The First Swallow

"I've got to have it if I am going to handle this reconversion problem. If you have been out to such places as Detroit and Los Angeles, you know there is going to be serious unemployment in some of these cities. I know because I have been through these plants myself when I was Senator. This problem is going to be serious."

So President Truman told Congressional leaders in private, before he sent Congress his message urging that special unemployment insurance should be provided to tide war workers over the reconversion period--not less than $25 a week for as long as six months.

Congress, which last year turned down a basically similar proposal in the Murray-Kilgore bill, was still only lukewarm to the idea. But this time, it seemed, Congress would have to pass some such bill--if not what the President asked--for it was becoming painfully apparent that Harry Truman was right: there would be major unemployment in many places and, unless adequate relief was provided, serious hardship would follow both for labor and business--through no fault and beyond the control of either.

Without yet having come to any real understanding or agreement about the thing called full employment, the nation was being pushed by events to do something about it. Emergencies with which only the Government could cope were imminent--and the first of them was reconversion.

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