M. BLUM RESIGNS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 April 1938, Page 7

M. BLUM RESIGNS

SENATE REFUSES EVEN TO DISCUSS FINANCE BILL Measure Flung Out by Large Majority (Recd This Day, 10 a.m.) PARIS. April 8. The Blum Government resigned when the Senate, refusing even to discuss the Finance Bill, flung it o ut by 233 votes to 49. The powers sought in M. Elum's Financial Bill were practically those upon which the French Legislature differed in June last year, resulting in M. Blum’s Popular Front Ministry resigning. The Senate refused to sanction M. Blum’s Bill, in which full powers were demanded to deal with the financial situation. The Go vernment demanded an authorisation to take by decree all the necessary steps to assure restoration of public confidence and to combat attacks on currency and public credit.

The Bill was passed by the Chamber of Deputies, mainly as a result of the support of the Communist deputies, who had previously decided to abstain from voting. The Bill was emasculated by the Finance Committee of the Senate, which limited the scope of the legislation to the suppression of speculators and fiscal frauds. M. Blum was under double pressure by the Communists and by the Radicals, and the Senate remained under the domination of the Radical-Socialists. Being assured of the support of the Socialists, the largest party in the Chamber, M. Chautemps formed a Cabinet which included M. Blum. A month ago M. Chautemps’s Cabinet resigned because the Socialists and Communists refused to grant special powers to ensure the success of the national defence loan, and M. Blum again agreed to take office.

In no small degree, the troubles of the Blum Government have been due to problems arising out of the nationalisation of the armament industry, complicated by a wide extension of stay-in strikes. In an article on this subject in the “Christian Science Monitor” recently, Mr Mallory Browne wrote in part:—

“A quiet but thorough investigation of one particular French arms factory which has now been under complete governmental control for nearly a year revealed the following facts:

“When the plant was taken over early last spring, the general manager (an American, incidentally) was replaced by a colonel in the army. The three other French engineers who directed the various branches of the firm were also ousted by the indirect process of offering them less than half their accustomed salaries. After some weeks, however, affairs in the plant were in such a hopeless tangle that the Ministry of War was obliged to go after these three directors and bring them back virtually on their own terms!

“Today, production in the factory is admittedly 40 per cent below what it was under private initiative. Naturally this is not due to lack of demand, for the firm is turning down orders that it cannot fill. The explanation is that the workers now consider themselves State functionnaires, which means that their jobs are virtually permanent without any regard for merit.”

"Added to this characteristically French ‘bureaucracy complex’ is the labour union complication. Most of the employees belong to the C.G.T. or French Federation of Labour which under the Popular Front became accustomed to the idea that the Government would always support its demands. It was therefore a rude awakening for these workers when the Minister of War notified them .it could no longer continue to pay them the high salaries they received, under efficient American management, now that they were doing only half as much work. “The result is that, in addition to interminable delay in delivery of arms and war material which the nation’s defence forces urgently need, production costs have soared sensationally. “One might think that all this is counterbalanced by the fact that now the firm works exclusively for the French Government. Not at all. The factory’s best customer at the moment is Japan, and its next best Rumania, despite the fact that both these countries might very conceivably become France’s enemies if a general conflict were to break out!

“This situation is not peculiar to the one plant in question. With local variations, it is fairly typical of all the French nationalised arms and airplane factories, though the latter have shown some improvement lately.”