently presented a list of
several dozen abandoned wells to
the managements of the two ceom-
panies, urging theiz reopening ‘in
order to increase production. The
managements ignored the propos-
al, however, The firm’s practice
has already cut oil output 15 per-
cent under last year,

Marshall learned in China what

tough job he

faces in

by ISRAEL EPSTEIN

new role

NEW YORK—Whatever Gen. George C. Marshall's appointment as Secretary of State
may hold in store, the year he. spent in China should have taught him what foreign policies

are unworkable. His return from Nanking highlights a great failure of American postwar -

diplomacy. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, because the course of action followed in China

promised no good to the peo-
ple of the USS,

Marshall was sent to China to
mediate a stop to the civil war
there, which was not only bleed-
ing the Chinese people but also
destroying a great market for
peacetime reconstruction goods,

Unfortunately for Marshall’s ef-
forts, the U.S. was backing one
side in the fighting—Chiang Kai-
shek’s Kuomintang — even while
peace discussions went on, The
late Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, who
knew China better than any other
American, said as long ago as
last April that meditation under
these conditions wouldn't work.
“George Marshall can’t walk on
water,” was the way he phrased
it.

On the other side in the civil
war are the armies of the Liber-

ated Areas of China, freed from |

the Japanese in wartime guerilla
campaigns and led by Chinese
Communists, These -armies have
had no aid from outside but have
grown by giving the people a
Square deal, raising wages, lower-
ing farm rents and dividing the
land of quisling landlords among
their former sharecroppers.

Stilwell was furious that the
U.S. had chosen to gang up
against these people with Dicta-
tor Chiang, who had sabotaged
his plans against Japan. The
American general wrote in a
letter just before he died: “It
makes me itch to throw down
my shovel and get over there
and shoulder a rifle with Chu
Teh” (Liberated Areas com-
mander),

Marshall couldn’t walk on water,

but he tried. As a result, the
civil war went on. The Chinese
people got so angry at America
that the U.S. was attacked by
nationwide student demonstrations
—an honor previously reserved for
the Japanese and the British.
Chiang covered up his terror
against labor and other Chinese
democrats by passing a. constitu-
tion that..has a dozen loopholes
for every right it pretends to give
the people, But even with U.S.
aid amounting to $3,600,000,000, he
didn’t make much headway mili-
tarily.

The trouble was that America's
China policy was not really a
China policy at all but one di-
rected at Russia, a bogey with
which Chiang was always scar-
ing Washington,

The result has been very bad
for Chiang himself. Judging that
war-torn China offers no hope as
a base against the Russians, War
Department brass hats have picked

Japan for the job. Gen. Douglas’

MacArthur is now looking for
ways to prop up Japanese indus-
tries with the old wartime gang
still in control,

U.S.-Soviet war possibilities no
longer look so good to Nanking.
One of Chiang’s newspapers re-
cently asked: “If Japan ever
fights as America’s ally, what is
more natural than for her to grab
a slice of weak China as her
reward?”

Sec. of State Marshall was not
the chief maker of this mess.
But he is now responsible for
finding a way out of it, if it is
not to get worse,

Senator Bilbo of Missippi leaving
Washington to undergo an oper-
ation after a compromise agree
ment had been reached, which
would allow the Mississippi bigot
his annual salary of $15,000 plus,
with the decision whether to seat
him or not delayed until his re-
turn. Bilbo’s anti-Negro lynch
rule and anti-democratic conduct
in the recent elections, together

with charges of war contractual -

grafting make this U.S. Hitlerite
product too odoriferous even for
case-hardened Republican stom-
achs.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1943