ROAD TO RECOVERY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 267, 9 October 1933, Page 7

ROAD TO RECOVERY

AMERICA’S ROUGH JOURNEY. MEETING LABOUR PROBLEMS. PRESIDENT’S DIFFICULT WORK. (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) WASHINGTON, Oct. 7. Labour difficulties, particularly recurring violence and discord at the socalled “captive” mines, absorbed the major portion of the National Recovery Act administration’s attention today. After a long conference with the major steel executives, President Roosevelt issued an eight-points’ plan to serve as a basis of negotiations between the employers and the striking miners. It restates that the “captive” mines must function under the regular coal code, and insists upon the right of the workers to bargain collectively with the employers through “representatives of their own choosing,” which is interpreted as meaning that the employers must recognise the union. The President declared that if an agreement was not soon reached he would impose, through an executive order, “conditions of work substantially the same as those which obtain in commercial mines.” During the day President Roosevelt dedicated a memorial to Samuel Gompers, the former president of the American Federation of Labour. He appealed to Capital and Labour for “unselfish partnotism” and said: “This is no time for cither to seek special privileges at the expense of the general public.” He warned recalcitrants that “horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in a corral.” The arrangement of the credit expansions programme, the war debt negotiations, and arrangements for the meeting at the White House which he called between representatives of the steel industry and the coal mine employers and workers, held President Roosevelt closely to his desk in a series of almost continued conferences. The credit problems considered were the creation of a separate corporation financed by the Reconstuetion Finance Corporation for making loans on cotton held on farms, and an announcement by the controller of currency, Mr O’Connor, that the reorganisation of 376 national banks holding 398,000,000 dollars of frozen assets had been approved. It is estimated that when the banks reopen the depositors will xeceive about 50 per cent, of their deposits, and in some cases more. The mine situation has not changed with the exception that a considerable number of steel mills have been compelled to shut down. The situation now is so disturbed that it is believed only the President can restore peace.