Home to the War

Prime Minister King had been away from home six weeks and the home folks noticed it. Toronto's Saturday Night doubted whether anything he was doing in Paris was as important "as the contribution [he] can make to . . . Canada by returning [home]." Ottawa's Journal agreed: Mr. King at Paris "is seeing Mr. Bevin and Italy's Prime Minister Mr. de Gasperi. We wonder if Mr. King would not be serving Canada more usefully by . . . seeing Mr. Hilton of the Steel Company of Canada and Mr. Millard of the Steel Workers Union?"

It was indeed high time that Mr. King came home. The steel strike, which he had hopefully handed over to Parliament to settle just before he left, had become a national disaster. Last week Mr. King sailed from Southampton.

Closed Plants. In all Canada, there were only some 40,000 men on strike, but thousands of other workers had been laid off; the strikes had closed dependent plants.

While the Prime Minister's ship ploughed toward Halifax, more halfhearted union-Government talks were held. But nothing came of them. The steel union still demanded 15-c--an-hour wage increases, the Government insisted that 10-c- was the limit. (Out in British Columbia the Government regional labor board was granting 13-c-, 15-c- and even 18-c- increases right & left.)

Crossed Fingers. Nor had the Government's "break-the-strike" tactics eased the tension. To Hamilton, Ont., where strikers were maintaining a strong picket line around the Stelco (Steel Co. of Canada) plant, went some 400 Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Ontario provincial police. Their announced job was to keep materials and men who wanted to work moving into the plant. Across Canada, organized labor protested. At Hamilton, picketers defiantly said they would resist police interference. At week's end the police were still judiciously keeping hands off. But worried Hamiltonians walked on tiptoe, kept their fingers crossed.

In this welter of stubbornness, tough talk and bad feeling, what could Mr. King do? If he stood firm on the 10-c- line, as his colleagues had done in his absence, he would just prolong the trouble. Yet if he agreed to the union's demand, and repudiated his colleagues, he might bring a rift in his own Cabinet. Best bet was that Mr. King, an old friend of labor and a skillful bargainer, would effect a compromise somewhere around 12 1/2-c-. This might bring the resignations of hold-the-liners like the Prices Board's Donald Gordon. But it might get the men back to work. At week's end, the stage was set for just such a compromise.

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