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Pages of History
With the war over and soldiers returning home by the millions, it was thought that happy days were here again and everything would be hunky-dory. Those thoughts soon turned to disappointment.
Even though rationing had been lifted on everything except sugar, many products remained scarce. For example, tire rationing ended on Jan. 1, but few dealers had any to sell. Due to a backlog of demand and a strike in the rubber industry, tires remained hard to come by for months.
New cars were nearly impossible to get and parts for old cars were becoming hard to find, as well. The production of new cars, trucks and spare parts was suspended from February 1942 through September 1945.
During this time General Motors produced tanks, trucks, aircraft parts, and munitions. Ford produced jeeps, airplane engines, and B-24 bombers. Chrysler produced tanks, trucks, and electronics. Willys made jeeps. When automobile production resumed in October 1945, the new models were essentially updated 1942s.
The process of reconversion to producing civilian goods was severely curtailed by labor unrest. Forbidden to strike during the war, hundreds of thousands of unionized auto workers, steel workers, packing house workers, electrical workers, and others walked out in late 1945 and early 1946.
Union workers demanded wage increases of up to 30 percent to maintain the higher pay they had earned during the war. Management refused to negotiate until wartime price controls were lifted.
A railroad strike was averted at the last minute when President Truman threatened to seize the railroads, draft striking workers, and operate the trains with soldiers.
“Looks like the whole country is going to be tied up by strikes,“ wrote Editor Allison. “This is a free country and labor ought to have the right to get as much as they can and management ought to have the right to hire workers at whatever wages they can. But when racketeers tie up the entire nation, it ceases to be a free country. Right now the shortage of food is beginning to be felt and we are doing without a lot of things we might have had but for a bunch of strikes. It’s time we write letters to our congressmen and demand action.”
Even some Nebraska farmers were talking about a strike. Members of the short-lived Farmers Vigilante Committee in southeastern Nebraska were threatening to strike to protest all the industrial strikes. Spokesman Hubert Johnson of Edgar, NE, listed some of the farmers’ grievances: “For years we have been getting along without new machinery and we’ve been told we probably would get none this spring. We need farm tools. We need automobiles. We can’t even buy a pair of overalls.“ Nothing came of it. The threatened strike did not materialize.
Servicemen stationed overseas could not strike but they were protesting over the War Department’s plan to slow their return of who expected to be sent home once the fighting ceased. The War Department said the slowdown was due to a shortage of replacements needed for occupation duty. General Eisenhower said without the slowdown the army would run short of men. As a temporary measure, Eisenhower banned demonstrations under threat of court marshal. To help alleviate the growing manpower shortage, Congress voted to increase military pay to attract more volunteers and also to extend the draft which had been expected to end after the fighting ceased.
But with the Cold War already looming and the seeds of war in Korea and Vietnam already planted, young men would be compelled to serve in the military until President Nixon ended the draft in 1973.
In 1946 Congress passed legislation charging the War Department with the responsibility of bringing back the bodies of war dead whose remains had been buried overseas. Nebraska Congressman Karl Stefan estimated that as many as 300,000 bodies might be repatriated. Next of kin could choose to have their loved ones’ remains buried in one of the new American cemeteries overseas or in a national cemetery in the United States at no cost. They also could choose to have the remains returned for burial in their home town cemetery with the government covering most, but not all, of the cost.
The millions of soldiers who returned home alive faced new challenges. One of these was finding a place to live. The postwar housing crisis was the worst in the nation’s history. President Truman proposed building five million new homes as quickly as possible. Another measure was to build massive government housing projects such as the one in which this writer spent the first few years of his life. Other solutions included cheaply-built prefabricated homes, mobile home parks, and sprawling suburban developments. With small towns like Laurel unable to fill the need for housing many returned servicemen headed to California.
For returning farm boys there was often no farm to return to. Between 1940 and 1945 the number of farms decreased substantially. Nationally there were a quarter of a million fewer small farms in 1945 than there were in 1940. The farm population decreased by more than 5 million. And the number of potential male farmers between the ages of 14 and 24 decreased by 40 percent while the number of young adult male farmers between the ages of 25 and 44 declined by more than 20 percent.
In one issue of the Advocate in February 1946, four farm sales were advertised. All of the sale bills started out “As I am quitting the farm.“ There would be more to come.
“Nineteen forty-five has been an eventful year,” said the Advocate in January, 1946. “Military victory has been achieved in both Europe and Asia but a lasting world peace has not yet been worked out. Great problems remain to be solved.”
And many of the problems are still with us today.
