The Wilmington morning star., 1943-07-12
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

his readers. His articles the good purpose of
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK.-If disunity among the Ameri-
can people has reached or should reach the
point of disruption who then can provide the
remedy?
I am not persuaded that mere disa greement
and political opposition between the ins and
outs constitute disruption at home but there
a precedent in the south after the Civil
War which reminds us how the American
people react if the human rights and property
rights of the individual are disregarded beyond
certain point of endurance. 1t surely is pos
sible and worth while for the national govern
ment to yield some of the advanced salients
of its political and social revolution at home
for the sake of unity and efficiency. Those
were peacetirne experiments, some Of them
undertaken in adventurous spirit which
can be waived for the war period but if not
waived, will still be opposed by those who
believe them to be wrong. This opposition
will not amount to such lawless insurrection
as the CIO resorted to to gain its objectives
in Michigan but will be stout political resist
ance nevertheless.
The principal cause of disunity, in my be-
lief, is still the Wagner act and the labor poll
cy of the New Deal, not only because it de-
nies the worker the very right which it pro-
fesses to guarantee him. namely the right to
but because in its administration it has placed
a large and worthy element of the American
people, the employers, in a class roughly
parallel to that of the disfranchised white
southerners after 1865.
Such men cannot by any legal distortion
be placed under condemnation as unrepentant
traitors as the case was with the white south
erners who supported the Confederacy. They
had obeyed the existing laws prior to the
Wagner act and they were wiling though in
many cases reluctant to comply with the Wag-
ner act They have not tried to disrupt the
union of states and in all ways, except as
may have been charged in Individual indct-
ments, good citizens.
Nevertheless, the class and character of the
men who were sent out to administer the law
even to conduct trials are prejudiced judges
was comparable to that of the Northern Car
petbagger Elections we're rigged. Employers
were endlessly harassed and workers were
terrorized. The enforcement personnel were
openly and mockingly partial to the organ
izers who were political allies and appointees
of the governing party and many of these
organizers and executives OF unions were ras-
cals either thieves or communists or both
for the communist is not free of the larcenous
motive. Yet, consistently, the employer is
held to have two strikes on him in any con-
troversy even though the organizer is a total
stranger to the community and to the workers
for whom he has set his trap.
Again, as in the South, the opposition is not
an aristocratic move. There the little peo-
pie, as the New Deal in its patronizing
way describes the workers today, were goaded
to opposition by the overbearing impudence,
the trickery and the clever little schemes of
the administrators set over them. Here, to-
day, millions of workers have been taxed out
rageously for membership in organizations
which they were forced to join through ter
rorism, open and unrebuked.
AS overtone to the protest against such
excesses, has come the constant cry of labor
batter" and labor hater from men and
women who are, themselves, baiters and
haters and political exploiters of labor Not
one of them has dared to defend the PROPOSE.
ton that pick-and- shovel worker should have
to pay $50 down. plus dues, fees and other
taxes for the God given right to work nor the
proposition that compulsory membership is
consistent with Wagner's offer of free choice
of bargaining agents. Not one of them has
dared to defend any of the thieves who have
been caught red-handed, most of them by
newspaper initiative and few by the initiative
of the Department of Justice, any of the
anti-American communists bent on substitute
ing one-party minority despotism over the
free American people.
It would be no sacrifice or any right of
labor so to amend the Wagner act to give
defendant employer his day in a genuine
court and a fair trial or to guarantee the
worker the same protection against union ter
rorism that is provided against boss terror
ism. Such a concession would remove from
the domestic situation the most disruptive
point of disagreement in all our family dis
putes. But every proposal to that effect has
been denounced with fury by the Carpetbag-
ger and thwarted by quiet but thus far sue
cessful resistance by the party whose ramifi-
cations now extend into the depths of the
criminal and political underworld.
TI,ir halle
single factor in our domestic affairs. Con-
gress should have passed the remedy years
ago but, plainly, Congress lacks the political
and CIVIC honor and courage to do so against
the opposition of the national government
Then, let the national government yield
point which is morally indefensble and the
prlnelpal cause of internal dscord and see
ileVeo OF doubt which troubles their faith
IN & the leadership Of their country in time Of