Come & Get It

In his September fireside chat Harry Truman meaningfully told labor: "Do not ask for wage increases beyond what is needed to meet the rise in the cost of living." Worded as an admonition, it was also an invitation. Since then, the cost of living has been rising and labor has been asking. With prices up about 7.1% and profits up nearly 15% since the invasion of South Korea, employers did not put up much resistance. Some did not wait to be asked: they wanted to hang on to their help.

Pay raises already handed out:

P: 8-c- to 15-c- an hour for C.I.O. electrical workers, meat packers and textile workers.

P: A 6% raise to the maritime unions.

P: 10-c- an hour for Harry Bridges' longshoremen.

P: 10-c- to 25-c- an hour for 85,000 A.F.L. construction workers.

P: 12-c- an hour for men's garment workers (which will probably add $8 to $10 to the price of men's suits).

Asked for, but not yet granted:

P: 25-c- to 30-c- an hour for Philip Murray's 960,000 steelworkers.

P: 25-c- to 35-c- for 16 railroad units, representing 1,085,000 men.

Washington showed no signs of objecting. But last week Harry Truman acted--after a fashion. He appointed cob-nosed old (74) Cyrus Ching to the high-sounding post of director of the Wage Stabilization Board, though the board did not yet exist.

As director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, big, pipe-smoking Cyrus Ching had stuck his lanky legs under countless negotiating tables, earned himself a reputation for homespun, amiable integrity, helped solve many a minor strike, some major ones. Both management & labor trusted him. Forty-six years ago, working as an equipment supervisor on Boston's Elevated Railway Co., he once almost electrocuted himself repairing an overhead wire, blowing out every fuse in the system. He came to a week later, badly burned and partially blind, lay in bed for 15 weeks. Nobody from the company ever came to see him; accident compensation didn't exist. Ching thought about that. He took a law degree, went back to the el and took over all labor relations problems. Later, he went to U.S. Rubber, stayed for 38 years as director of industrial relations.

As a mediator, Ching puffs imperturbably on his pipe as he listens, grunts understandingly, grins often, gets a relaxed atmosphere with homely saws. He is good at it. But is he the tough man for the thankless job of wage stabilizer? "I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig," Ching likes to say. "You get dirty and besides the pig likes it." When the time comes to crack down hard on employers or workers, the job may need a man who doesn't mind getting dirty if he has to.

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