Among the many big questions posed by the steel strike, perhaps the most important is what should be the role of the federal government. For there is much confusion about this. The strike is taking place just as Congress is working on a law for the regulation of labor unions, a law which calls for comprehensive and far-reaching federal intervention in the internal affairs of the unions. Yet on the steel strike there are many, including now the President himself, who want no federal intervention and wish to see the issue settled by the test of economic power ...
Last week, at his press conference on July 15, the President had had the matter studied. He had learned that "as far as a fact-finding board is concerned, I believe that all the facts are pretty well known In all our reports, in the labor statistics and the commerce and other figures that are published, some quarterly, some monthly, they are all there ..."
Whoever did the studying of the question for the President did not understand the question, or he did not want the president to understand it. For while it may well be true that the "facts" are "all there" in some of the many reports that are published, how is the public to know, how is Congress to know, how are newspaper editors to know which of the facts are important and relevant? The task of finding the facts in that matter and of judging how they matter is a semi-judicial function. It cannot be done without a specialized inquiry by trained minds.
If there is no impartial tribunal to find the facts, then there can be no such thing as an enlightened public opinion. And if there is no enlightened opinion that can be brought to bear upon it, a strike of this magnitude must become a test of power in a whirl of propaganda and of prejudice.
When the President rejected the idea of a "fact-finding" which he had thought rather well of a month before, he affirmed a new doctrine: "I believe that we have got thoroughly to test out and use the method of free bargaining." Where great and vital interests are involved how much free bargaining do we really believe in?
In the steel controversy today, the companies happen to have the stronger bargaining position, their customers have large stockpiles, public opinion is stoutly opposed to another round of wage and price increases. The union appears to be far from solid within itself.
But this favorable balance to the companies will not always be the case, and I wonder whether it is wise and prudent for them to set it up as a principle that in these great controversies involving the national interest the issue shall be decided by a contest of power?
I do not believe it is true, as has been said recently, that this is "one of the ways in which freedom functions." If freedom is to function it must insist that the struggle of powerful interests be regulated by rational and just procedure. Freedom does not mean that the powerful interests shall fight it out as best they can.
We live in a time when the vital industries and services of the nation are in the hands of giant companies and giant unions. We cannot entrust the interests of the nation to a combination of the companies and the unions, which is what we have had for some years until recently in the steel industry. Nor can we entrust the interests of the nation to a power struggle between the unions and the companies, however much this struggle be prettified by calling it "free bargaining."
In these great conflicts the national interest must be represented and asserted by the federal government. The place to begin this is by a clarification of the contending claims. This alone may be enough to provide the basis of an opinion on which the government can exert its influence, and to which the public can rally."