Substantial Wage, Salary Increases or Depression- Nation’s Choice
(by Philip Murray, President, C. I. 0.)
The vast majority of Americans work for a liv
ing.
These men and women and their families form
the American public we hear so much about. These
are the people who make up the bulk of the consum
ing class. The dollars they earn and spend is the
keystone to prosperity. When they have sufficient
money, they can buy the food, clothing and other
essentials of life that industry produces. When
they don’t have the money .they can’t buy—indus
a try stagnates and the entire nation suffers.
During the war, thus money—high purchasing
power the economists call it—was available. The
tremendous need for war materials assured jobs for I
all and overtime work added to the national income.
Of course, the high cost of living—still with us —
cut into this income considerably. But now the
peace is here and with it has come great cuts in our
war-swollen economy, cuts in this national purch
asing power. Overtime has been practically elim
inated and millions of war workers have been
thrown out of jobs. These, and other factors, a
government study for President Truman recently
revealed, will amount to cuts of no less than 35 hel
lion dollars in the national income. That means
35 billion dollars less spent on buying things. Can
you conceive how many articles of clothing, food,
homes and other necessities of life 35 million dol
lars can buy ? It means 35 billion dollars less pur
chasing power will eliminate jobs for America. It
means the opening of the depression gates.
'these tacts have special significance tor tne rse.
gro people. Because of the evil bars of discrimin
ation, the Negro industrial worker has been the
chief victim of a notorious low-wage policy, a policy
which is a cancerous growth in our economy. Until
we secure the establishment of a permanent FEPC,
we face the fact that the wages of Negro workers
will drop even lower as the wages of non-Negro
workers go down.
Therefore, we must wage this fight on two fronts
First, we must renew our efforts to assure all Am
ericans, Negro and white, Jew and Gentile, foreign
or native born, an equal chance to job opportunities.
To this end, the creation of a permanent FEPC
has been one of the major aims of the CIO. We shall
not cease our efforts until this agency receives per
manent status.
And second we must see to it that wage and sal
ary cuts for all workers are not made permanent.
This is why the CIO is currently conducting wage
and salary campaigns in all sections of the country.
We speak not as a selfish, narrow organization but
for all Americans. We are striving to make Amer
ica realize that prosperity is impossible unless the
ingredients of prosperity—purchasing power— is
available. The alternative, as past experience has
proven, is depression. America cannot, must not,
return to the starvation, slums, sickness, bank
ruptcy, wandering families—to the chaos which de
pression brings.
o There can be no question over the need for these
increases. Ask yourself, ask your neighbor, how
much take-home pay has been cut since V-J Day.
Ask yourself how much more you could give your
family, your children if take-home pay was main
tained. The answers are obvious.
And there can be no question over the ability of
industry to meet these wage and salary increases.
Despite the laments of large corporations that wage
rises would automatically mean corresponding rise
in prices, this is not true. President Truman, in
his recent wage policy address, clearly outlined the
ability of business to meet these increases out of
war profits and geenrous refunds under the tax
laws.
The issue of immediate and substantial wage and
salary increases can be translated into the ever
present conflict between progress and reaction.
Just as a permanent FEPC and the abolition of the
poll tax—issues on which the CIO will never res
cind its efforts—are key issues in our battle for full
social democracy, so are wage and salary increases
the cornerstone of the battle for economic democ
racy.
Victory in both struggles means victory for the
forces of progress, defeat for reaction. It means
another step forward in the struggle to make Am
erica a fuller and richer country for all its people.
OVERTONES
_(BY AL HEN1NGBURG)_
ARMY JIM CROW AILING:
. .Big news is the report that for several .weeks .a
study has been made in the War .Department for
the purpose of ridding the army of .old .man .Jim
Crow.. .Some of the best minds in Washington have
long wanted to build an army of fighting men, .in
stead of permitting the dangerous practice of seg
regation in the armed forces to continue... General
Eisenhower knows how well men of all . races . can
fight together, just as all intelligent .people have
known all the time that the whole business of seg
regation is merely a device to shut Negroes off .in
the area of maximum discrimination and minimum
services.
HOW’S YOUR ARITHMETIC?
If you’re now making rosy plans to buy some
thing which takes a long time to pay for, and will
soon be possible with the easing of credit restrict
ions, divide the figure 72 by your rate of interest,
and you get a notion of about how many years it
takes you to pay double money. If you nay six
percent, you pay the amount over twice in just
§ The Omaha Guide §!
m +■ A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER JL fi |
■ft Published Every Saturday at 2^20 Grant Street
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Editorial: Japan’s First Democracy Lesion
tf
^ j*
I v.
—QUOTES—]
OF THE WEEK
“They sang and danced and
poured our beer.”—Capt. L.
Dibella, of Chicago, officially re
porting on Tokyo geisha girls.
"I’d like to go back to the
South Pole!”—Adm. Richard E.
Byrd, home from Japan.
