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p On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the instrument of unconditional surrender. World War II ended with the long-awaited victory over fascism. To mark the great event, President Truman declared a two-day national holiday.

p Radical changes took place in the world arena as a result of the war. The Soviet Union emerged from the war stronger than it had been before it. As a result of the rout of German fascism and Japanese militarism, the power of the capitalists and landowners was overthrown in several countries of Europe and powerful revolutionary and national liberation movements swept a number of Asian countries. Eventually, as a result of these developments, eleven states with a total population of over 700 million dropped out of the capitalist system. Socialism now extended beyond the bounds of one country, and the world socialist system took shape. The general crisis of capitalism at this stage manifested itself also in an even greater unevenness in the economic and political development of the capitalist countries, an exacerbation of the contradictions of imperialism, the strengthening of state-monopoly capitalism, and the growth of militarism.

p It was under these conditions that reconversion took place. While the economies of most of the capitalist powers that had fought in the war were destroyed or stagnating, the economic and military potential of the United States had increased sharply.

p Even before the war was over, however, there was anxiety about the difficulties facing the nation. How to avoid mass 166 unemployment and the social unrest it entailed was the question that occupied the minds of the country’s economists and leading statesmen. The spectre of unemployment loomed large. According to official data from the War Mobilization and Reconversion Board, the total number of unemployed rose from 840,000 in 1944 to 2,270,000 in 1946.  [166•1 

Despite the fact that the wartime boom, in a country untouched by destructive effects of war, continued into the postwar years, the economic development of the United States at the war’s end was marked by instability. We mentioned earlier that there was a business slump in 1944-1945. The industrial production index in 1946 was much lower than in 1943, as can be seen from the following figures (1957-1959= 100)  [166•2 :

82.9 81.7 70.5 1946 59.5

p In 1946, due to the switch-over in the larger part of industry to civilian goods, overall production fell by 23.4 points as compared with the wartime peak in 1943.

p One of the causes of the recession of 1944-1946 was the sharp reduction in government defense spending. In 1945, military expenditures amounted to $90.5 billion; they were reduced to $44 billion in 1946.  [166•3  Another cause, as mentioned above, was the transfer of industry to peacetime production, and this meant that some plants were closed down altogether, while others were temporarily shut down for retooling.

p During the war the demand for consumer goods had risen sharply and remained largely unsatisfied. Housing construction and the production of passenger cars, refrigerators, radios, vacuum cleaners, washing and sewing machines and other home appliances had been reduced to a bare minimum. The switch-over to a peace economy meant the expansion of commodity production and services to meet civilian needs. This brought about a flow of capital into industries producing 167 the above-mentioned goods as well as into the trade and service fields. Naturally, this restructuring required large investments in private construction, which, according to the War Mobilization and Reconversion Board, was undergoing the biggest boom in its history. During 1945, new construction activity totalled about $4.5 billion, of which $2.6 billion was private. In 1946, new construction increased to $7 billion, that is, a rise of almost 60 per cent, with investment in private construction amounting to $5.5 billion.  [167•1 

p Enormous outlays for capital construction were made in the trade and service fields.

p In such areas as the automobile and construction industries and the manufacture of home appliances reconversion was accomplished rapidly and the monopolies quickly adapted to market demands. In other fields, largely busy with defense orders, reconversion took place more slowly, which tended to reduce overall production volume and worsen the economic position of the workers, part of whom lost their jobs.

p Reconversion was accompanied by the liquidation of government ownership of defense plants and the sale of war surpluses at home and, to a large extent, abroad. By the end of 1946, almost three-fourths of the assets of 2,800 enterprises built by the government during the war became the property of 250 major monopolies that bought them at an average of 60 per cent of face value.  [167•2 

p With the war coming to an end and the economy entering postwar reconversion, old problems facing the workers and the labor unions took on a new urgency. What would happen to the standard of living? Would it plummet to the levels of the 1930s, or could it be held at the wartime level and be used as the starting point in the fight against big business? They were worried about the prospects of employment, hourly wage rates, weekly and annual earnings, overtime work and its compensation, work loads, speedup and other working 168 conditions. To no smaller extent the workers were concerned about the cost of living.

p The first years of reconversion showed that the employers were out to place the whole burden onto the backs of the workers. The big industrialists were demanding a decisive role in the postwar economy. The workers, naturally, wanted to retain the gains they had made before and during the war. A clash was inevitable.

p In a message to Congress on September 5, 1945, Truman outlined the administration’s program for reconversion. It called for expanded social security, raising the minimum wage from 40 to 65 cents an hour, and legislation guaranteeing full employment. It recommended that the Fair Employment Practices Committee be made into a permanent body, all forms of government control lifted, and taxes slightly reduced. In addition to this, the administration intended to do away with the excess profits tax, reduce military spending, and begin demobilization.

p One of the first attempts to find ways and means to avert the sharp class conflict that was brewing was the National Labor-Management Conference which took place in Washington November 5 to 30, 1945. As early as July 30, 1945, Senator Arthur Vandenberg addressed a letter to Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach, suggesting that such a conference be held. Vandenberg wrote: “Responsible Labor Leadership knows that irresponsible strikes and subversive attacks upon essential production are the gravest threats of the permanent success of Labor’s Bill of Rights. The American public knows that we cannot rebuild and maintain our national economy at the high levels ... if we cannot have productive peace instead of disruptive war on the industrial front.”   [168•1 

p Truman and Schwellenbach agreed with Vandenberg and sent proposals to the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, the CIO, the AFL and independent unions. After consultations, the leaders of these organizations set up a preparatory committee to work out the conference agenda.

