The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE defeat of the Democratic Party in the mid-term elections has put the onus of responsibility for the organization of Congress upon the Republicans. Divided rule will thus be the nation’s lot for the next two years. The situation is bound to reopen the question of succession to the Presidency. The House in response to President Truman’s request passed a bill putting its speaker first in the line of succession. But the Senate would have none of it. If this bill had been passed, Representative Joe Martin would today be next in line to the White House.

A more plausible suggestion, which would require an amendment to the Constitution, has come from Representative Mike Monroney. It is that there should be two Vice Presidents: one to preside over the Senate and attend to other Throttlebottom functions, the other to take over the great burden of administrative detail that now devolves upon our Chief Executive. The administrative officer would be senior in the matter of succession. But the plain fact is that something should be done to prevent a divided government.

Anything for a vote

The electioneering was not very edifying. Foreign affairs were used as political footballs by both sides. An example was the letter from Truman to Attlee on the eve of Yom Kippur regarding the entry of 100,000 immigrants to Palestine. To be sure, charges of “politics” are always made against pronouncements of this sort at election time. But the circumstances of the Truman letter lend credence to the allegation.

The story is that David K. Niles, the President’s adviser on race and religious relations, heard that Governor Dewey was about to let loose a blast against British policy in Palestine. Niles suggested that the bid for the New York Jewish vote be forestalled. Forestalled it was, in spite of the British plea that the Truman letter be held up for a few days pending a delicate phase in negotiations in London, and Governor Dewey’s speech came in the form of a counterbid. Dewey simply multiplied the Truman request for Jewish entries into Palestine.

Possibly the only good thing in the party competition is that the leaders of both parties are now on record as favoring more liberal immigration. It smacks of hypocrisy to ask other nations to open their doors while we are doing nothing special ourselves. We could take at least 200,000 merely by filling the immigration quotas that were unfilled during the war. Some of the refugees and displaced persons in Europe would make first-class citizens. Polish farmers and Baltic professionals are in the greatest number. What they have in common is a love of liberty, a biological persistence after great suffering, and a willingness to work.

The vote-bidding extended to many other groups than the Zionist minority. Catholics and Slavs were appealed to in the State Department démarche over Archbishop Stepinac. Wise diplomacy requires knowledge of facts before it essays intervention. In this case, however, Acting Secretary of State Acheson, in rebuking Tito, frankly acknowledged that no facts were available. “We do not have,” he said, “a record of the trial, nor have we had a specific report from our Embassy in regard to it.” But this lack did not prevent Mr. Acheson from reading Tito a lecture on civil liberties.

Again the hand of David Niles was seen in this reproof, which bespoke self-righteousness rather than wisdom, though there are those who thought the ultimate responsibility might belong to Senator Vandenberg, who has deserved well of the Administration as one of the architects of the biparty unity on foreign affairs. Vandenberg was up for re-election in his state of Michigan, where he has sizable blocs of Slavic supporters.

A similar case at the expense of Yugoslavia occurred when we sent to Belgrade a bristling note accusing Yugoslavia of making American citizens work as slaves, and of causing the deaths of some of them in “horror” camps. There was room for at least reasonable doubt as to the citizenship of the persons involved. All told there are believed to be 165 of them. They include natives of Yugoslavia who came to this country, became naturalized, made enough money to return, and settled down, and who are now fearful of life under Tito.

Yugoslavia asserts they are Yugoslav. Cases of dual citizenship are not uncommon. They call for intergovernment negotiation, not for the use of such threatening gestures as we addressed to Tito.

The lingering death of OPA

Paul Porter said the election was fought on the issues of pork and Palestine. Meat, or the lack of it, was certainly a factor in the minds of the electorate. There could not have been any worse political timing than the August 20 decision of the Decontrol Board to put meat back under control.

The packers were up in arms against OPA. But try as it did, the Administration could find no evidence of a collusive campaign beyond the antiOPA propaganda to stop meat from getting to the consumer. It was said that buying had been eschewed in centers like Omaha. But the real deterrent to buying was the unwillingness of the feed lot operators to sell.

This situation was quite understandable. With controls so clearly on the skids, farmers were bound to stay on the sidelines, especially as a bumper corn crop was being reaped for cheaper feed. But OPA’s Porter took the President’s surrender quite philosophically. “What a country to live in,” he said, “where the question is not whether I shall eat but what I shall eat.”

