THE PRESIDENCY: Work & Wages

Hatching at the White House last week was a nestful of plans for the mobilization of industry on a scale not seen in the U. S. since War days. What sort of Federal control over work and wages would finally come forth even President Roosevelt did not know. He was brooding over a wide assortment of ideas, offered not only by his assistants but by financiers and industrialists who wanted him to go the limit on business dictatorship to end unemployment, restore the nation’s buying power.

The White House industrial program as thus far worked out had four fronts: 1) a minimum work-week law such as the Black 30-hour bill (TIME, April 17); 2) a minimum wage law to prevent a drop in pay rolls equal to the proposed drop in working hours; 3) a huge public works program; 4) resurrection of the old War Industries Board to enforce balanced production by quotas, price-fixing, and trade agreements now prohibited by the antitrust laws.

Through Secretary of Labor Perkins the President last week gave his approval “in principle” to Federal limitations of working hours. What bothered him most was the question of the constitutionality of such a proposal. Marching to the Capitol, Secretary Perkins appeared before the House Labor Committee, picked two flaws in its 30-hour bill. She favored a less rigid measure which would permit her department to flex working hours between 30 and 40 per week, to meet different conditions in different industries. In the provision barring imports from countries with longer work weeks than the U. S. she saw an embargo which would seriously embarrass the President in his World Economic Conference negotiations starting this week at the White House.

President Roosevelt revealed his sympathy for minimum wage legislation when he wired the Governors of New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland. Delaware. North Carolina, Alabama and New Hampshire:

“May I call your attention to minimum wage law just, passed by Legislature of New York. . . . This represents a great step forward against lowering of wages which constitutes a serious form of unfair competition against the employers, reduces the purchasing power of the workers and threatens the stability of industry. I hope similar action can be taken by the other states for the protection of the public interest.”

The President considered including a minimum wage provision in the minimum work-week law. Suggested was the creation of a variety of Federal boards to fix rock-bottom wages in different industries. President Roosevelt thought only 10% of U. S. industry would need such boards to prevent employers from cutting their employes’ throats in trying to cut each other’s.

The Roosevelt public works program will call for a bond issue of two or three billion dollars. Secretary Perkins’ aim is to dry up “pools of unemployment” by financing cheap-home construction, water works, public buildings. She predicted a tremendous market for bath tubs and other plumbing fixtures.

To mobilize industry and expand its production was the most difficult and most nebulous item in the President’s program. Yet without it the whole re-employment program would probably collapse.

Sponsors of the White House nestegg confidently predicted that, once hatched, it would and could put 6,000,000 jobless to work in half a year.

¶ To a House and Senate still trying to digest his proposals for banking reform and farm relief. President Roosevelt last week sent still another legislative request. “As a further and urgently necessary step in the program to promote economic recovery,” read the President’s nth special message to Congress, “I ask for legislation to protect small home owners from foreclosure and to relieve them of a portion of the burden of excessive interest and principal payments incurred during the period of higher values and higher earning power.”

In the House. Chairman Steagall of the Banking & Currency Committee promptly introduced the White House bill. Democratic Leader Robinson did likewise in the Senate. The measure applies only to homes valued at $10,000 or less. Second of the Administration’s direct debtor relief proposals, it provides for the setting up by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board of a Home Owners Loan Corp.

If the bill passes, John Homeowner may apply to Home Owners Loan Corp. for a review of his case. No case in which the mortgage covers more than 80% of the value of the property will be considered. Home Owners Loan Corp. would offer the mortgage holder perhaps $6,000 in bonds for the dubious $8.000 mortgage. The bonds would bear 4% interest, guaranteed by the Treasury. John Homeowner would pay 5% interest to the Government on his reduced mortgage, would have 15 years, with the possibility of a three-year extension, to make principal payments. The Government would also offer John Homeowner a small sum at 5% for repairs and payment of tax arrears.

¶ With Secretary of State Hull, President Roosevelt motored to the patioed Pan-American Union Building to address a meeting of the Pan-American Union’s governing board. The President interpreted the Monroe Doctrine to his listeners not as an instrument of U. S. dominion over the Americas, but as a mutual protective society “aimed against the acquisition in any manner of the control of additional territory in this hemisphere by any non-American power.” For the first time, President Roosevelt took public notice of South America’s two undeclared wars between Paraguay and Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. “I regard existing conflicts between four of our sister republics,” said he, “as a backward step.”

¶ To balm hurt feelings, the President, through the State Department, went through the formality of issuing invitations to 42 more countries to send representatives to Washington to confer with him about the forthcoming World Monetary & Economic Conference.

¶ Through Paul D. Rust Jr. of Marblehead, Mass., the schooner Amberjack II was put at President Roosevelt’s disposal for a summer cruise down East.

¶ The War Department has rebuilt the trimotored cabin plane which onetime Secretary of War Patrick Hurley and his air assistant, Trubee Davison, used to fly about in, announced that it will be held in readiness for Presidential use.

¶ President Roosevelt, ardent philatelist, approved designs of two stamps to commemorate Chicago’s Century of Progress.

¶ Hugh Cooper, who built for the U. S. S. R. its vast Dnieper dam, called on the President to discuss the Tennessee Valley waterpower project, possible recognition by the U. S. of Russia.

¶ On Easter Sunday the President, his wife and Son James went in the rain to the incompleted Washington Cathedral to worship. Next day President Roosevelt appeared briefly on the South Portico to watch the annual public White House egg rolling. He smiled, remarked: “There seem to be as many adults as there are children.”