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p The industrial magnates were seeking to get a number of concessions from labor, one of which was a 30 per cent reduction of the wartime wage level. They were also thinking in terms of reviewing work loads and increasing labor productivity.

p The conference was preceded by a meeting in Absecon, New Jersey, of officials of the country’s major banks and companies. They worked out recommendations on measures to be taken during the reconversion period.

p Soon after that meeting, Truman made note of the attempts by the monopolies to raise prices. The administration wanted to act with caution in lifting controls and to prepare the public for it.

p Truman tried to portray the government as an impartial, non-class force, equally concerned about workers and the employers. He frequently delivered demagogic speeches and made statements designed to create the impression that his administration was a true friend of labor. In one such speech he said pompously: “We recognize the importance and dignity of labor and we recognize the right of every citizen to a wage which will permit him and his dependents to maintain a decent standard of living."  [169•1 

p He pursued the same kind of ostensible impartiality with respect to the forthcoming national conference, emphasizing that the government would have no casting vote in it.

p Truman called for class peace and urged that strikes be averted and disputes settled by peaceful means.

p The conference opened on November 5, 1945, in Washington, and was attended by 39 delegates, 18 representing employers and management, 18 representing labor, and three representing the general public. The public members—Henry Wallace, Lewis Schwellenbach and Judge Walter P. Stacy—had only a consultative voice in the conference. This underscored the fact that the conference brought together two equal sides (management and labor) who by themselves, without pressure from the outside, would be able to solve their problems. Among the labor delegates eight were from the AFL, eight 170 from the CIO, and one each from the United Mine Workers and the Railroad Brotherhoods.

p Among the employer representatives there were David Sarnoff, Eric Johnston, Ira Mosher and other well-known figures from the business world. They took a hard line. The industrialists and the bourgeois press were hostile to attempts by Truman and Wallace to propose a partial wage increase. Some, like those in previous years who suspected Roosevelt of partiality to the CIO, accused Truman, too, of siding with the CIO and working against “orthodox democracy”.

p Labor was represented by the same old rightist leaders—Green, Meany, Tobin and the like. Really progressive labor union leaders as well as a number of leaders of independent labor organizations were not admitted to the conference.

p There was no unity among the labor delegates. Green, in particular, came out against including the wage question on the conference agenda. He said that this should be decided without government control, and that labor should try to satisfy its demands by using its own economic power, that is, not by legislative means but by means of direct negotiations between labor and management.

p The CIO delegation held a different position, and demanded that the question of raising wages definitely be taken up at the conference. Murray’s argument on this issue was characteristic. He maintained that industry could increase wages by 31 per cent and still receive twice as much profit as in the prewar period.  [170•1  Even according to very conservative estimates of the War Mobilization and Reconversion Board, industry was in a position to increase wages by 24 per cent.  [170•2 

p Sharp differences arose at the conference both between labor and management and between AFL and CIO leaders on the question of higher wages. The realities of the situation disproved Truman’s words that labor and capital would cooperate with each other and that the conference would lay the foundations for an era of prosperity and security. It was 171 futile to expect it to propose a mechanism for settling industrial disputes.  [171•1 

p The representatives of industry refused to discuss not only the demands of the unions but also the government’s proposal calling for a 15 per cent wage increase without a raise in prices. The conflicting interests of the workers and the employers obviously could not lead to the “class peace" in industry which the latter wished to achieve. The conference was bound to fail, and so it did.

p In view of the position taken by the delegates representing management and the atmosphere at the conference one cannot agree with the assessment of the conference’s potential significance given by historian Foster Rhea Dulles. In his book on the history of the labor movement in the USA he says: “Apart from recommendations for expanding the Conciliation Service of the Department of Labor, the conference had no practical results."   [171•2  But how does he explain the reasons for the failure of the conference? In his opinion, the main reason was that the unions did not understand the significance of the conference and responded to its convocation with mass strike actions. Thus, he sees the main cause to have been the behavior of the unions and the lack of restraint on the part of the workers who responded to it with strikes. Strikes, however, were taking place long before the conference convened, and it was the conference’s purpose to reconcile the conflicting sides in order to avert future strikes. This did not happen, however, because it was impossible to reconcile the extreme class contradictions.

p After the labor-management conference was over, the annual convention of the NAM opened in Washington in December 1945. Its participants assailed the unions and especially the CIO.

p The monopolies were using the hardships of the postwar period to their own ends. They achieved a redistribution of the national income in their favor by means of lowering real wages. In 1945, when the national income amounted to $182.8 billion, 172 the share of the corporations was $20.2 billion (before taxes) and the share of wages was $122.9 billion; in 1946, when the national income was $178.2 billion, the figures were $21.1 billion and $116.8 billion, respectively.  [172•1  Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach conceded at the time that “figures dealing with the current distribution of the national income indicate a downward trend in labor’s share, and profits in the aggregate are breaking all records".  [172•2 

p It was mainly the big monopolies that made the increased profits. In 1948, 0.07 per cent of all companies received over 40 per cent of all the profits. The leaders were 250 major corporations which formed the nucleus of monopoly capital in the United States. The assets of these corporations totalled $192.8 billion.  [172•3 

p Using their enormous economic and political power, the monopolies pressured the administration and Congress to take measures in their interests. Besides the government-owned war plants which they bought up at low prices, the monopolies received yet another generous gift. An income tax law passed by Congress in 1945 released the corporations from the excess profits tax.

