Why Not Also Capital Day?

September 15, 1947

Union politicians chose the Labor Day week end this year to let loose a Niagara of nonsense. William Green, president of the AFL, denounced the Taft-Hartley Act as “the most oppressive. . . . the most offensive and most reprehensible law ever enacted against the nation’s workers.” He neglected to submit a bill of particulars. Is the worker oppressed by the provision making it an unfair labor practice for a union as well as an employer to “restrain or coerce” him in the exercise of his bargaining rights? Is he oppressed by the provision requiring his written consent for a check-off of union dues? Or by the ban on excessive initiation fees? Or by the requirement that the union officials disclose how their union is run? Or is it perhaps merely the union bosses who resent these curbs?

“We believe industrial peace can be promoted.” continued Mr. Green, “through . . . collective bargaining contracts . . . which we hold sacred and inviolate.” Then why object to the Taft-Hartley provisions holding unions as well as employers legally responsible for living up to these contracts?

Philip Murray, president of the CIO, competed with Mr. Green in lashing out against the “infamous” Taft-Hartley Act. Mr. Murray is worried about the way workers are being “squeezed economically” by higher living costs and “smaller and smaller purchasing power,” He wants to restore price control. That price control always reduces and distorts production, and that in the long run it cannot be made to work at all without wage control, are among the little details about which Mr. Murray never bothers his pretty head. But it is about time someone told him the elementary facts about “shrinking purchasing power” and the “economic squeeze.” The figures of the Department of Commerce show that purchasing power in this country is higher than any levels ever reached before in our history. And the figures of the Department of Labor reveal that while living costs had risen by June of this year 57 percent since 1935–39, average weekly wages in manufacturing industries had risen in the same period by 120 percent. Whoever is being “squeezed” compared with his pre-war status, it is not the average American factory worker.

President Truman also made his Labor Day statement. “Good labor relations,” he decided, “cannot be brought about by legislation.” He called for a “minimum amount of regulatory law.” This was strikingly similar to Mr. Murray’s statement that management and labor can settle their problems “without need of coercion, force, and legislation.” But this seems a rather belated discovery. Neither Mr. Murray nor Mr. Truman objected to “legislation” when it was directed solely against the employer. Only when the Taft-Hartley Act made some attempt to place upon unions duties and responsibilities commensurate with their expanded legal rights and privileges did this outcry against “legislation” come from the self-styled “pro-labor” ranks.

And one wonders about the consistency and sincerity of this outcry against “legislation” when it is accomplished by a plea by the labor leaders and the President for a further increase in minimum wage rates—in other words, for still more legislation, for a further substitution of government coercion for competition or collective bargaining. The simple truth is that nothing would jolt union leadership in this country more than a simple repeal of the [Wagner Act]. What union officialdom really wants is to restore the one-sided Wagner Act and turn the government once again into a union-organizing agency.

These criticisms should end on a constructive note. Why not set aside the Monday following Labor Day as Capital Day? Why not devote at least one day to pointing out the importance of profits as a means of guiding output and encouraging capital accumulation and investment, and to emphasizing the importance of investment for providing new jobs, increasing production and raising wages? Labor Day reminds us that capital depends on labor. Capital Day could remind us that labor depends no less on capital.