On January 23 the Independent Citizens Committee ran an ad in The New York Times asking "Say, Who is the Public Anyway?" Their answer was that labor formed the biggest single chunk, some 15 million workers, and, if you counted their family members, about 50,000,000 Americans in all. Because of the size of this group, the ad declared, the well-being of all Americans was tied to labor's capacity to buy goods and services. The Committee also asserted that the unions were fighting to bring labor's take home pay in line with wartime and postwar inflation and keep it from falling to a level that just covered the bare essentials. The ad, signed by the celebrated individuals who made up the organization's national board, urged the public to support the strikers by writing to the President and Congress. It asked stockholders to write to corporations letting them know they supported the strikers and consumers to write to companies telling them to get together with their employees to get production going. It asked the public to contribute money or food to the strike funds to help the families of the strikers. The ad also included a mail in coupon to join the Independent Citizens Committee. A contributing membership was $50, a sustaining membership $10 and a general membership was $3.
The ad brought a rebuttal in the form of a letter to the editors from John W. Scoville of Detroit, a vehement opponent of unions who worked as an economist/lobbyist for Chrysler. Scoville wrote that raising wages (apparently even in response to a higher cost of living) would hurt businessmen and consumers by raising prices. Of course at this time business leaders were arguing vociferously that they deserved a higher profit and needed to raise prices to get it. Scoville's sneering letter struck a chord that has echoed through Right Wing rhetoric ever since. "When poets, singers and actors seek to enlighten the public in regard to economic theories, it would probably be desirable for them to have their program analyzed by a competent economist," he wrote. "This is an age of specialization, and while few economists are good singers or actors, it would be strange, indeed, if many artists were good economists." (You see, economists who were in the employ of major corporations could be trusted to be fair and impartial in their evaluation of and prescriptions for the economy.)
The labor unions, especially those affiliated with the CIO, had unleashed a massive wave of strikes early in 1946. According to Michael Denning in The Cultural Front, by February 1 about one-quarter of the CIO membership was on strike and general strikes had broken out in half a dozen cities. Union leaders and their leftist allies believed that, now that the war was over, they would pick up where they had left off further growing the size and clout of the unions. For those on the Far Left, strong unions were also a vehicle for controlling a wider political agenda. The People's Songs crowd announced in their publication that "The People" were on the march and needed songs to sing. They seriously misread the spirit of the postwar era. Lack of jobs and opportunities were the driving force in the Depression. Now with unemployment no longer the problem it was before the War, it was shortages that had the public upset. Business leaders convinced much of them that this was the fault of unions, strikes and government price controls. Labor militancy, as well as the role of the Communist Party in the unions, played a major role in the widespread defeat of Democrats in the 1946 election and in the subsequent passing of the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman's veto. The act put restrictions on union activities and also barred anyone who had ever been a Communist from union leadership. Scoville played an influential role in getting the bill passed.