p When we also consider the lowered income tax rates on corporations we can see that they derived no small benefit from these Congressional actions.

p During the war, the monopolies and the private capitalists had to comply with government-imposed price and rent controls, although they did show their displeasure, calling these measures “socialization” of the economy. But as soon as the war ended, voices were raised against government interference in labor-management relations. Politicians, scholars and journalists joined in propagandizing free enterprise. They declared that material sacrifices by the people were inevitable.

p Some economists justified the need to have some sort of “normal” unemployment rate. Some considered the “natural” 173 reserve to be 2 per cent of the work force, while others maintained that it should be 5 or 6 per cent.  [173•1  Pointing to the jobless waiting outside the plant gates, the employer could whip up his workers, speed up the assembly line, lower wages or increase the work loads. A characteristic stand was taken by Benjamin Fairless, president of the United States Steel Corporation, who categorically rejected the CIO suggestion that guaranteed annual wages be introduced. He said in a press statement that this would destroy rather than protect labor’s right to work, that it would tie workers to specific jobs and thus deprive others of the right to them.

p The peacetime readjustment of the US economy brought about a deterioration of the economic condition of the bulk of the American working class in the first postwar years.

p According to Department of Labor statistics, employment dropped from 65 million in 1945 to 61 million in 1946. Of these, 57 million were in the economy and 3.5 million in the armed forces. The number of unemployed had increased to 2.3 million.  [173•2 

The number of people employed in trade, the service field and in financial and insurance establishments grew rapidly in these years. The number of industrial workers fell by 1.8 million in the first three months after victory over Japan, while the number of workers in the trade and service industries increased by 800,000.  [173•3  A War Mobilization and Reconversion Board report noted that many laid-off war-plant workers plus many veterans returning from the war were pouring into these industries. On the other hand, the production worker category began to shrink markedly. Although the number of nonagricultural workers grew from 30.3 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1946, serious changes had taken place within the working class, as can be seen from the following data (in thousands)  [173•4 :

174 Industry division Table 3 Total estimated employment (excluding agriculture) 30,287 42,042 42,928 Manufacturing Mining Contract construction Transportation, communication, other public utilities Trade Finance and insurance Service Government 10,078 17,381 15,348 845 917 874 1,150 1,567 1,644 2,912 3,619 4,071 6,705 7,322 9,234 1,382 1,401 1,546 3,228 3,786 4,573 3,987 6,049 5,638

p American statistics include in the industrial work force not only wage earners, but also enterprise owners, managers and other administrative personnel. Therefore the actual number of wage earners in industry was smaller than shown in Table 3. But even so, the statistics give an idea of the correlation between production and non-production workers.

p In 1946, the drop in the number of workers in the manufacturing industries was caused to a large extent by the restructuring of production, and especially by the closing down of many war plants.

p The differentiation in wages shown in the preceding chapters did not become smaller after the war. Workers who left war plants to go to work in the trade and service industries took big wage cuts. But the biggest losses were caused by the reduction in the number of hours worked per year. The workweek in many cases was reduced from 48 to 40 hours, and overtime work, which was compensated at a time-and-one-half rate of pay, was as a rule eliminated. This led to a sharp reduction in weekly earnings. Some workers found their hourly wage rates reduced or their work loads increased without any increase in pay. In manufacturing, for example, the workweek was reduced from an average of 45.2 hours in 1944 to 40.4 in 1946, so that the average weekly wages declined from $46.08 to $43.82.  [174•1  During this period, prices had gone up 175 13 per cent.  [175•1  According to the official government figures which Murray cited in his report to the eighth convention of the CIO in November 1946, 70 per cent of American families in early 1946 earned less than $3,000 a year, and 47 per cent earned less than $2,000 a year.  [175•2 

p At the same time, the cost of living was rising sharply. According to the Heller budget, the annual expenses of a family of four grew from $3,000-$3,500 in 1946 to $4,111 in 1948.  [175•3 

p Prices were the subject of debate in the executive and legislative branches of government and in the press. The price control law was due to expire June 30, 1946, and debates began in Congress on the question of passing a new law. The business press stressed the difficulties, “It isn’t going to be easy to restore anything which resembles effective price control even if Congress passes a law that suits the President."  [175•4 

p It was not surprising that with rising prices and falling wages, the condition of the American workers began to deteriorate markedly in the postwar period. If during the war there was a certain growth in the incomes of most worker families due to increased hourly wage rates, overtime work, and the earnings of second and third family members, this possibility became rare in the period of reconversion. To cover their annual budget deficit, most worker families had to draw on their wartime savings, as confirmed by the fact that savings deposits went down from $35.6 billion in 1944 to $11 billion in 1947.  [175•5 

p Unwilling to bear the whole burden of reconversion, the organized workers began to protest with increasing vigor. This was something the labor leaders could not ignore. The CIO leaders, for example, made wide use of material contained in a report entitled, “A National Wage Policy for 1947”, compiled by Robert Nathan, former deputy head of the Reconversion Board. The report stated that a general increase in wage rates 176 was essential not only in the interests of the workers. “The silent facts of the wage-price-profit situation in American business today indicate that the national interest requires a major general increase in wage rates.” It emphasized that a further substantial wage increase without a general price increase was possible, justified, and essential. Nathan considered it to be fully possible for all industries to raise wages by 25 per cent without raising prices. The report also attempted to show the possibility of bringing wages back to the January 1945 level by raising them in 1946 an average of 23 per cent in all manufacturing industries, which would involve a 25.7 percent increase in steel and a 28.4 per cent increase in the automobile industry.  [176•1 