_ .-MW5
"The sooner we do away with
unnecessary Government regula
tions and get back to competition
the better it will be for the coun
try.”—Sen. Hugh Butler, Neb.
i
] -
“What would we do with a
battleship?” — Aide to Gov.
Dewey, offered obsolete U.SJ3.
New York.
“The new theory is that the
less you work the more you
should earn. Even the Russians
are not that crazy!” — Leslie
Gould, financial editor.
! _ '•*
“I was chasing my wife.” —
R. L. Palmer, Detroit, arrested
for speeding.
TAAF GLEE CLIB TO BROAD
CAST WITH SOl'THERNAIRES
Tuskegee Army Airfield, Ala. _
The Southernaires, famed radio and
concert artists, will be heard on
their regular Sunday morning
broadcast via the American Broad
casting Company network on Nov
ember 18, 1945, 4directly from the
Post Chapel at Tuskegee Army Air
Field, Alabama. It will mark the
fourth appearance of the group at
thig station.
TAAF GLEE CLIB
TO BE HEARD
The renowned TAAF Glee Club oS
30 officers and enlisted men under
the direction of Lt. James T. Wil
liams, will be heard as special
guest artists of the Southernaires,
in a rendition of “Roger”, the title
song from the TAAF all-soldier
show. Written by Lt. Williams,
Sgt. Ernest Hatfield and Sgt. Leon
E. Smith, “Roger” has been des
cribed as the most stirring song to
emanate from the Air Corps. With
Sgt. Elwood Peterson as soloist,
the number will be dedicated to
members of the fame<j 99th Fighter
Squadron and the 332nd Fighter
Group who received their early
training at Tuskegee Army Air
Field.
twelve years. But you won’t be really smart until
you know all about those legally respectable but
fiendish devices called “carrying charges.”
GLORIOUS 92ND:
-“They were glorious”, said General Mark W.
Clark of the 92nd Division, and we repeat that
“glorious” is the word for this oldest of the Army’s
Negro Infantry divisions. The campaign record of
this division, which suffered nearly 4,000 casual
ties during World War II, measures up in every
way to the history of American Ifighting men of all
time.
These boys of ours will be coming home soon,
probably early in November, and now is the time to
plan a richly deserved royal welcome. But if some
of the brass hats have their way, the Division will
be split up before embarking that they will arrive
in small groups, which makes a welcome for the
Division just about impossible.
BRANCH RICKEY—AMERICAN:
Add the name of Branch Rickey Jr., manager of
the Brooklyn Dodgers, to your list of men who act- 1
ually believe that democracy can work in America,
and are determined to give it a try. A tempest in
a teapot deevloped over his purchase of Jackie Rob
inson, for the color-line boys immediately and loud'
ly predicted that it simply couldn’t be done. Rickey
suspects that some of his men may quit rather than
play with Robinson, but he has thought all that
through too. A report went the rounds that tlie
owner of the Kansas City Monarclis. thought the
whole business a raw deal, but that’s all cleared up,
and now for the first time a Negro has been signed
to a playing contract in what is called “organized”
baseball.” If you are not very careful, even some
American churches may swing around to the notion
that people are just people.
OUT-DATED KKK:
When the shrewd cowards who went shreiking
over the countryside during Reconstruction days in
the South burned their fiery crosses, they terrified
ignorant Negroes for whom the most real thing in
life was fear. The KKK bums its crosses once
more atop Stone Mountain in Georgia, but this time
only a handful of delude whites are impressed. The
Klan is out of step and out of date. Even the most
rabid Negro-baiters in the country know this, and
Negroes have learned not to be afraid. Many will
die, if the Klan has its way, but many more than
you would ever suspect will die fighting, not runn
ing. And a bed sheet just doesn’t seem like a good
screen to hide behind when the fracas begins. Other
han for those who pay fancy "prices for this yellow
domestic, America is unimpressed.
WHAT MAKES...
My friends who are in the dough elaborate on the
fancy prices paid for each item in their wardrobe,
when anybody can see that I'm one of those guys
who believe that the major function of clothing is j
to cover the body?
People with new store teeth give you that so very
broad grin, as if it were necessary to show ALL of
both upers and lowers at each slightest provoc
ation?
Plain Talk...
(BY DAN GARDNER)
WHITE MAN’S WOMAN AND
HOW HE KEEPS HER WHITE
The white man has one fear, his greatest, on the
race question, and that is about his woman. If he
were positively assured that Intermarriage, mis
cegnation, and social mixing would be taboo in ev
ery phase of life, the status of the Negro in the U.
S. and darker peoples throughout the world would
change overnight for the better, thinking persons
have surmised.
Throughout the centuries of his world domin
ation ,the white man has built conquest upon con
quest, explored most of the known world, reached
out for the unknown in science, philosohy, religion,
and done many unprecedented things in psychology,
but in all, he is like Achilles with one vulnerable
spot—in Achilles’ case, the heel, in the white man’s
his woman.
