Forecast

Some of the clouds cleared away. The striking coal miners went back to work (see below). New York Harbor's rebellious longshoremen decided that their strike could not possibly break the iron rule of Union Boss Joseph P. Ryan; ships moved out again after 18 days of idleness.

But new clouds appeared. Every day brought a new strike or strike threat. The layers of disputes before the National Labor Relations Board, the quick pile-up of new disputes, threatened the U.S. with troubled labor weather for many a day to come. In Detroit, where most of the storms shape up, the nation got a glimpse of what made the barometer fall.

Wage negotiations in the auto industry demonstrated the basic tensions between 1945 management and 1945 labor. Union leaders--some out of sincere economic conviction, some to court popularity with the rank & file--contended that the postwar U.S. must pay its workers more money for less work to keep up purchasing power, spread the job around, create full employment.

Manufacturers--some out of sincere conviction, some with an eye to easy profits--contended that the only road to prosperity was to make as much goods as possible as cheaply as possible. They were not ready to concede, as labor argued, that technological improvements permitted the U.S. to have high wages and low prices at the same time.

If such conflicts are an inevitable part of democracy, so is Government's role as arbiter and evener of pressures. But this time the Administration was divided on economic theory, not sure whether or how to carry over its wage and price controls from war to peace. In Washington everybody was talking about the weather but nobody was doing much about it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.