Down from the Mount

The big headline news of the week was that a steel strike had been postponed--if not averted entirely. For an economy which could stand no rocking of the boat, the bigger news was that the President's three-man fact-finding committee had come out decisively against a fourth-round wage increase.

In arriving at its decision, the board had struck a compromise solution. It recommended pensions and social insurance for workers, to be financed by the steel industry.

Before making its evenhanded report, the board had taken a sweeping view of the whole U.S. economy. It came down from the mount with a warning to both management and labor. It warned industry that it had no right to use up and then discard the human components of its structure. It warned the nation's steelmakers that excessive profits from production should be equitably shared through lower prices. At the same time, it sounded an implicit warning to labor that benefits cannot be won at the expense of industry's good health. In other words, the board seemed to be saying that labor's old war cry, "We want more," could lead sooner or later to mutual extermination. U.S. labor could not afford to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

The decision did not mean that the U.S. economy was yet in the clear. The auto workers, electrical workers and rubber workers, to say nothing of John Lewis' coal miners, had been sitting back waiting to see what the board's findings would be. Now that they saw them, they would also have to make up their minds which way to jump. But the nation, only last week facing a strangling strike of 500,000 men in steel, momentarily could breathe a little more easily. It had before it, in the board's report, a comprehensive formula for peace.

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