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    "ocrText": "-15-\nveloped over a long period of years under conditions when we had full free-\ndom, complete freedom to develop our social organizations. It is an open\nsecret that there is a great deal of tension between union leaders and\ngovernment administrators, the union leaders often feeling that the admin-\nistrators do not understand their job nor have any idea of the difficulties\nunder which they, the union leaders, labor.\nThe government administrators come from economics classrooms or from\nsocial work or from some similar walk of life. They do not realize that\nunions are themselves governments subject to political struggle for pos-\nition so that leaders who make certain pledges to the government and try\nto live up to them may really be taking their political lives in their\nhands. The administrator speaks on behalf of what to him is the sole\nliving sovereign in the country. Consciously or unconsciously he feels\nsuperior. He assumes that it is one's sacred duty to obey. Labor lead-\ners just don't see it that way.\nThere is another thing characteristic of the attitude of the admin-\nistrators. They are obsessed by one fear. Our administrators, many of\nthem students of economics, are under the influence of economics and they\nare obsessed by the fear of inflation. Of course runaway inflation is a\nreal danger and we need but recall the experience of other nations to\nrealize that. But these economists and administrators can see nothing\nelse but the inflationary gap. My fellow economists have outdone them-\nselves in developing that line of argument in a most convincing way. Un-\nder wartime conditions, they point out, we have turned the major part of\nour productive capacity to war production and we have thus diminished the\noutput of consumers' goods. At the same time, we have hired more people,\nput them to work at longer hours, and poured out to them millions of dol-\nlars in wages so that a gap between their purchasing power and the supply\nof consumers goods is bound to develop. This inflationary gap for the\nyear 1943 is supposed to be thirty-six. or thirty-eight billion dollars\nwould upset our entire program of economic stabilization.\nBut what about savings? I think if we look we will find that our people\nare saving. Here is where the administrator goes wrong because he does\nnot look closely enough to see what actually motivates Tom, Dick, and\nHarry.\nIt seems to me that the American people have undergone a basic change\nof attitude. Formerly they used to take prosperity for granted. Pros-.\nperity was a normal phenomenon and depression was an abnormal thing. In\nthe last war if you talked to wage-earners, especially to those who had never\nbelonged to a union, you found that they looked upon prosperity not as\na windfall but as the normal situation; they expected. to see it continue\nwhen the war was over. But if you talk to the average wage-earner today\nyou find that he does not take prosperity for granted. He has known what\nit is to be on relief, or on W.P.A., and that is an experience that has\nburned deep into his mind. And so he does what the farmer has always done.\nHe is trying to lay aside something for a rainy day.\nI lectured Madison the other day to a group of students, most of\nwhom had a farm background, and this is how I tried to explain the labor\nsituation. I pointed out that the farmer is now earning more than ever\nbefore. What is he doing with his money? He is paying off old debts,\nreducing his mortgage, or laying something aside for a rainy day. We\ndon't begrudge him this, I added, because we realize that our economic\nfuture is most uncertain."
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