Around his women he has hung a sacred halo. To
her he attributes purity, dignity .unsullied by con
tact with people of lower strata, meaning Negroes
and darker peoples. Although these restraints
have been irksome, tiresome, to say the least, the
white woman has had to endure them through the
years as her man placed and kept her on the very
pinnacle of the pedestal of white supremacy. He
organized Night Riders, the Ku Klux Klan; he has
set up Christian Fronts, Bunds, Rotary and Lions
Clubs, Daughters of the American Revolution and
other groups whose main reasons for existence are
the preachment of the purity and sanctity of white
womanhood.
More lynchings here in the LT. S. have come about
over some fancied assault or insult to a white wom
an than any other reason. It has been said that a
white man will make a Negro king so long as he has
no designs on a white woman. Even Shakespeare
back in the 15th Century expounded the theory of
the supremacy of white womanhood and what a
white man will do to keep her supreme (in his eyes)
in how he worked out the drama of “Othello.”
In this tragedy, the master playwright allowed
the black Moor, Othello, to become a great general
and ruler of white men; to have unlimited power
and everything he wanted. Then Othello got an
eyeful of Desdemonia, a white woman, and because
of his position and opwer moved in to marry her,
which he did. Then the fun began.
Where plotting and griping was not racial before,
it became so when black Othello became husband to
Your Work
(by Ruth Taylor)
How do you work ? Do you finish what you start
to do? Do you have to do things over? Do you
work because you have to—or to fill up time?
It was Carlyle who wrote “Genius is the infinite
capacity for taking pains.” And it is that ability,
that willingness of spirit which is even more im
portant than m/r sfal dexterity or mental skills.
All work is a>ie <eeds sown! it grows and spreads
like the ripple? from a stone thrown into a pool.
We do not know against what bank it may spend
itself, or whom and what it may affect.
Slipshod work hurts first the doer. First in hav
ing to redo—-for redoing work is staying in a rut, is
not progressing or learning. Second, in the weak
ening of ability to do a job right. Carelessness is
a habit-forming drug, insidious in its sapping of
morale, but deadly in its effects.
The work that each of us do, the work that is be
fore us, is our job, to be done by us. We must
prove that we do it better than anyone else.
But there is another thing to be remembered. Dr.
Stelzle brought it out in an article once years ago:
“The day’s work stands for a socialized effort,
which has become possible only because others in
the past have contributed their share to our effort.
To these we owe a debt of gratitude. There is only
one way in which we may pay this debt we owe
them—we have the privilege of building upon the
foundation laid by our forefathers, so that other
millions may be blessed because of our own labors.
“This may seem idealistic, but the law of pro
gress demands this of us, unless we are content to
become parasites, living from the labors of others.
In a sense, every man is a parasite, who is willing
to receive the benefits which have accrued as the
result of others’ labors, without contributing his
share to the common good.”
This is as true today as it was when it was writ
ten. The way to get ahead—both materially and
spiritually—no matter what task confronts you, is
to do the day’s work as though it were the only job v
in the world—the one thing by which you would be
judged. “With good will doing service, as to the
Lord, and not unto men” so wrote Paul.
white Desdemonia. Iago and the rest of the boys
fixed it up so that Othello had to kill Desdemonia
and then liimself, to satisfy the edict of white phil
osophy on the race question that intermarriage can
only have a tragic ending when the male is black
and the female white. Other stories point to a sim
ilar conclusion. The white man, however, can do
no wrong although he also gets it in the neck in the
end for venturing across the color line and having a
black woman in a clandestine hideaway. Tracy
Dean in Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit” was such a
character. The main theme is that it won’t work
out.
Truth is, intermarriage has and does work out.
Otherwise, there would be fewer mixed bloods of
legally married parents. But the white man has
put the frown on it and that is all there is to it.
The white man will accept aNegro Joe Louis as
heavyweight champion in the prize ring, a situation
in which a Negro is established by the white man’s
rules as the tops in physical prowess. He will ac
cept Kenny Washington, Jackie Robinson, Bind
Holland, Buddy Young and others as all-Americans
on the gridiron. He has finally accepted a Negro,
Jackie Robinson, to crash the lily-white gates of
major league baseball. Bill Robinson is, to the
white man, one &of the greatest persona Hit ies of the
theatre of all time. But in each instance outlined
here, a white woman remains out of the matter en
tirely. If the above-named persons, including
Louis, consorted publicly with white girls, or mar
ried them, the show would be ended right away.
Remember what happened to Jack Johnson? Well,
that’s the clue.
ah tins brings us to the point that someooav m
our leadership front office ought to make it clear to
the white world that white women are not that at
tractive to our men, and our men ought to prove it
by showing more respect for their own women and
by forcing the white man to belatedly give them the
same respect he demands Negro men show his.
There is no reason why Negro women should face
double-trouble, disrespect from their own men and
the same from white men. The white woman is
certainly not entitled to any more respect than ours
The sooner the white man finds out that Negro men
are not “white woman crazy” and that he’d better
come across wTith the same respect for our women,
the sooner a lot of this fog around the race question
is ging to clear up.
.
