Labor and management in many industries have been operating successfully under the Government’s wage-price policy.  Upward revisions of wage scales have been made in thousands of establishments throughout the Nation since VJ-day.  It is estimated that about 6 million workers, or more than 20 percent of all employees in nonagricultural and nongovernmental establishments, have received wage increases since August 18, 1945.  The amounts of increases given by individual employers concentrate between 10 and 15 percent, but range from less than 5 percent to over 30 percent.

The United States Conciliation Service since VJ-day has settled over 3,000 disputes affecting over 1,300,000 workers without a strike threat and has assisted in settling about 1,300 disputes where strikes were threatened which involved about 500,000 workers.  Only workers directly involved, and not those in related industries who might have been indirectly affected, are included in these estimates.

Many of these adjustments have occurred in key industries and would have seemed to us major crises if they had not been settled peaceably.

Within the framework of the wage-price policy there has been definite success, and it is to be expected that this success will continue in a vast majority of the cases arising in the months ahead.

However, everyone who realizes the extreme need for a swift and orderly reconversion must feel a deep concern about the number of major strikes now in progress.  If long continued, these strikes could put a heavy brake on our program.

I have already made recommendations to the Congress as to the procedure best adapted to meeting the threat of work stoppages in Nation-wide industries without sacrificing the fundamental rights of labor to bargain collectively and ultimately to strike in support of their position.

If we manage our economy properly, the future will see us on a level of production half again as high as anything we have ever accomplished in peacetime.  Business can in the future pay higher wages and sell for lower prices than ever before.  This is not true now for all companies, nor will it ever be true for all, but for business generally it is true.

We are relying on all concerned to develop, through collective bargaining, wage structures that are fair to labor, allow for necessary business incentives, and conform with a policy designed to “hold the line” on prices.

Production and more production was the byword during the war and still is during the transition from war to peace.  However, when deferred demand slackens, we shall once again face the deflationary dangers which beset this and other countries during the 1930’s.  Prosperity can be assured only by a high level of demand supported by high current income; it cannot be sustained by deferred needs and use of accumulated savings.

If we take the right steps in time we can certainly avoid the disastrous excesses of runaway booms and headlong depressions.  We must not let a year or two of prosperity lull us into a false feeling of security and a repetition of the mistakes of the 1920’s that culminated in the crash of 1929.