THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 618
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W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER..Editors
Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943, at the postoffice at
Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Wednesday, February 27, 1946
INVITATION TO ACT
(Daily Alaska Empire)
Recently published results of a Gallup Poll taken
across the Nation on the question of approval of Presi
dent Truman’s proposed fact-finding, cooling-off period
procedure in management-labor disputes show strong
endorsement of the projected legislation in every major
occupational group.
Business, professional and white collar classes ap
proved by 80 percent. Farmers were 83 percent in favor
while 73 percent of manual workers held with the Pres
ident's pian. Large majorities in all groups thought the
proposal would help in reducing strikes. Especially
noteworthy is the vote of labor union members—70
percent approval, 14 percent undecided and only 16
percent disapproval.
Here is another invitation to the Congress to move
ahead resolutely writh strike-adjustment legislation, it
is true that union leaders hotly denounced the Presi
dent’s proposal when it was made. But in this matter
they apparently speak for only a small minority of their
following. The rank and file is, of course, eager for
higher wages and better working conditions — but
would like to obtain these benefits without resorting
to strikes.
What Congress needs most in dealing with this prob
lem is to shake itself free of organized pressure from
both employers and unions, and to legislate in the gen
eral interest. That comprehends, as is clearly indicated
by results of the poll, the interests of organized as well
as unorganized workers and consumers.
That the general interest is at stake is signified by
analysis of the pattern of strikes that have already
taken place, in progress or threatened. With some ex
ceptions, they are in vital industries, if not in what we
customarily call public utilities.
Steel production is not a “public utility” in the nar
row sense. But on it depends the manufacture of a
whole host of things, including equipment for other es
sential industries. Telegraph and telephone communi
cation, and the manufacture of equipment for those
utilities, are obviously industries vested with an unmis
takable public interest. The provision of meat is a dif
ferent matter; yet it comes very close to the others in
its relation to the orderly operation of our national life.
In a word, the industries already paralyzed or threat
ened with paralysis are predominantly those in which
the interest of the whole people is greater than that of
the employers or workers directly concerned.
This is not at all an exaggeration. One can add up the j
equities of the policy directors and the workers of the
telephone companies and form a notion of what they
have at stake. Then one can estimate the economic cost
of paralysis in the Nation’s communications and make a
rough approximation of the bill which the American J
people would have to pay. There is no comparison. The j
public interest is immeasurably greater than the pri
vate interests in jeopardy.
The clear implication of these stoppages is that we
must seek by law to provide an alternative to economic
attrition as a method of reconciling the differences of
employers and workers in essential industries.
There is here no contention that President Truman’s
proposal offers the only likely way out—though few
others of any worth have been put forward. Congres
sional opinion ranges from ultra-conservatiVe to the
Moscow party line. But the men whose decisions shape
the pattern of legislation are in the middle of the road.
They have been reluctant to take any anti-labor action;
have, indeed, 'been unwilling to thrust the power of
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government into the strike question save as a wartime
measure.
But—their hand is being forced. They cannot con
tinue to ignore the wave of strikes which threatens to
manacle the economy of a country already seriously i
crippled by the difficulties of reconversion. Orderly
means of adjusting labor-management disputes must be
found.
THREAT TO OUR YOUTH
•v I
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
A bitter by-product of the war has been a widespread
destruction of moral values among the young, as evi
denced in an alarming upsurge of juvenile crime.
Commenting on a report submitted by J. Edgar
Hoover, director of the federal bureau of investigation,
United States Attorney General Tom C. Clark said:
“Our present day youth has piled up such a catalogue
of crime as makes all previous records for juvenile of
fenders seem a mere list of childish pranks by compari
son.’’
There is no exaggeration in that estimate, as Mr.
Hoover’s report reveals.
Last October serious crime throughout the nation
showed an increase of 19 per cent over October, 1944.
A shockingly large proportion of those crimes were
committed by teen age youngsters.
Of all the murders 15 per cent were committed by
boys and girls under 21 years of age.
Of the robberies, 36 per cent were committed by boys
and girls under 21.
Fifty-one percent of the burglars were under 21 as
were 62 per cent of automobile thieves, 26 per cent of
arsonists and 30 per cent of rapists.
Obviously juvenile crime has become a national prob
lem of the most pressing gravity.
How shall we solve it?
By attacking the CAUSES of moral deterioration
among young people and by giving them able and un
derstanding leadership in turning their energies to
wholesome self-development.
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[ AHEAD
m GEORGE 1 BENSON
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KING CUSTOMER
Catering to the customer has
been America’s most profitable
and highly diversified craft for
several generations, and it must
never stop if this country is to
stay great and free. Catering to
I
the customer is an honorable and
interesting activity, and here is •
nothing to stop it but man-made
laws. May they never be enacted!
Certainly 1946 is no time to ex
periment with silly ideas.
Take the automotive industry
for an example. It is probably the
best example. Automobile men
have gone to great lengths to
please the American buyer. His
wish for speed has been served,
seasoned with safety. His need as
to seating capacity, his taste in
design, his whim in color, and
• most important) his buying pow
er, have been taken into account.
Result: A car for a king.
Primitive Notions
Perhaps the first time a car
manufacturer decided suddenly to
rip the insides out of his plant
and put in new machinery to give
King Customer a better dollar’s
worth, the stockholders winced.
Maybe, in that long-gone day,
stockholders considered such ex
penses wasteful, but they learned
better. Catering to the customer
is exactly what makes dividends
grow bigger each year.
We may imagine also that, back
in the early days of the horse
less carriage, some factory work
ers worried about their jobs tyr a
while after lower prices were an
nounced. Probably some good
workmen asked, “How long can
the big boss keep paying us after
he starts giving his profits to the
consumer?” These doubters are
wiser now too, same as the old
style stockholders.
Imitating Nobody
Yearly better machines, more
handsome, and less costly, have
built big industries and created
thousands of good jobs. Wage
earners and stockholders prosper
ed together while shrewd manage
ment studied King Customer’sj
needs and met them. When the
Japs struck at Pearl Harbor the
United States had one automobile
for every four people—one for
each 139 people in the rest of the
world.
American manufacturers know
the route that leads to national
prosperity. Just the same, they
are being urged to turn aside and
try a course completely strange to
western industry. It’s an old jun
gle road that has lost many great
races in poverty. It means busi
ness servile to power. It means
opening private records to be
thumbed at will by partisan fact
finding committees.
Looking lor What?
Such a committee will be con
cerned with wages — only with
wages. It will have small interest
in prices of cars to the users;
less in returns to investors. Its job
will be to say what wages an em
ployer is able to pay. Rightly,
wages are determined by a work
man’s ability to produce. The new
concept seems to be that an em
ployer’s savings have a bearing
on wage levels.
Such a scheme would ear-mark
for wages all but such a paltry
share of a firm’s earnings that in
vestors would turn away. Down
would came cash reserves, plant
equipment and output. Quality
would suffer, prices would ad
vance and sales drop off. Paying
men, not by what they produce
but according to the employer’s
ability to pay, is the surest (if not
the fastest) way to hopelessly low
wages and a dog’s life for us all.
NUERNBERG, Feb. 27, (>T*)—
Allied prosecution rested its case
against 22 top ranking Nazi war
leaders, after more than three
months of hearings before the in
ternational military tribunal. Ar
guments on legal aspects in the
attempt to prosecute six Nazi or
ganization as criminal groups are
scheduled for tomorrow. The de
fense will likely start Monday
The tribunal denied Von Ribben
trop’s plea that Churchill, Dala
dier and other prewar allied lead
ers be summoned as defense wit
nesses. ___