"I Will Eat That Hat"

Off the six "Back to Work Special" trains they trooped into Washington's Union Station: men in open-necked sports shirts, women in spring prints, many wearing blue and white badges marked "A.F.L.-C.I.O. Conference on Unemployment--Jobs for All." Already, some members of the Toledo delegation were looking slightly green; something they had eaten aboard their train soon laid 100 of them low, sent 28 to hospitals. Ohio's Republican Congressman William Hanes Ayres of Akron was on hand at the depot with coffee, doughnuts, and a sign saying: SEE YOUR CONGRESSMAN FIRST. HE CAN HELP YOU MOST.

"Where's that Wide Wide World?" cried members of the Detroit contingent. "Where's Dave Garroway? He told us he was going to be here." Television's Garroway did not show, but NBC's Martin Agronsky was there, stage managing United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther on to the footprints marked for him in chalk pn the platform, marshaling a crowd behind Reuther, while a producer with a megaphone exhorted everyone to wave the freshly printed PUT AMERICA BACK TO WORK signs for the camera.

Good Old Days. So, last week, began a modern-day "March on Washington," arranged by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to dramatize the plight of the nation's unemployed.* Actually, much of the impact had been taken away from the meeting by the highly encouraging employment figures for March, released only the day before by the Administration. They showed that unemployment fell by about 390.000 to 4,360,000, while employment climbed by 1,100,000 to 63.8 million. But that did not in the slightest diminish the decibel count of the 7,000 people (about half of them actually unemployed, the other half union functionaries) who gathered in Washington's National Guard Armory.

For hours, the back-to-workers whooped and hollered at predictably anti-Administration speeches from such Democrats as Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson (who announced his plan for a legislative-executive commission on unemployment to report in 60 days) and Illinois' Senator Paul Douglas (President Eisenhower, "the kindly Kansan, has unwittingly become the captive of hard-faced men"). The U.A.W.'s Reuther, in a high-pitched, rhythmic singsong? pulled out all the stops, deriding Eisenhower for playing golf and quail hunting in Georgia, and conjuring up the memory of the good old days of World War II, when everybody was working overtime: "If we can have full employment and full production making the weapons of war and destruction, why can't we have full employment and full production making the good things of life for people in peacetime?"

Good Old October. A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany swung less wildly but he pulled no punches. He jeered at the Administration's balanced budget and "tight money" policy, turned defense expert to proclaim that the balanced budget is "weakening the national defense program." His "program for action to put America back to work": 1) new legislation to "cushion the shock" of unemployment and "safeguard purchasing power," 2) a vast, Government-sponsored building program, 3) "justified wage increases" and a shorter work week "to spread the available supply of jobs."

Meany introduced the lone Administration spokesman. Labor Secretary James Mitchell, as "a good friend of "mine--I want everyone to know that." Said Mitchell: "I have enough faith in the basic health of the American economy to state that by October of this year there will be 67 million people at work, 3,000,000 more than there are today, and that unemployment will be 3,000,000 or less. And may I say to my friend George Meany: If this isn't so, George, when the October figures come out, on the steps of the Labor Department I will eat that hat you said I was talking through."

Grinned George Meany as Mitchell sat down: "You know, for a minute I thought he was going to say he would meet me in Macy's window."

Jim Mitchell was roundly applauded by an audience that might well have booed. Perhaps it was because he had spoken forthrightly. Or perhaps because a good many of the not-too-heavyhearted delegates were just as sure as Jim Mitchell that he would not have to eat his hat.

*Out of business since last June.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.