p The NAM gave Nathan’s report a hostile reception. It described it as a document aimed at misleading the public as a whole and workers in particular.  [176•2 

p Thus, after the war, the American workers were faced with a drive by the big corporations to lower the wartime wage level, eliminate the time-and-one-half pay for overtime, and increase work loads. The workers were deeply concerned over declining employment and the threat of growing unemployment. They realized that they would have to resort to strikes, a tested weapon in the struggle to protect their standard of living.

p The closing months of 1945 were marked by an intensification of the strike struggle. Masses of workers joined the struggle under the slogan, “No Contract, No Work!" In September, hundreds of thousands went out on strike in the steel, rubber, electrical and radio, oil refining and coal industries. An unemployed movement emerged and was particularly strong in Chicago, where thousands of laid-off workers were demanding reinstatement. Returned war veterans joined war workers in a huge demonstration for jobs, sponsored by the Chicago CIO Industrial Union Council. The 177 demonstrators carried posters, the most frequently seen reading: “We Want 60,000,000 Jobs.”   [177•1 

p In an appeal addressed to Truman, the demonstrators urged the President and Congress to apply unused war appropriations to peaceful needs and unemployment relief. In this same message, over 7,000 workers called for the passage of a full employment law, unemployment benefits of $25 a week for 26 weeks, a 20 per cent increase in wage rates, a guaranteed annual income, and an increase in the minimum wage to 65 cents an hour. Workers in other cities set forth similar demands.

p The attention of the labor unions was focussed on the mass actions of unemployed and striking workers. The struggle was intensified considerably by the automobile workers’ demand for a 33-cent-an-hour wage increase, which amounted on the average to a 30 per cent rise. Most of the other unions made similar demands during strikes. The automobile companies rejected the demand and staged a lockout.

p General Motors was in essence trying to provoke a strike at a time that was unfavorable to the workers, hoping to break the strike and the workers’ resistance.  [177•2  During negotiations with the union, some other companies agreed to raise wages by 10 cents an hour. Since a strike in the automobile industry could precipitate a crisis in the steel industry, the President intervened. The government’s recommendation was that the companies raise wages by 19.5 cents an hour. The union agreed to this, but General Motors rejected the proposed compromise. Ford Motor and Chrysler proved to be more tractable and agreed in principle to the proposal. On November 21, 1945, after fruitless negotiations, about 200,000 workers at 102 General Motors plants in 50 cities of 20 states decided to strike.  [177•3  Many of them manned the picket lines against strikebreakers.

p During the strike the government tried to act as arbitrator. On December 3, it asked the workers to go back to work. But since the struggle continued, Truman appointed a fact-finding 178 commission, which proposed on January 10, 1946 that the company increase wages by 19.5 cents an hour without raising its automobile prices, and that the agreement the company had abrogated during the strike be reinstated. But it was not until March 13 that the strike ended after the company agreed to increase wages on the terms proposed by the commission. Negotiations at Ford and Chrysler plants ended on almost the same terms. The General Motors strike was one of the longest in the automobile industry.

p The autumn months of 1945 were full of other events as well. On October 1, 1945, a strike of 3,500 longshoremen began in the port of New York.  [178•1  Over 200,000 miners entered into a sharp conflict with the mineowners. At the time that the National Labor-Management Conference was being held in Washington, a city transport workers’ strike broke out there. In New York City there was a general strike of elevator operators and maintenance workers who serviced the city’s skyscrapers. The press noted that in “Wall St., bankers puffed their way upstairs alongside their low-paid employees, and up at the’big Empire State Building, every elevator was standing still".  [178•2 

p The greatest activity in the strike struggle that year was shown by the ClO-affiliated unions. Almost half of all striking workers were CIO members, and only 20 per cent were AFL.  [178•3  Demobilized servicemen were prominent among the strikers.

All in all, 4,750 strikes took place in 1945, involving about 3,470,000 persons.  [178•4  But this was only the beginning of an even greater upsurge to come in 1946. Describing the situation at the time, Eugene Dennis said at the July session of the Communist Party National Committee that during the winter of 1945-1946, the big monopolies had rejected the moderate wage demands the workers made, provoking a series of strikes, and tried to undermine the CIO unions in the auto, steel, electrical and other industries. However, due to the fighting spirit of the workers and the policies of their unions, these attacks were rebuffed and the workers won out.

