The union times., 1943-06-19
Smith Thinks He Is Going To Town

WASHINGTON - Rep. Howard Smith CD. Va.) is pretty re- strained man. He has what is known as the judicial approach. But when he was asked if the round robin warning by seven government war agencies that passage of the Con- nally-Smith anti-strike bill (S-796) would hamper production, had changed his opinion on the need for the bill, he said:
 ''It's the job of those birds to run their agencies, it's ours to make laws. When the time comes that they're to make the laws, we might as well go home."
 (Heaven forbid, Judge Smith, but some day in the near future you and your fellow Virginian, Sen. Harry Byrd, and other poll taxers may be going home, after the passage of 1.R. Y, the bill to repeal the poll tax
 Those birds," as the Judge called them in an unwonted relapse from his usual judicial manner, include WIPE. Chairman Donald Nelson, Secy. of the Navy Frank Knox, Chairman Emory s. (Shoot Elm at Sunrise) Land and others.
 The face of Howard Smith is not a happy face at best. It is color less face long and narrow, with ears jutting out like handles on a trophy cup. His eyes are bright and dark and with melancholy glitter under their shaggy brows.
 s'I am very much the friend of Iabor,'' he said, his thin lips closing shut over his long teeth, his small eyes glittering. ''But I'm speaking of the rank and file of working men, not those who exploit them. Why, I've got so much confidence in American working men that I don't think they want to strike.
 "They don't want to, but they're in a state of peonage," he said, warming up, his Adams apple working up and down in emotion above the loose soft collar he wore for a change. He usu- ally wears a stiff wing collar, and always wears a black ribbon around his neck, to which his glasses are at tached. His figure droops, and his funeral appearance is somehow not helped by the loud tweeds he affects with his wing collar.
 "Their leaders have too much power when the country's at war;" he said. If any Lewis or Murray tells their members to strike, they have to, or lose the right to make living"
 Do you mean to say that either Philip Murray or William Green would possibly provoke strike, or countenance one during the war after the no-strike pledge?" he was asked.
 ssI didn't mean to mention names,' he said. ssI didn't mean to mention MT. Lewis, for that matter. But let me illustrate what I mean, and to illustrate I must again see the coal strike. It was assumed that the President" he said, putting even less warmth i'm the word than he had evinced toward labor leaders, 'swould make a great patriotic ap- peal and that the miners would go back to work. All the President has is a patriotic appeal" he added sneeringly.
 This is the man who is spearhead of all the anti-labor forces in Con- gress. When William E. Dodd, IT,, ran against him, Smiths campaign workers circulated literature showing Dodd once mentioned sympathetically an organization which was trying to do something for southern Negroes. All the sweatshop proprietors who were grateful to him for voting against the wage-hour bill rallied in his de- fense.
 One of the powerful members of the rules committee, Smith was able to kill in committee the resO- Iution calling for an investigation