Deadlock in Steel

The new boss of the nation's multibillion dollar steel industry was "Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer. But Boss Sawyer was just singing the words & music composed by the Government's wage and price stabilizers. "I hope it won't be too long before I can turn [the mills] back," Sawyer told a television audience this week. But after talks between the steelmen and the C.I.O. steelworkers' union broke down again, Sawyer reluctantly announced that he was going to give the union at least part of the benefits (a 26.1-c- wage package plus the union shop) recommended by the Wage Stabilization Board.

Did that also mean that the Government would give the Government-operated plants a price rise? Not if Price Stabilizer Ellis Arnall could call the tune. Georgian Arnall lashed out at the companies for their insistence that the WSB benefits would add $12 a ton to production costs. Steel could have a price boost under the Capehart Amendment of $3 a ton, he declared, but no more. "I'm not going to any Munich ... If the price of peace is surrender and a steel price increase, we're not going to have peace . . ." The companies struck back with full-page newspaper ads, and denounced Arnall for using his federal office as "a vehicle for anti-industry propaganda."

As the deadlock tightened, tempers flared higher. Congress seethed with rancorous argument over the President's highhanded seizure of steel. Ohio's Republican Representative George H. Bender asked for a bipartisan committee to consider impeachment of Harry Truman. The Senate Labor Committee (favorable to the Administration) began hearings on a bill that would regulate Government seizures. The Senate Judiciary Committee (unfavorable to the Administration) prepared to rake over the constitutionality of Truman's action. With the Administration still backing him up, Steelworker Boss Philip Murray berated the companies, and called for the full WSB score, down to the last quarter note: "I expect the Government of the U.S. to impose the [WSB] recommendations."

Though Phil Murray belittled the hue & cry over the constitutionality of seizing the steel mills last week, he might have begun to have some private doubts about the whole principle of Government seizure. Since August 1950, when the President acted to forestall a strike, the Secretary of the Army has been in charge of the nation's railways. The workers have not got the pay raise they demand, and now they want to strike against the Government. Last week a federal court in Cleveland gave them their answer: an injunction barring a strike. Cried James P. Shields, Grand Chief Engineer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers: "In the light of the Cleveland decision, and the seizure of the steel industry, this nation is faced with the specter of continuing and expanding involuntary servitude unless present seizure tactics are wiped out on constitutional grounds."

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