LABOR: The Workers

There were some sore spots and sound places in the ranks of organized U.S. labor last week. For the fourth time since the U.S. became the so-called world’s arsenal of democracy, Franklin Roosevelt was forced to order the Army or Navy to take over a strike-bound factory (see p. 71). In Detroit, production and labor relations were snarled by bad morale (see p. 17). But in thousands of other plants, while the picture was not heartening, it was at least normal.

A few conclusions could be drawn after a study of the panoramic picture of U.S. labor: 1) its working conditions are generally excellent; 2) foreign-born workers, particularly, spurt into faster production when the war news is bad; 3) women workers take the war more seriously than men; 4) many workers accept the war boom as their economic personal stepping-stone to a good life; 5) many do not think about the war at all.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Gone are many of the red-brick factories of World War I’s war plants, with the narrow windows, bad ventilation and wood floors. Many of 1942’s implements of war are made in block-long rooms with broad bands of windows and hard, clean floors; under light sometimes better than daylight, in cool, washed air. Lavatories are generally clean and shiny; there are locker rooms to change clothes in.

The 1942 workers eat better, get more vitamins, whether they bring their food in lunch pails or go to the company cafeterias. Lunch wagons make the rounds of many assembly lines; along the walls are vending machines loaded with cokes and milk, candy, cookies, cigarets. The 1942 workers play harder and in healthier places than pool rooms. They do much of their playing at the plant: there are softball fields, basketball courts and bowling alleys (bowling is a favorite 1942 workers’ sport). There are special movies for those on swing shifts, special nightclub parties starting in the cool of the morning. For workers who want them, there are welfare services: group and hospital insurance, medical attention; in at least one California plant, profits from the concessions pay the hire of a minister to comfort the sick and bereaved.

The Foreign-Born. In the smelly pork-trimming room of Omaha’s Armour plant, large, muscular women carve the slaughtered pigs with glistening ten-inch knives. They wear white uniforms, rubber aprons, and galoshes. Many are European-born, many have sons in the fighting forces. The plant is on a 24-hour basis, supplying meat to the United Nations’ armies. When the war news is bad, they sometimes slash at the pigs as if they had Hitler himself in their grasp. Then production soars.

For 38 years Polish-born Frank Zarzeski has worked in front of an open hearth in a Chicago steel mill. Tired, eternally grimy, Frank Zarzeski still gets mad. Said he: “I think we should open second front now. Knock hell out of Hitler. I hate Hitler. We make lots of stuff here. We get him some day.”

The Women. Women with husbands or sweethearts in the armed forces work well. Most women are new at their jobs, and more conscientious than men.

One of Boeing’s women employes is Mrs. Sophus Keith Winther, wife of an English professor at the University of Washington. Mrs. Winther worked one 45-day stretch on the assembly line (eight hours a day) without noticeable fatigue. War defeats do not depress her; they make her work harder.

A 19-year-old Buffalo girl on her first job said: “It’s noisy and it’s a dirty job, but it’s my big chance to help.”

The Steady Ones. War workers who throw their new riches away are easy to find: they drive new cars, wear new, expensive and gaudy slack suits (counterpart of World War I’s silk shirts), make most nights Saturday nights. But equally representative are those who pay off their old debts, settle down to a healthier, happier life than they have ever had.

Such a one is Frank Graff, who checks the weight of steel plates, sheets and coils as they come off the rolls in the giant Jones & Laughlin strip mill along the murky Monongahela in Pittsburgh. Frank Graff is 29, married, father of three children. He earns $34 a week.

Graff had always been poor. Until last May he and his family lived in a four-room no-bath shack in Allentown, heated by a coal stove, infested by bugs. When Glen Hazen Heights, a Federal Housing project, was opened, the Graffs moved in: four rooms, a gas furnace, a shiny, tiled bathroom; rent (with utilities) $34.50. Steady work has enabled them to pay off their debts, finish payments on new furniture. They never saved anything before; now they put away 10% in war bonds. Frank Graff is an air-raid warden, keeps a first-aid manual in the kitchen cabinet. War and the New Deal have given the Graffs a settled, respectable life. They do not have much, but they like what they have. “Some day,” says Mrs. Graff, “my guy’s going to be sitting at a big desk.”

The Unworried. Many U.S. war workers do not try to second-guess the war: baseball, a rummy game, a wife’s new hat are more immediate problems. But most keep on doing their job.

One of the few plants that broke production records in July was Carnegie-Illinois’s giant South Works steel mill in Chicago. One day the 44-inch slab mill turned out 6,636 tons (previous record, 6,339); the 96-inch mill ground out 3,520 tons (previous record, 2,641). This was on the hottest day of the month.

From the South Works’ Louis Majcherski came words that perhaps epitomize a majority of U.S. war workers in the summer of 1942. Louis Majcherski sits in a tower in the mill, controlling the hot steel as it shoots into rollers for formation into bars. It is very hot in the tower and Louis Majcherski usually wraps a piece of felt around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes. Said he: “Last war I worked 12 to 14 hours. This time I only have to work eight. I don’t worry about the war. It should be left to those guys in Washington. I fix steel.”