National Affairs: Cooling the Furnaces

When the word reached the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Harry Truman signed an order to his ex-boss of steel, Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer. "Dear Mr. Secretary," wrote the President, "in view of today's decision by the Supreme Court, you are hereby directed to take appropriate steps to relinquish immediately possession of plants, facilities and other property . . . which have been in possession of the Government. . ."

When the word got to Pittsburgh, President Philip Murray of the C.I.O. steelworkers first calmly finished his lunch, then pushed back his chair and issued an order. Now that this was again an affair between management and union, Murray could see only one course: strike.

Within minutes, in the nation's great steel mills, workers began streaming out of the plants, finally leaving only standby crews on the job to protect the cooling furnaces. By nightfall, the fires were dying in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Youngstown, Gary and wherever the union's organizing hand had reached.

Phil Murray called on the steel companies to renew the bargaining process, and big steel was willing to talk. Just where this would lead, no one knew. Originally, the union had asked for a union shop and for wage and fringe benefits which would eventually cost the company about 35¢ per man-hour (present average hourly wage: $1.83). The Wage Stabilization Board recommended 26.1¢, plus the union shop; the union gleefully agreed. Steel company officials offered 17.6¢ (no union shop), said that they could not pay the proposed 26.1¢ increase unless the controlled price of steel was raised by $12 a ton (present price: about $100). Truman's Office of Price Stabilization stubbornly insisted that no such increase would be allowed.

Throughout the steel dispute, Truman has notably failed to coordinate the policies of his Wage Board and his Price Board. The latter body is supposed to hold down the price level, which cannot be done if wages in a basic industry take a rapid rise. The Wage Board, in the steel case, threw its weight on the side of a large wage increase. From this failure evil consequences flowed: 1) the irresponsible contradiction in Government policy aggravated the struggle between unions and companies; 2) Mobilizer Charles Wilson quit in protest; 3) Truman, seeking a way out, proclaimed a doctrine of presidential power so sweeping that a court entirely composed of men appointed by Roosevelt and Truman rejected it; 4) when the court rejected the President's desperate solution, the union shut down the nation's basic industry.