Jay's Portfolio: W.L.B. Refuses To Define Pay Rise Authority
Says It Can't Decide on Roosevelt's Power to Change Wage Ceilings
New York Herald Tribune
October 11, 1944
By Jay Reid
As the sun rose on October 11, 1944, Franklin Roosevelt awoke from his slumber with a lingering feeling of jealously toward one of his major wartime allies.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Bethesda, MD, when Jay grabbed his morning paper - the one featuring his writing - he was no doubt overwhelmed with jealously for his many colleagues who successfully avoided the misfortune that befell him that day.
Half a century later, singer Natalie Merchant cited the now famous “dueling jealousies of October 11” as the inspiration behind her 1995 hit single, “Jealousy”.1
Let’s start with FDR.
On October 9, 1944, he had a lower-level bureaucrat, what we would today call a “subject matter expert”, go to the press and throw cold water on the possibility of any action on wages before the presidential election, which was less than one month away.
The whole point of that action was to end the daily madness emanating from the leadership of the nation’s various unions.
It was a nice attempt, and FDR deserves some credit for giving it the ole college try.
However, the unions were having none of it. They were back at it the next day with what Jay noted was “the second in a series of unusual daily press conferences.”
The unions saw right through what FDR was attempting to do, so they just ratcheted up the pressure to an even higher level.
It is rather comical to consider the parallel universe in which the W.L.B. did decide on the president’s power to set wage limits.
That would rank right up there with my children issuing a joint statement questioning my legal right to mandate that they complete their homework before watching television or going on the internet.
Joseph Stalin had his issues during the war, but that list did not include anything on par with the Little Steel Formula.
If Stalin kept up with Jay’s reporting in the Herald Tribune, he was no doubt on the floor laughing at the political knots FDR was getting tied in over this issue.
“Ha! It’s a good thing I removed language from the New Economic Policy that would have instituted a similar scheme here,” Stalin was known to have repeated to multiple members of the politburo throughout the fall of 1944.2
If Jay had pitied FDR the day before3, when he filed his report that would appear in the October 11 edition of the newspaper, that pity evaporated when he saw his article in print.
The typo in the article’s title was a preview of coming attractions.
If you listen to the audio embed of me reading the article, you will catch a brief hesitation about midway through when I read the name “Mr. Davies”.
In that instant I thought to myself, “Wasn’t it Mr. Davis?”, and then my eyes glanced over a column to the left and confirmed that I was not losing my mind. It was another typo.
What a mess, for all involved!
This is a complete fabrication, but if ChatGPT said it, ~85% of Americans would totally buy it.
Not really, but it would have been funny if it was true.
There is no evidence that he did, but it is possible.