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p During this period, Negro workers became very active in the strike struggle, and not only in the automobile, coal and steel industries, but also in the meat-packing, textile and other industries. They took part in the movement to transform the temporary Fair Employment Practices Committee into a permanent government body. In January 1946, 600 representatives of Negro organizations led by Negro activist Benjamin Davis, a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, marched to Washington with this aim.

p Indeed, never in the history of the United States had so many workers been on strike simultaneously as in early 1946. Strikes gripped entire industries. By the end of January, the number of workers on strike was 1,500,000.

p The Steelworkers played a leading role in labor’s economic struggle in the postwar period. In early 1946, a general strike in the steel industry attracted wide attention as it threatened to shut down many plants in other industries, especially the automobile industry, one of the biggest consumers of steel.

p The conflict in steel first arose in late 1945. The steel 180 industry was one of the most monopolized and powerful in the country. In the postwar years, most of the country’s steel was produced by eight major companies employing hundreds of thousands of workers. Two companies, United States Steel and Bethlehem Steel, owned 43.7 per cent of the country’s steel-making capacities. To counteract rising prices and a declining standard of living, the workers at United States Steel demanded a wage increase. Negotiations went on for a long time without results. In an effort to avert a strike, Truman urged the corporation to raise wages by 18.5 cents an hour. The union agreed to the President’s proposal, but the company rejected it. As a consequence, negotiations between Murray and company president Fairless were broken off on January 12, 1946. On the same day, Murray gave the signal for a strike.

p On the night of January 13-14, Truman, acting as mediator, again intervened, and invited Fairless and Murray to the White House. He urged Fairless to accept his compromise proposal. However, Fairless reaffirmed the company’s refusal. Later, in his keynote address to the eighth convention of the CIO in November 1946, Murray lauded Truman’s mediatory role in the dispute.

p Another steel company, Kaiser Steel Corporation, agreed to raise wages at its California plants by 18.5 cents an hour. This to a certain extent refuted the arguments of the bourgeois press and the United States Steel Corporation that it was impossible to raise wages by 18.5 cents without raising steel prices. The American Economic Review magazine reported that the profits of 20 steel companies before taxes amounted to $270.6 million in 1945, and $345.3 million in 1946. In nine steel companies, the profit on every ton of steel averaged $3.61 in 1945 and $5.55 in 1946.

p On January 21, 1946, the strike spread to almost the entire steel industry, involving 750,000 workers in 30 states. Only after United States Steel got government’s permission to raise the price of steel by $5 a ton did it accept Truman’s proposal to raise wages by 18.5 cents an hour, which amounted to an average increase of 17.5 to 20 per cent, instead of the 30 per cent demanded by the workers. It was on this basis that the dispute with United States Steel was settled on February 15, 181 1946. Shortly thereafter, strikes at other companies ended, and about 300,000 workers went back to work.

p April 1, 1946 was the beginning of a mass strike affecting nearly half of the country’s mines. For a long time, the government hesitated taking harsh measures, fearing unhappy consequences. The union was demanding the 18.5-cent-anhour wage raise supported by the government in other industrial disputes, plus safety provisions in the mines and union control over health insurance funds. The mineowners rejected the demands, whereupon the union called a strike. The bourgeois press immediately launched a campaign against the miners. Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug declared that the strike would cause drastic curtailment of industrial activity and that “the relief program for Europe is on the verge of collapse".  [181•1  The NAM warned that New York would find itself in a critical situation, and northern Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Indiana were already experiencing a coal famine.  [181•2 

p The press repeatedly carried threats against the miners and their union. On May 17, the miners and the mineowners rejected Truman’s offer to mediate. On May 22, the President announced that Secretary of the Interior Krug would take over and operate the mines under a presidential order establishing government control over the mines.  [181•3 

p The miners’ union condemned Truman’s anti-labor policy. A report to the 39th convention of the United Mine Workers said: “On Saturday May 25, 1946, President Truman appeared before a joint session of the House and Senate, demanding immediate passage of legislation to curb strikes. A bill drawn by Presidential advisers containing the most drastic measures ever proposed by any President was offered to the Congress.... In violation of the fundamental and constitutional rights of every workingman and woman in America, the President asked that he be given power to draft every worker striking against government-seized properties into the Army where they would be forced to work at the point of a bayonet."  [181•4 

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p On May 25 the government seized the coal industry, forcing the union to halt the strike. On May 29, the miners returned to work after the companies agreed to satisfy their demands. Wages were raised by 18.5 cents an hour, which meant that the dispute was settled on the terms recommended by the government. The miners won an increase from $75 to $100 in benefits for unused vacation and the creation of a welfare fund to which employers would contribute 5 cents on each ton of coal mined.  [182•1  The initial size of this fund was $26 million.  [182•2  However, the miners’ demands were not fully satisfied, and in late 1946 the dispute flared up again. The union declared invalid the May contract made under government pressure. The government, still in control of the mines, would not agree to new union demands, and continued to uphold the court injunction against the miners (in accordance with the SmithConnally Act). Under these circumstances, Lewis called upon the workers to strike, and on November 20, 1946 they refused to go down into the mines. The district court charged the union with contempt of court. The case was heard in a charged atmosphere and ended in a decision which imposed a fine of $3,500,000 on the union, and a separate fine of $10,000 on the union’s president, John L. Lewis.  [182•3 

p On December 7, under conditions of persecution and baiting, Lewis called the miners back to work, promising them that he would continue to negotiate for a new contract. The union appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision but reduced the fine to $700,000.  [182•4  Government control of the mines was lifted only in June 1947.  [182•5 

p Another instance of heavy-handed government interference occurred during a strike on the railroads. The railroad workers were an important part of the American working class. United in the Railroad Brotherhoods, they had little contact with organized workers in other branches of the economy. The specific features of their work set them apart, and the top union officials did everything they could to perpetuate this 183 isolation. Their labor policy amounted to keeping the unions out of politics. To avoid sharp conflicts and come to terms with the companies, the Brotherhood leaders were usually ready to go back on all principles.

