Whose Responsibility?

The sky over Washington darkened as the most worrisome problems of U.S. rearmament and inflation flew flapping home to roost. Both the C.I.O. steelworkers and the major U.S. steel plants washed their hands of all responsibility for a strike that was set for New Year's Day. After futile attempts to bring them together, Federal Mediator Cyrus Ching conceded defeat and admitted: "It is the biggest domestic crisis we have or could have."

Barbed Hook. President Phil Murray of the steelworkers was the first to make a ceremonial waiver of responsibility in the complex processes of settlement. He announced that 650,000 steelworkers will quit working after their contract expires on New Year's Eve. Then to make sure that he was shorn of any obligation in the crisis, he got his policy committee to strip him of his powers to call off a strike until a 2,500-delegate convention meets in Atlantic City--three days after the strike deadline. Thus, an aging Ulysses in perilous waters, he had himself bound to the mast and tried to make it clear that Big Steel will be shut down for at least a week if there is no wage settlement.

For its part, Big Steel sewed its lips. It flatly refused--as it has since negotiations began a month ago--to make any counteroffers to Murray's demands, variously estimated at 30-c- to 50-c--an-hour increase per worker.* Instead, Steel ducked tidily for cover behind the steelmen's laws of economics: any major wage increase would mean an automatic increase in the price of steel, the basic commodity of both phases of a guns & butter economy. Said U.S. Steel'^ President Ben Fairless: "The nation cannot now afford another general round of substantial wage increases and the higher prices which must inevitably result. . . There should be no wage or price increase' at this" time."

Stainless-Steel Logic. Fairless' stainless-steel logic somewhat outshone the fact that Big Steel's stand was just as stubborn as Phil Murray's. By refusirig to make any counter-offer at all, it was making deadlock inevitable. Furthermore, it left the Government's price controllers with the responsibility for breaking the dike against inflation, if it is to be broken.

Mediator Ching listened for eight hours to the spokesmen of both sides--Phil Murray and U.S. Steel's Vice President John A. Stephens--then turned it all over to Harry Truman. The President bucked it on to the Wage Stabilization Board, and asked both sides to keep production going until the board hands down its recommendations. Said Harry Truman in a voice whetted to cut Phil Murray's bonds: "The immediate obligation on the steelworkers is to decide to remain at work . . . The union members and their leaders, and the managers of the steel companies, have a responsibility to defend the U.S. against its enemies just as I do."

-* Phil Murray does not believe in the escalator clause (which links pay scales to the cost of living) because it can go both ways. If he did, steelworkers would have got an automatic wage boost along with 1,250,000 railroad workers, last week, when the cost of living shot to an alltime high. It was up .8% in November to 189.3% of the 1935-39 period.

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