Although
mid-term election results were bad [see November 1946 entry –AS], this was a
good financial year for H.A., he expected his 40 percent ownership of Pioneer
Hi-Bred will provide him with $150,000.
This compared to his presidential salary of $75,000, Vice President salary
of $20,000, and his former Secretary salary of $15,000.
Even
with this income, H.A. is notoriously cheap.
One of my jobs, before he became President, was to surreptitiously
supplement his restaurant tips. As
President, this does not come up as often, since he doesn’t need to carry cash
or even a wallet, but on occasion still need to reach into my pocket.
Fortunately,
H.A. is generous to labor in the big picture.
H.A.
used the full force of his office to mediate labor disputes and helped prevent
strikes. His efforts helped ensure that
wages did not fall as the labor force increased with the returning service men
and women. He did this through the public bully pulpit of shaming big business
in their efforts to reduce wages and through private meetings explaining the
importance of big business to work with his administration to ensure the
continuance of lucrative government contracts, fair business regulation, and
open markets overseas. Strikes still
occurred but I believe our efforts greatly limited the number of strikes and
shortened their duration. For those
recalcitrant big businesses, unidentified members of our administration hinted
that we were considering using the administration’s authority under the
Smith-Connally Act of 1947, passed over FDR’s veto, to seize plants closed by
labor disputes. Since the law was
designed to weaken organized labor, our opponents howled that this would be an
illegal nationalizing of industry. H.A.
has not had to use this option, but the threat has been powerful.
This
month, we created a Committee on Civil Rights to provide recommendation on how
to eliminate, or at least reduce, racial discrimination in government. H.A. wants the government to serve all
Americans and to ensure that it does he knows that government must be made up
of all Americans. Once these
recommendations are made, I hope that H.A. will expand the focus of this
committee. The Whiskey Rebels attacked
the formation of the committee in their normal hysteria that promoting civil
rights is a communist plot to divide and destroy America.
© 2013 Ron Millar
