Peace in Our Time?

In Washington's Chamber of Commerce Building, in the eye-winking glare of flash bulbs, three men signed their names to what may be a historic document. The men: U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Eric Johnston, C.I.O. President Philip Murray and A.F. of L. President William Green. The document: a labor-management charter for industrial peace in the postwar world.

The charter was the distillation of some two years of quiet talks between the three. It was brief. It contained some obvious points: that increased prosperity can come only through technological advancement, improved productive efficiency, broader social security and an expanding foreign trade. It also provided that an "enduring peace must be secured" by the "establishment of an international security organization . . . [of the] United Nations capable of preventing aggression."

Tool for the Job. What was significant to U.S. industrialists, worried by the C.I.O.'s streak of socialistic thinking, was labor's wholehearted agreement that a "system of private competitive capitalism must continue to be the foundation of our . . . expanding economy. . . . The inherent right of management to direct . . . shall be preserved. . . . So that enterprise may develop and expand and earn a reasonable profit, management must be free as well from unnecessary governmental interference."

Important to labor, which fears an all-out assault to emasculate the Wagner Act at war's end, was the promise of the C. of C. president that: "The fundamental rights of labor to organize . . . and collective bargaining . . . shall be preserved, free from legislative enactments."

No one expected that the charter would do the impossible--eliminate all strikes. But, said cautious Mr. Green, it should help substitute arbitration for conflict.

The tool for arbitration will be the 20-man board which is being set up to implement the charter. On it are such topflight businessmen as Henry J. Kaiser, Studebaker's and C.E.D.'s Paul Hoffman, and such labor leaders as P.A.C. Boss Sidney Hillman, the C.I.O.-U.A.W.'s President R. J. Thomas, and A.F. of L. Secretary-Treasurer George Meany.

Glittering Mr. Johnston smoothly turned away any suggestions that the ultimate aim of the new board is to replace the War Labor Board. But both labor & management were well aware that the group, if it is to be anything more than a sounding board for pious platitudes, will have to take a hand in the shaping of any national labor policy by Congress.

The N.A.M. Regrets. The charter was greeted with hosannas from almost everyone, except the stodgy National Association of Manufacturers. N.A.M.'s dogmatic President Ira Mosher carped that the principles were good as far as they went but they were "unspecific . . . premature and made up of generalities. . . . This is a job for Congress. All consumers must have their interests protected."

For this sour-graping, he was soundly whacked. The Republican New York Herald Tribune growled that his criticism "is a feeble reason for his failure to join the framers of the charter." The conservative Wall Street Journal chimed in: "Mr. Mosher says the statement of principles is premature. We do not agree."

As long as the N.A.M. and its approximate 12,500 businessmen withheld its support of the charter, its effectiveness was hobbled. But Johnston, Murray et al. have a sound reason for hoping that N.A.M., at least, will soon stop sulking and join them. It is the same reason that induced them to put their heads together. Unless business and labor resolve their quarrels, they are keenly aware that the Federal Government might step in with controls which would strait-jacket both.

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