LABORING FOR DEFENSE

Ten days ago a strike called by the C.I.O. United Automobile Workers' Aircraft Division union closed the large Vultee Aircraft Corporation plant at Downey, Cal. Cause of the strike was the refusal of the Vultee Co. to grant wage increases to approximately 3000 men whose basic wage was 50 cents an hour. The union claimed that $20 a week was not enough for a man to support a family decently, and asked that the sunken wage floor in the Vultee plant be raised to 75 cents an hour. With $84,000,000 in profitable foreign and domestic orders on its books, the Vultee Corp. can hardly be said to be struggling with its back to the budget wall in its altruistic and purely patriotic effort to save the world from Nazism. And the wage increase requested by the union appears modest indeed when the wage scales of other automotive and aircraft plants, are compared with the prevailing rates at Downey, Cal. In short, the C.I.O. strike is a justifiable attempt by the working man to better his living standard and share more equitably in the cutting of the defense melons.

But let us look at the reaction of government officials, the business world and the mighty press to the action of these underpaid workers. In a boastful reply to Martin Dies, who has accused the F.B.I. of laxity in hunting down "Reds" and "5th, Columnists," Attorney-General Robert Jackson points with pride to the F.B.I. investigation of the Vultee strike and calls the strike Communists inspired. Representative Dies plans to conduct his own little "investigation" of the strike this next week. The public is being treated to the disgusting spectacle of a tragi-comic feud between the F.B.I. and the laurel-laden Dies Committee, over which of the two can conjure up the biggest bogey, with the tin cup of hysterically patriotic approval going to the winner. Chief among the side-line rooters are our patriotic business men who stand in high-minded solidarity in decrying any labor activity today as sabotage of the defense program. The press, with its usual uncanny feeling for the side of shinning truth and righteousness, has stumbled over itself in its anxiety to throw the weight of the front page behind these elements-while only a persistent nature and a sharp eye for small type will reward the reader with the union's arguments.

Of course the Vultee strike is a serious matter at this time of breakneck rearming. Of course a strike which ties up production of the Army's basic training planes should be settled as soon as possible. But the stumbling block in the path to adequate defense is not the union requesting a decent living wage; it is the selfish obstinacy of vested interests, guarding fat dividends and munificent executive salaries, by capitalizing upon the imperative character of the present national emergency. And the Vultee strike situation is merely symptomatic of the attitude of the interests and men who dominate the conduct of our defense efforts.

There is nothing wrong with the vigorous persecution of true agent provocateurs, but no patriot in the best sense of the term will condone the flag-canopied abortion of all legitimate attempts by labor to improve its position and increase the buying power of our laboring millions. When the position of labor is strengthened, increased vitality is given to the most sincere peace groups in the nation. When the buying power of the laboring man is increased, and the living standard raised, the most basic and constructive step is taken towards the prevention of home-grown communism or fascism-a step worth more than a thousand investigations by the F.B.I. or Martin Dies. A defense program used to defeat the efforts of the largest and truest group of defenders in the nation can be nothing but sheer travesty, can do little but open the doors to those very forces against which our defense is aimed.