No Hand on the Tiller

At Harry Truman's urging, Charlie Wilson took on the job of chief U.S. Defense Mobilizer in December 1950, confident that he knew a thing or two about wartime Washington. After two years on Franklin Roosevelt's mobilization staff, he was wise to the perils of palace politics and political hatchet work. But in Harry Truman's Washington he was soon completely at sea in leaderless confusion. Last week, in a blunt letter to the President (written the day before Truman bowed out as a candidate), Charlie Wilson abruptly quit his job.

The Reversal. Specifically, the blowup was over the steel case, but that was just the ingot that broke Wilson's back. After the Wage Stabilization Board approved a bright package of benefits and increases amounting to 26.1¢ an hour for the steelworkers (TIME, March 31), Wilson hustled down to Key West to talk to the President. "I advised you it was my best judgment that if steelworkers received the whole package . . . inevitably other unions would demand and probably have to be given like consideration," wrote Wilson in his letter of resignation, "and that I did not believe the resultant inflationary pressures could be resisted. You stressed the point that there must be no strike on account of our defense production requirements." Moreover, Wilson went on, Harry Truman agreed that an increase in the price of steel might prove necessary to prevent a strike.

But when the President came back to Washington, wrote Wilson, "you changed the plan we agreed upon," approving the WSB wage package but frowning on the idea of a compensating price increase for industry. Said Wilson: "This violates my sense of justice and disregards the principles of equity on which I understood our whole control program was based."

The steel strike was still set for April 8, unless the steelworkers' Phil Murray and industry negotiators manage to reach an agreement. During the week, both Charlie Wilson and Harry Truman helped to upset the labor-management negotiations just when-they began to show promise. Wilson, returning from Key West, infuriated Phil Murray by blurting that the proposed WSB package was "a serious threat in our year-old effort to stabilize the economy." Then Wilson telephoned the steelmakers to promise them that the President had agreed to a raise in steel prices if the wage settlement required one.

Later Harry Truman, in his answering letter to Wilson's blast, wrote: "I find that the proposed changes in wages and working conditions are by no means unreasonable . . . [while steel] profits are continuing at extraordinarily high levels." This was a clear change of signals and an invitation for labor to yield nothing. If negotiators reach an agreement this week, it will be a tribute to their own clearheadedness in the face of confused and contradictory Government policies.