p The year 1946 marked the end of a twenty-year period of “peace” that had begun with the passage of the Watson-Parker Act in 1926. Not a single strike had taken place on the railroads in those 20 years. All disputes were settled with active intervention by the government, which acted as mediator to avert strikes.

p In the meantime, the economic position of the railroad workers deteriorated. Unemployment became a steady factor. In 1920, two million people were employed on the railroads, but on the eve of World War II the figure stood at one million. Even during the war years, their number did not exceed 1.5 million, although in 1944 the ton-mileage had doubled over the 1940 level and passenger transportation had quadrupled,  [183•1  which indicated a further intensification of labor.

p Now that the war was over and the Railroad Brotherhoods were free from the no-strike pledge, the workers decided to stand up to the monopolies. They also came out against government interference in their labor disputes.

p The threat of a general strike was imminent. This was felt by the tone of the bourgeois press, which increased its attacks on the railroad workers for making what it called excessive demands on the companies. As usual, the press brought up the 1926 law and so much as told the Brotherhoods that they should not violate their “fine traditions" but content themselves with arbitration. One New York newspaper reported: “The impending strike affects 250,000 railroad trainmen and locomotive engineers, who are demanding a wage increase of $2.50 a day and forty-seven changes in operating rules."  [183•2 

p It goes without saying that the companies and the government took every measure to prevent the strike. Mediation boards were set up, lengthy negotiations were held, and so forth. Then the dispute was turned over to an arbitration board, which decided that the workers should get a 16-cent-an-hour 184 wage increase instead of the 30 cents they were demanding.  [184•1  Truman agreed with the board’s decision and called representatives of both sides to the White House for talks.

p Truman declared at his press conference that he would order seizure of the railroads to prevent a nationwide strike, if railroad management and union representatives reported to him the next day that no settlement was possible by negotiation.  [184•2  On May 17, twenty-four hours before the strike was to begin, the railroads were seized by federal troops.

p Even so, a general strike of railroad workers began on May

p 23, under the leadership of the Brotherhoods of Locomotive Engineers and Railroad Trainmen, headed by Alvanley Johnston and Alexander F.Whitney. It involved 250,000 locomotive engineers and trainmen. For the first time in twenty years the Railroad Brotherhoods asserted their rights and refused to submit to the conciliatory law of 1926. Almost all railroad traffic in the United States was halted.  [184•3  On May 24, of the usual 17,500 passenger trains, only 50 were operating.

p The bourgeois press published panicky reports. Some New York papers wrote with alarm that if the industrial paralysis caused by the railroad and coal strikes were not ended it would be a disaster for everyone, and that every hour and every minute was precious in the effort to end the strikes. On May 24, Truman delivered a radio address to the nation. While accusing the union leaders of every sin, he assured the railroad workers that he was their friend. However, this did not prevent him from delivering an ultimatum to the railroad workers and putting the railroads under government control. He ordered the army to take over the railroads. The railroad workers were compelled to end the strike.

p Speaking before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1946, Truman described the railroad strike as one against the government and asked for legislation providing that all workers striking against the government be drafted into the 185 army and that employers and union officers who ignored the President’s back-to-work orders be prosecuted.

p However, the House and Senate could not agree on the question. After a forty-minute debate, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill giving the President emergency powers. But the bill was defeated in the Senate.

p Government intervention and persecution forced the Railroad Brotherhoods to terminate the strike on May 26. The workers and a number of union leaders attacked the promonopoly position of the government and the President. In a press statement, Whitney condemned Truman’s actions and promised that his Brotherhood would use its treasury to “defeat Mr. Truman if he tries again to run for President in 1948”.  [185•1  Michael Quill, president of the CIO Transport Workers Union, said that Truman had become strikebreaker No. 1 in the interests of American bankers and railroad companies.

p In contrast to the railroad workers, the maritime workers and longshoremen displayed militant spirit and determination in the struggle against the monopolies.

p A prominent role in the strike struggle was played by the maritime workers and longshoremen. After the end of the war, the shipowners decided to review the wartime wage scales for merchant seamen and stevedores, and undertook efforts to nullify the higher standard of living the workers had achieved. Premium pay for war-risk duty and overtime pay were stopped, and work conditions and norms were re-examined. This naturally led to unrest among the maritime workers. Their unions spoke out against the anti-labor policies of the shipowners. Seamen picketed the local offices of the War Shipping Administration.

p To strengthen their forces the CIO unions of merchant seamen and other workers involved in servicing the merchant fleet on the Pacific Coast organized a Committee for Maritime Unity, composed of representatives of the Maritime Union, the Longshoremen and Warehousemen, the Radio Operators, and 186 the Marine Cooks and Stewards.  [186•1  The Committee directed preparations for a strike involving over 200,000 West Coast maritime workers. In negotiations with the shipowners, they demanded a 22- to 30-cent-an-hour wage increase, a 48-hour week, and $1.25 to $1.75 an hour for overtime work.

p However, the West Coast seamen and longshoremen got no support from the leadership of the East Coast maritime workers’ and longshoremen’s unions affiliated with the AFL. On the contrary, their executive committee launched attacks against the West Coast Unity Committee. Moreover, Green, Meany and Ryan entered into negotiations with the Atlantic Coast shipowners to prevent AFL maritime workers and longshoremen from taking part in the impending strike. This move undeniably worked against any unity on a national scale.

