. POEs the plush and gold

of New York’s Waldorf
Astoria hotel, General Motors

has just taken the wraps off the ,

1949 Chevrolet, Pontiac, Olds-
mobile, Buick and Cadillac mod-
els.

The occasion was the opening
of GM’s auto show, “Transporta-
tion Unlimited,” and bubbling
press agents tell you “off the rec-
ord” that it is costing the firm
around two million dollars.

Chrysler is reported ready to
spend three quarters of a million
dollars exhibiting the new Ply-
mouth scheduled to come off the
line in the next few weeks.

Both these members of auto’s
Big Three describe, in the min-
utest detail, the great improve-
ments and the irresistible qualities
of the 1949 models. But in the
massive press kits not a single
word is devoted to the hundreds
of thousands of auto workers
whose skill, hands, and sweat
turned out the cars.

When you read about what’s
new in GM’s Body by Fisher, re-
member that two weeks ago the
United Auto Workers Fisher
Body Local in Flint, Michigan,
went on record in support of a
demand for a national union
conference of GM workers to do
something about the thousands of
unsolved grievances in the GM
setup. :

And when you look at the new
Chevrolet, standing on its plat-
form of gold cloth, remember that
the Chevrolet local in Flint de-
clared the speedup is becoming
so intolerable that if it is neces-
sary to scrap the UAW-GM con-
tract to get better working con-
ditions, then UAW President Wal-
ter Reuther should call a con-
ference to do so.

And when that long, sleek, pow-
erful Buick hails into sight on
the turntable, there will be no
mention by the silver-tongued
spieler of the working conditions

in Buick’s foundry in Flint. He

won't tell you about. conditions
where the cores are made. Be-
cause then he would have to speak
of the belt line that goes down the
hole, and how the air is so thick
with the sand off the cores that
Negro and white workers toiling
down there have to wipe off the
electric bulb every ten minutes.
Imagine what happens to their
lungs, and how many of them are
‘silicosis cases.

No, they won’t tell you about
the speedup on the assembly line,
or conditions on the paint spray
job—the same finish that dazzles
your eyes when you see it on the
showroom floor. But think of the
thousands of particles of paint
that are inside the lungs of work-
ers because of lack of protection
from these health hazards.

So it will go—all the new fea-
tures of the 49 models. But noth-
ing about the new features of the
3949 auto worker.

There will be nothing about how
in 1948 a total of 5,600,000 motor
vehicles were produced by only
70 percent of the working force

needed to produce a slightly less ~

amount of cars in 1929, the best
previous production year of the
auto industry. :

Nothing will be said about the
all time high of auto profits of

. 1948—while thousands of work-
ers in the industry face layoffs.

Already auto industry spokes-
men gloomily declare that of the
6,000.000 backlog of orders, more
than 40 percent are “water”;
meaning people no longer want
a new car because they can’t
afford it.

Kaiser-Frazer prepares to lay
off 3,500, is the headline you read
in Detroit, while on the back page
you see the pictures of the new
Chevrolet and Plymouth.

Talk at the Ford empire in
Dearborn is that to sell the "49
Ford a price cut may be in order.

To beat the Chevrolets and Ply-
mouths onto the market, Ford
jacked up production 25 percent

Britain is producing the small and medium cars like
this new Standard Vanguard now increasingly popular in
Canada, but freight and duties make their original cost
comparitively high here. In Europe and now in Australia

they must compete with cheap small U.S.

If auto’s Big 3 wanted

rn

by auto’s Big Three to the North American public.

cars—denied

| By
WILLIAM

roucould have! “ii
a $1,000 car

in recent months. Now you can
get a 49 Ford any time—a Lin-
coln they'll drive to your front
door, And the Ford-Lincoln plant
announces a layoff of 1,280 work-
ers.

No wonder that auto workers
are talking about the 30 - hour
week with 40 hours.’ pay. The
older workers want pensions,
paid for by the company. And all
want higher wages, for, like the

majority of us, the men and wo-
men who make autos cannot af-
ford to buy the sleek 1949 models.
e

One product of the looming cri-
sis in the auto industry is a
growing demand that Detroit, the

‘auto city that was built on low-

priced cars, and its Canadian
counterpart, Windsor, produce a
good cheap car instead of heavy,
increasingly expensive luxury ve-

strangers to the peculiar char-

hicles that are beyond the reach
of the average family.

“A motorcar named Desire,” is
called for by the CIO United Au-
to Workers research and engin-
eering department in a detailed
bulletin published in Ammuni-
tion, the UAW education month-
ly.

It states that auto makers
could produce a six-cylinder, six-
passenger car weighing 2,000 lbs.,

with 105 inch wheelbase and 80
horsepower at $1,000 retail.

The UAW engineers note that
General Motors is already build-
ing a, car something like that. de-
signed and engineered in Detroit
-—but produced and to be market-
ed in Australia.

Ford, the UAW further notes,
is putting out a similar car in
France, the Vedette, also design-
ed and engineered in the United

States. They quote the Wall
Street Journal which said last
October 7:

“Australia’s upcoming Holden,
the first native-built car, will have
many of the features of the chea-
per Chevrolet which was one time
destined for the home (U.S.) mar-
ket.”

