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Letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency on the Steel Strike.

June 09, 1952

Dear Senator Maybank:

I am informed that the Senate may take some action today with respect to the current dispute in the steel industry. If the Senate should do this, the results might be very harmful.

The parties to the dispute are now negotiating for a settlement of the dispute. No one can be sure of the outcome of these negotiations. However, the parties on both sides appear to be earnestly seeking a settlement, and there is at least a reasonable hope that they will be successful--unless something is done on the outside to upset the present bargaining situation.

Everyone must agree that a settlement by the parties is by far the best thing that could happen in the national interest. When we may be on the verge of achieving that, any action which prevented it would be tragic. In the present circumstances, any action by the Senate--even though it would not become applicable immediately or even though it might be only an expression of the Senate's views--could so alter the situation or the attitudes of the parties in this case as to cause a breakdown in their negotiations.

I earnestly ask the Senate not to do this.

Sincerely yours,

HARRY S. TRUMAN

[Honorable Burnet R. Maybank, Chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency, United States Senate, Washington, D.C.]

Note: As released by the White House the letter was addressed to the Honorable Alben W. Barkley, President of the Senate of the United States. Since the Vice President was out of town, the letter was recalled at the suggestion of Senator Ernest W. Mcfarland, Chairman of the Majority Policy Committee, and was readdressed to Senator Maybank.

Harry S Truman, Letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency on the Steel Strike. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230895

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