p Despite the treacherous position adopted by the AFL leadership, the Pacific Coast maritime workers continued to fight for their demands. In June 1946, a clash between the shipping companies and the Committee for Maritime Unity became inevitable. The shipowners continued to sabotage negotiations. The President threatened to step in and use the Navy to break the strike. Even some of the leaders of the West Coast maritime union became doubtful of success and were ready to accept the shipowners’ offer of a $12.50 monthly wage rise. The rank-and-file members, however, rejected this compromise and demanded that their leaders continue negotiating the terms set by the Committee for Maritime Unity.  [186•2  The Committee set June 15 as the deadline for a strike embracing all ship crews and all ports on the West Coast. The companies realized that it was useless to hold out, and reopened negotiations. Besides a wage increase, they agreed to a 48-hour week with overtime pay for the eight hours worked over 40.  [186•3 

p Thus, without actually going on strike, but merely threatening to, the maritime workers achieved impressive success. The chief factors making for it were their militancy and unity 187 and the support they received from the CIO and maritime unions across the world affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions.

p The years 1945 and especially 1946 remain a high mark in the history of the American labor movement’s strike struggle. In the first postwar year alone there were about 5,000 strikes in the country, involving 4,600,000 workers and resulting in a total of 116 million man-days lost.  [187•1  In such industrial’states as Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and California, the left wing in the labor movement had considerable influence. Progressive forces were strongly in evidence in the CIO, where they were represented in the leadership of a number of unions. Communists played an important role in these unions. They carried on educational work, sustained a spirit of solidarity, participated in strikes, and helped organize collections for strike funds.

p At the same time, opportunist sentiments fostered by a close-knit group of rightist leaders prevailed in the executive bodies of the AFL and Railroad Brotherhoods. Not infrequently, the leaders openly opposed strikes, or, at crucial moments, as during the railroad strike, made concessions to the employers or the authorities.

p A considerable part of the working people had illusions that Truman would continue Roosevelt’s policies. They believed his promises to be true to the New Deal and pursue a genuine Fair Deal policy. The propaganda of the top labor leaders fostered these illusions. The AFL leadership assured the workers that “the position taken by the American Federation of Labor on wage stabilization, collective bargaining and related industrial questions has been substantiated by President Truman and the Council of Economic Advisors".  [187•2 

p As for the CIO leaders headed by Murray, their situation was different from that of Green’s group because of the strong influence of progressive forces in the CIO. In the first postwar years, the CIO leaders, although not always firm and consistent, nonetheless played a significant role in the strike 188 struggle. It should be noted that the United Mine Workers, which was in the AFL at the time, also had a big organizing influence on the strike struggle during that period.

p The eighth convention of the CIO, held in Atlantic City in November 1946, took place against a background of mass strike activity. The convention devoted a great deal of attention to the fight for higher wages. Delegates spoke with concern about the deteriorating living standards of the workers after the end of the war. One resolution said: “The elimination of overtime, down-grading, the transfer of workers from war industries to civilian industries, from high-paid jobs to low-paid jobs, the re-timing of incentive systems and other factors drastically reduced weekly earnings of the vast majority of American wage earners.” It said further that “after the establishment of the Administration’s wage-price policy in February of this year, powerful American employers entered into a conspiracy which sought, through unwarranted price increases, to destroy the living standards of the workers".  [188•1  The resolution sharply condemned the policy of employers aimed at abolishing price controls.

p The convention called for the establishment of a 65-centan-hour minimum wage, rising to 75 cents in subsequent years, and extending coverage of the minimum wage law to all workers.  [188•2 

p The CIO set forth a progressive program for reconversion. Murray maintained the centrist position he had held during the war, and had not yet brought himself to openly alter his tactics and switch from a temporary alliance with the leftists to an offensive against them. Even some of the more outspoken rightist leaders felt that with the given balance of forces in the first postwar years it would be inappropriate to openly demonstrate their negative attitude to the left elements in the CIO. Progressive sentiments were still stronger in the middle and lower echelons of the labor union leadership.

p As a result of the mass actions in 1945-1946, the workers succeeded in holding back the monopolies’ offensive against the living standards of the working class and to slow down the 189 decline in real wages that had begun with the fall in employment, reductions of hourly wage rates and increases in work loads. In 1946, the workers won wage increases averaging 18.5 cents an hour in the steel, automobile, electrical and several other industries.

p After the ideological and organizational crisis of 1944-1945, the Communist Party launched a drive to consolidate its ranks. The leadership headed by William Z. Foster, Eugene Dennis and other members of the National Committee was faced with serious difficulties in eliminating the effects of right revisionism.

p As we have seen, the opportunism of Browder and his followers was exposed at the 13th convention. Browder assured the delegates that he would submit to the decisions of the convention, but shied away from repudiating his antiMarxist views. When called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities he dissociated himself altogether from the Party and refused to speak in its defense, stating that he was a private citizen and had nothing to do with the activities of the Party.  [189•1 

p Toward the end of 1945 Browder began publishing a newspaper whose orientation testified that Browder maintained his anti-Party revisionist position. The upshot was that in February 1946, the National Committee expelled him from the Communist Party. Browder’s supporters dropped out of the Party too. The decision said that he was expelled for opposing the political line of the Party.

