◆ SpookStack

By ART SHIELDS WASHINGTON. ENRY WALLACE is pretty busy these days. couple of hours in his vo-acre war garden, where 2's raising his own brand hybrid corn and a lot of suc~ lent vegetables, open the morn- y. A several-mile hike in from ; apartment in the Wardman tk Hotel, with a turn in the tk, freshens him up further. jong day working in the big mmerce Building downtown on : 60-million-job program makes a Yelish the garden again. the big, sun-browned fafTiitr- utisé from Towa isn’t afraid of 60-million-job slogan. Some ninistration men in Washing- get nervous when they hear t figure, it must be admitted. : heard assistant secretaries of te dodge the term when ques- red in Congressional commit-. 3. And one of the highest Ad- iistration appointees on the momic front told reporters at press conference recently that wasn’t talking 60 million jobs ust “full employment.” Nell, the new Secretary of mmerce doesn’t hedge on that ue. Full employment means 60 Jlon jobs, he, insists, and he vor tis suaustite” dO-SnOW why, vurce of His b Figures Tow the Roosevelt - Wallace gram of 60 million Jobs 2n been attacked as imprac- ible and visionary. But Wal- :4s a far more factual person n the monopolists’ Senators > called him a dreamer, Nev- ieless, it's well to understand 7 Wallace gets his figures. For _Secretary of Commerce, by very nature of his work, has special responsibility toward . employment and production vansion,. So there's no better son to quote on this issue than ~~ Nace himsclf, ‘he document I’m quoting from nes to almost all our readers the first time. in this issue of e Worker. ention in the press after it was dressed to Sen.- Robert -F, igner (D-NY), May 29, in an- er to his questions as to how 2 Department of Commerce uld help to carry out the ob- stives of the. Wagner-Murray it Employment Act. In one of his questions, Sen- ov Wagner had asked: “In the present planning of ur agency’s . postwar. activities, tat assumptions, if any, have ade with regard to the itwar fovel of the gross natlotial nluct, the national income and ployment?” . It got almost: no- How Wallace Got His * wtechno! logy antl war have destroyed western Europe as the center of world power. powers which now come to the top have no ¢ nies and do not believe in o-tunies. nave great respect for the rigs of smal) the American people wishes’ to use modern tech- We want to raise nology as an instrument of war. Wallace said in reply: “Ever since President Roose- - velt announced as a postwar ob- jective the achievement of close to 60 million jobs there has been considerable discussion of thi figrre, ‘ “It is not generar know the’ 60-million figure Jo by the official pee United States’ oe that by March, 195vp. normal population growth, number of. persons in the Unii States working or seeking work would total 59,165,000, This fig- ure, adjusted for seasonal move- ments of the labor force, results in an average number of persons working or seeking work for the year 1950 of 60,500,000, . | “If allowance is made for t&s fact that some of the workers who. were dtawn into the labor market during the war will re- main after the war, and for war- time casualties, the number of workerg in the. United States to be expected in 1950 is 615 mil- lion. “If the goal is set up of keeping ‘frictional unemployment down to 15 million workers, 60 million of the labor force will need job op- portunities, “It we assume that 60 million _ Jobs are provided in 1950 the gross national product resulting! from this level of employment, ‘would be about 200 billion. p dollars’ in terms of the present level - - Priees’ and a 40-hour work week.| “rhe national income which would be assoclated with thisy gross national product would de- The tw. 60 Million Job Figure e standard of living of our peoples and we do not want to exploit other people. “Both the Russians and Americans in their different ways are groping for a way of life which cwili enable the common man everywhere in the world to get the most good out of modern tech- nology. “This does not mean there is anything irrecon- cilable in our aims and purposes. Those who so proclaim are wittingly or unwittingly looking for war and that, in my opinion, is criminal.” HENRY A. WALLACE ects pend on the levels taxes and business reserves. of business With present business taxes and busi- ness reserves, the national income would be in the. neighborhood of 160 billions.” That is the factual fabric out of which the Wallace-Roosevelt program of 60 million jobs was built. Just as real as the corn in Wallace’s war gafden. Workers, who instinctively knew the million-job idea grew out of, that the 60 mil! cy fought foyt by the inst the monopolists, who tually seek bigger and were profits by raising prices and restricting production, while beating down workers’ wages, mpnopolists . act “preserve the capitalist —from an address to the Institute of World Af- fairs, New York, May 24, 1945. Such monopolist policies, in turn, bring new economic crises, as Wallace has pointed out. His speeches, in fact, have been full of warnings against the dangers to American economy if the « not curbed. =o tter just quoted, ‘ieitiat poinks oi” that restricted poduction means economic disaster. Wallace is a Cabinet officer in a capitalist state who wants to system. But it is doubtful, he says, whether American economy can stand another round of crises like those of the 1930s. And he em- phasizes in his letter to Wagner that the Government must not hesitate to intervene to furnish jobs before another crisis comes. Don't let Red-baiters interfere with the program, he pleads. “We cannot allow this issue to be confused or ta be distorted by irresponsible charges of state so-_ cialism, planned economy and similar red- herrings,” his~ letter declares, ? vention in eco- course, can work ways. Hoover. and Corfmerce and RFC Adminis- trator, actively intervened to strengthen the monopolsts against small business, and thus to ald the forces that looked to re- stricted production and higher prices, not to full employment, for their profits. Wallace, on the other nd, en- His _sones ~ not restricting, prottygtion; on develozment of foreign trade to ew nigh levels, and on vast pub- lic works. And, more and more, he is using the Commerce Department to prepare the way, statistically and otherwise, for the program ahead, The type of public works that Wallace envisions to aid the 60- million-job program sre indicated in this climactic paragraph to Wagner: “Compared to our war produc- tion program,” he says, “the job of clearing our slums, of mod- ernizing our cities, of developing . our river yallies, and of providing health and education to all our citizens is well within our abil- ity.” Wallace's program for a foreign trade of 10 billion dollars of ex- ports, furnishing five million jobs, may be aided soon if authority over export licenses is taken from Leo Crowley's Foreign Economic Administration and turned over to Wallace. That is a likely event. What Wallace can do for little business is Hmited, of course. His department cannot push out the trusts. But for the first’ time in this generation,’ probably, the Commerce Department is being ved to aid little business in very ee er How Department Works Example: A small manufac- turer wants to open a heating equipment factory in a northern Louisiana town. There’s a plant there he can get... But what about ‘the market? He turns to Henry ‘Wallace’s Department of Com- merce and gets the answer to his inquiry about the need for heaters within a 200-mile radius. Result: ‘The trusts have a competiter. Total production, total employment, increase. a Another example: Wallace has the task of selling several billion dollars’ worth of consumer goods to be released by the Army and Navy: motors, shoes and many other items. A smal) shoe dealer comes to the Department of Com- merce to buy, and he gets just as Jow a price per hundred pair of shoes as the biggest wholesaler can get. These are just. samples of the changes taking place in the Corh- merce Department since _ Jesse went out and Wallace came in. We'll hear much more of the a fol. Conuy~ -Man’s_friend-as_recon~ version gets further under way and Wallace is given, as there is some reason. to hope, more power to deal with the problems that arise,