OPA is now trying to put its remaining controls in systematic order so that Congress can see the control situation at a glance. If the OPA had been given a choice in the control of meats or dairyproducts, which the Decontrol Board released, it would have chosen dairy products. Butter and cheese have soared in the freed market; and since very little butter is going into storage, we may face a shortage next spring.

As to industry, Congress will face a situation in which about 60 per cent of the products used will be controlled. The remaining controls are being retained as long as such controls will aid production, keep down wage demands, or combat unhealthy speculation. But these criteria will not necessarily govern the present Congress. Decontrol has become almost a religion, and it will be a surprise to the Capital if there is any OPA left by next June, when the end is scheduled.

Selective control

The hullabaloo for the end of rent control will be diverted to the new Congress. Sporadic landlord strikes have been reported from Seattle to Washington, D.C. One ceases to wonder at this kind of pressure in the light of the success that has attended similar governmental holdups by labor and industry.

Thus far there is no disposition on the part of the Administration to wind up rent control. President Truman spoke about rent control “for a long time to come.” As somebody remarked, “landlord is an obscene word in America,” and the Administration would lose political capital in deferring to landlord demand.

OPA’s reason for holding on to rent control is that the landlord has no problems of reconversion. To be sure, he has had to face extra maintenance costs, but these are counterbalanced in the eyes of OPA by full occupancy. However, the landlords have a justifiable complaint in the present period of selective control. Selective control, for which Leon Henderson contended in 1941, means discrimination, and is likely to work hardships.

The labor squeeze

Labor will be an immediate problem for the new Congress. Nobody can foretell the course of Congressional action, but action is needed to arrest the extremism developing out of the prevailing chaos. Washington’s hotel strike, for example, was kept up unconscionably by the refusal of the hotels to agree to arbitration. On the face of it, this smacked of union-busting. The airline pilots, on the other extreme, struck after presenting to TWA an ultimatum in which they did not even spell out their demands and after having worked for a few weeks on an award handed down by a Presidential panel.

The moderates are hoping that the reaction will not be regressive legislation. A common feeling is that since organized labor has come of age the unions should be made to account for their actions. But how such an objective will be achieved is still in doubt.

The fact is that in the absence of an adequate labor law and of strict enforcement of what law there is, union heads are bound to play “follow the leader.” John L. Lewis is now out in front. He has never recovered from his chagrin when Walter Reuther was allowed to sound CIO’s tocsin for the 18 1/2cent raise for major industries last spring. Mr. Lewis, now a good A. F. of L. man, kept a rod in pickle for the President until election time. If Truman could be so partial to the CIO, and so unhelpful to the A. F. of L., then he would have to suffer the consequences.

Accordingly Mr. Lewis has put the Administration over the barrel in behalf of a new contract for his coal miners. His demands, as usual, are veiled in mystery. His tactics are in part political, in part economic. Certainly his covert threats of the meaning of his miners’ votes in the coal-mining areas sent shivers down the spines of the party chieftains.

It is impossible to withhold admiration for Lewis’s strategy. And one must agree with Attorney General Clark that the terms of Mr. Lewis’s contract with the government are not so fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians. The contrary would be a foolish interpretation, no matter what the lawyers say.

But to say this, is entirely different from acquiescence in Lewis’s role as a satrap who is using his satrapy as a means wherewith to squeeze the Federal government at will. Nothing is so contemptible, as John Ruskin said, as a mob pulling the strings of government. But we are getting perilously close to precisely such a situation. And nothing, it seems, is easier with a supine Administration than to throw an industrial management of which it has control into the political millstream.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

The Capital has not yet recovered from the confusion arising out of the Republican victory. It has been suggested that the President should bow to the nation’s verdict and resign. Such an act would be unthinkable in practical party politics. The massive protest from the voters, however, calls for some recognition from the White House.

Mr. Truman already has the good fortune to be the beneficiary of biparty unity in the conduct of foreign affairs. Some approach to the same harmony in domestic affairs must now be bought with concessions. It is suggested that the President appoint Republicans to every Cabinet post except the State Department. Without some such gesture the Capital sees nothing but deadlock ahead.

As for the election two years hence, the death knell of any Presidential hope for Mr. Truman has been sounded. Judging from history, though, the beneficiary will not necessarily be a Republican. But the Democrats realize that their only chance in 1948 is to groom a great national figure, and one hears General Eisenhower mentioned more and more in this connection.