p Browderism caused great damage to the Party. For one thing, the Party lost many of its members. In mid-1944 membership had stood at 63,044 (plus 15,000 members serving in the armed forces). By January 1946, it had gone down to 52,824.  [189•2  In a number of places the position and influence of Party organizations and their leaders were undermined. The proportion of industrial workers in the membership fell. In New York City, for example, it declined from 34 to 29 per cent, with 71 per cent of the city’s 190 membership consisting of white-collar workers, professionals and housewives.  [190•1 

p Under these circumstances, it was essential to strengthen and expand the Party organizations at industrial enterprises. At the beginning of 1946, there were only 122 Party members at the General Motors plants,  [190•2  and only small and scattered groups of Communists at other major autoplants and in the steel industry.

p In its efforts to enhance its standing with the masses, the Communist Party had to overcome not only the internal difficulties caused by the subversive activities of Earl Browder and his supporters, but also the fierce anti-Communist activities of reactionary labor leaders. Red-baiting in the unions, which increased sharply after the war, once again confirmed the validity of Lenin’s words when he wrote: “These men, the ‘leaders’ of opportunism, will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in the trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and persecute them."  [190•3 

p Various means were used to discredit the Communists in the eyes of workers. Communists found it increasingly hard to work in the unions. Even in the CIO, an open offensive against Communists began in 1946. To be sure, Murray and other leaders did not immediately abandon their tactics of putting up with the Communists and forming a temporary alliance with them. But the rightists within the CIO brought increasing pressure to bear upon Murray to make him withdraw from this alliance and join the anti-Communist forces in the CIO unions.

p Murray was a Catholic, and the Catholic Church of America and the Vatican repeatedly expressed their displeasure with his indecisiveness in struggling against leftists in the unions. The bourgeois press also exerted pressure.

p But while Murray still wavered, anti-Communist leaders in the automobile, shipbuilding and electrical workers’ unions 191 began a general offensive on their own. Under these new conditions, Murray decided to abandon his maneuvering between the right and left and openly joined the anticommunist camp. On May 17, 1946, a convention of the steelworkers union in Atlantic City, New Jersey, adopted a resolution of their executive committee which said that the union would not tolerate any outside interference in its affairs by Communist, Socialist or any other groups. In November of that year, on the eve of the eighth convention of the CIO, Murray publicly announced that a similar resolution would be submitted at that convention.

p Indeed, the eighth convention the CIO held shortly thereafter declared that “the Congress of Industrial Organizations is an American institution dedicated to the attainment of its well-defined social and economic objectives within the framework of American political democracy".  [191•1  Such declarations of devotion to Americanism had been made before, but this time the following statement was added: “We, the delegates of the Eighth Constitutional Convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations,resent and reject efforts of the Communist Party or other political parties and their adherents to interfere in the affairs of the CIO. This convention serves notice that we will not tolerate such interference."  [191•2 

p The bourgeois press hailed the anti-Communist stance of the CIO leaders. However, feelings of solidarity still remained at the grass-roots level. At that time the CIO united nearly five million organized industrial and white-collar workers, and the spirit of the war years was generally still high among them. It was impossible to turn such an enormous organization in the opposite direction all at once; it required some time for anti-communism to gain the upper hand in the CIO.

After the eighth convention, the rightist leaders began to fan anti-Communist sentiments in the locals. Murray urged his supporters to stop cooperating with leftist elements. The hostile campaign launched against Communists frequently turned into open persecution, similar to the practices in the AFL.

192

p A new period of CIO history began, a period characterized by the abandonment of the principles on which it had emerged and which it had developed in the course of ten years. It was the beginning of a phase of rapprochement between its top leaders with the leaders of the AFL. A meeting of the Communist Party’s National Committee in June 1947 noted that “the relations between the Left-Progressive forces and those Center forces associated with Murray, are probably more strained today than at any time since the formation of the CIO".  [192•1 

p Despite the extremely difficult conditions, the Communist Party fought on for its position as a political organization. Immediately after it was reconstituted it issued several political documents demanding an end to American intervention in China, protesting US imperialist policy in Latin America, the Philippines and the Middle East, and calling for the establishment of a lasting peace.

p The Party also focussed on domestic political and economic issues. It actively supported the popular demand for 60 million jobs; condemned the policy of militarizing the economy; and demanded that the industrialists and the bourgeois state bear the expenses of reconversion. Two important events in the life of the Party during the reconversion period were the February and July 1946 plenary sessions of its National Committee.

193

p At the July 1946 plenary session, William Foster and Eugene Dennis delivered reports in which they noted that the past year had seen the re-establishment of the party organizations dissolved in 1944 after the decision to transform the party into a non-partisan political association. This faciliated the party’s more active participation in the peace movement, the strike movement, and the struggle for the rights of the Negro people. Regarding the fact that the party’s influence within the working class had fallen during the struggle with Browderism, the NC specially emphasized the need to bring the work of Communists in the trade unions to a new and higher level.

p The session elected Eugene Dennis General Secretary of the party, Henry Winston was approved Organization Secretary, and John Williamson Labor Secretary.  [193•1 

p The process of liquidating Browderism and re-establishing the party and its influence in the labor movement required not only time but strenuous efforts in overcoming serious difficulties caused mainly by the domestic political situation.

After its 16th convention, the party steered a course towards expanding its activity in certain states in an effort to re-establish ties with the workers in various industries and unions. It was not an easy task, and it was made that much harder by the police persecution that followed once the ruling circles plunged the country into cold war.