Simple Statement

The President and his advisers worked on his long-awaited wage-price speech until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. At 10 o'clock that night, when he sat down to read it to the nation, it was clear that the writing took a long time not because of what went into it, but because of what was left out.

Except for one brief excursion to chastise Congress for failing to pass his $25-3-week unemployment compensation and full employment bills, the President's speech followed a straight and simple line. Said he:

P: Wherever wage rises can be granted, they are "imperative" to avoid a deep cut in the U.S. worker's take-home pay and in his purchasing power as the nation goes back to a 40-hour peacetime week.

P: Price ceilings cannot be lifted to permit wage rises, for then the worker would get no real benefit and an inflationary spiral would be started.

P: "Fortunately . . . there is room in the existing price structure for business as a whole to grant increases in wage rates"--thanks to such factors as industry's increased productivity and repeal of the excess-profits tax.

P: The amount of the rise should be determined in each industry by "free and fair collective bargaining"--not by Government control.

P: In every case labor should recognize that "we cannot hope, with a reduced work week, to maintain now the same take-home pay for labor generally that it has had during the war." In some industries labor would have to reconcile itself to the fact that no increase at all was possible.

P: Any company, finding itself unable to operate at a fair profit after granting an increase set through bargaining, may go to the Office of Price Administration after six months and ask for a lift in its price ceilings.

Having thus turned the problem back to management & labor, the President read them both a little lecture. Said he:

"Labor has a stern responsibility to see that demands for wage increases are reasonable. . . .

"Labor itself has a responsibility to aid industry in reaching this goal of higher production and more jobs. It must strive constantly for greater efficiency and greater productivity. . . .

'The country is entitled to expect that industry and labor will bargain in good faith, with labor recognizing the right of industry to a fair profit, and industry recognizing labor's need to a decent and sustained standard of living. . . .

"I know that this is not an easy way to solve the wage problem, but it is the sound way. . . . Labor is the best customer management has, and management is the source of labor's livelihood. Both are wholly dependent on each other, and the country is dependent on both of them."

If the President's sentiments sounded somewhat quaint and academic against the background of industrial strife and power politicking, perhaps this was not so much to the discredit of Harry Truman as it was indicative of the feckless fatalism of the public.

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