The UAW comments bitterly:

“When the auto companies in-
troduced light cars abroad they
considered the pattern of purt-
chasing power and income. They
knew that to market their cars
abroad they had to reduce the
price. In the U.S., however, they
continue to make luxury cars out
of scarce iron and steel for the
well-to-do families at the expense
of the families of farmers and
wage earners.”

Sixty percent of American mo-
torists — and the percentage
would be even higher among Can-
adians — polled in a recent sur-
vey stated their preference
for a smaller car selling around
$1,000. But C. E. Wilson, GM
president, doesn’t favor smaller
cars,.and all through the sales
and promotional end of the indus-
try the word has been passed
along to discourage the demand.

Wilson argues illogically, “The
trouble with making a car two-
thirds the size of Ford, Chevro-—
let or Plymouth is that you take
out value faster than you can
take out cost. And if we could
only sell 50,000 a year, a small
car would cost more than a Chev-
rolet.”

Obviously. if 60 percent of mo-~
torists want smaller, cheaper cars
they will buy them if they are
made available and the sales will
be in the hundreds of thousands

The real reason the auto manu-
facturers don’t want smaller,
cheaper cars is that there’s more
profit, proportionately, in expen-
sive luxury liners (GM made $450
million net profit last year)—re-
gardless of how auto workers are
laid off and how many families
decide to dispense with a car be-
cause they can no longer afford ~
to run it.

Communist trial belies U.S. ‘freedom’ boast —

By MAX GORDON

"THE peoples of Europe, Latin

America and elsewhere are
watching with intense interest
and considerable indignation
the trial of the 12 U.S. Com-
munist party leaders for the
“crime” of organizing a Marx-
ist-Leninist party.

Reports of protest actions
are fragmentary, but they are
indications of wide movement.
In France, committees of in-
tellectuals have been organ-
ized throughout the land and
large protest meetings have
been held.
been passed by big workers’
meetings, such as the 20,000
who met at Nimes. ;

In Britain, local mass meet
ings in various areas have ex-
pressed their displeasure, and
demonstrations have been held
before the American embassy.
In Italy, a town council has
passed a condemnatory resolu-
tion, and many meetings have
been organized in opposition to
American imperialism’s act of
suppression. <

In Holland, the American
embassy has been the target of
thousands of postcards. And in
Prague and Bucharest, scores
of factory meetings have acted

on protest resolutions.

The world’s people’s are no

Resolutions have .

acter of American “justice.”
Echoes of the Mooney, Sacco-
Vanzetti, Scottsboro Cases
were heard round the globe.

After the experiénce with |
Hitlerism, however, there is
widespread recognition that in- .

volved in this case of the Com-
munist leaders is something
even more profound. it is
considered a sign that Ameri-
can big business is travelling
down a similar road, and
strengthens the argument of
those who charge the U. §&.
with bolstering reaction and
imperialism internationally.

e ‘
EUROPE’S PEOPLES in
particular are also no strang-
ers to heresy trials against
Communists. :
In 1924, twelve Communist
leaders of Belgium were ac-

- quitted on a charge that close-

ly resembled the present one
against the American Com-
munists. Ironically chief de-

_fense counsel was Paul-Henri

Spaak, present Soviet-baiting,
anti-Communist prime minis-
ter of Belgium. :

In 1925, Britain too, wit-
nessed a trial of its 12 Com-
munist leaders on a somewhat
similar charge. though here
they were accused of actual
deeds, vague though the charge

was. Those with previous po-
litical convictions received a
year in jail; those without a

_record received six months.

A prominent highly conser-
vative journalist who recently
s€rved as a Paris correspond-
ent for one of America’s most
important newspapers told us
that the average European
man-on-the-street was far more.
acquainted with the trial of
the American Communists
than was the American man-
on-the-street. "For one thing,
the left-wing press has given
wide coverage to the Case,
and the left-wing press is high-
ly influential in Europe.

¢
Second, even the conserva-

.tive press has discussed the

case, sometimes expressing
shock and fear of the political
consequences in their own
countries if there should be a
conviction.

It was the opinion of this vet-
eran newspaperman, who ex-
pressed intense dislike of Com-
munism, that a conviction
would have serious repercus-
sions in the Marshall Plan
countries, making U.S, political
aims far more, difficult to
achieve. He declared, and sev-
eral recent European observers
have confirmed, this, that the

indictments alone against the
Communist leaders are enough
to shock Europeans. They

thought they had done with
persecution of Marxist-Lenin-
ist parties following the de-
struction of Hitlerism.

The foreign press is showing
an enormous interest in the
trial proceedings. Communist
newspapers in Europe are get-
ting either direct daily cable
coverage or are receiving it
indirectly from the Telepress
service in Prague, which gets
a direct daily cable and imme-
diately place it on the radio,
where it is picked up by mon-

itoring services throughout
Europe.

Several Latin American
Communists and progressive

papers are receiving direct
daily cables from the court-
room. Inside the court, too, sev-
eral foreign news services have
reporters who are giving the
trial world coverage.

As the case. proceeds, the
clamor and protest from Eu-
rope and Latin America espe-
cially will continue to grow
rapidly in volume. The Marsh-
all Planners and the bipartisan
imperialists will have to think
more than twice before they
dare put over their raw frame-
up.

—

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 4, 1949 — PAGE 4