The Wilmington morning star., 1943-10-22
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK.-1t has taken more than ght
years, since the passage of the Wagner act,
to re-establsh the right of an employer, wheth-
er the corner grocer or soulless corporation,
to speak to his clerk or address the whole
staff on topic which was forbidden by the
Labor Relations Board. This has been done
by decision of the second circuit court of
appeals which exonerated the American Tube
Bending Co. of unfair labor practice in ex-
pressing to it's employees the company's views
that they should not vote to bargain through
certain union.
Soon after the Wagner act became law,
and at a time when the board and its staff
were infested with communists and fellow
travellers of brash and arrogant disposition,
the board took the position that the employers
freedom of speech was abridged. That was
the party line of the new deal government,
too, for the whole personnel in charge OF the
Wagner act was selected deliberately and
with great care to impart to the administra-
ton of the law the devious and coercive man.
ners and twists of thought which Mussolini
had employed in his early days to persuade
the Italian workers that he stood as their
friend against the bosses. That the new deal,
by these means, was planning tc deliver the
workers into the power of its political sub
salaries, the unions, which would prosecute
them with cruelty unsurpassed by any en-
ployer in the past was not apparent to the
people at the time even though it was pointed
out in the debate on the Wagner act that
the provision against coercion polntedIy eX-
empted union agents and man-hunters, many
of them working on a commission basis AS
time passed, however, and as the actual prac-
tees of most of the unions were revealed,
the citizens slowly became aware of the trap
that had been set for them disguised as
safe and prosperous haven.
The administrative personnel and manners
of the Wagner act have changed markedly
since a congressional investigation disclosed
some of the more outra geous, dishonest and
totaltarian practices of the early days. How
ever, the old, original idea Yields doggedly,
for the labor relations board still insisted IN
the current case that the employer could not
speak freely, in accordance with the consti-
tuition, because the workers were dependent
on the company for their jobs and were under
compulsion to listen to its arguments even
though they might have preferred not to-
Meanwhile, many workers have learned that
they do not enjoy freedom of speech in union
councils but may be expelled for dlsrespect
for the ruling unioneers and that they are
under absolute compulsion to listen to the
union boss and obey him. That. however, is
in accordance with the new deal plan OF
labor relations and all proposals that these
mpositions be corrected by law have been
resisted, most recently by Wendell Willkie.
In the early days of the Wagner act one
| employer IN New YOrK Was lllledteleu Will
citation for coercion because he had avalled
himself of the freedom of the press and OF
the United States mails to send to his en-
ployes copies of newspaper article dlscuss-
ing certain union practices. And the Labor
Boards Interpretation of the word coercion
was such that an employer was 1oroldden
even to inform his employees or express his
opinion that the union organizer was com
munist and thus traitor or gangster with
a criminal record.
This redemption of one Of the basic Amer
lean freedoms which the new deal-commu-
mist axis would have impaired was won not
by any 'liberal individual or group out by
soulless corporation. Meanwhile, however,
thousands of Americans lacking the money
and the initiative to fight as this corporation
did waived this freedom.
doubt that the same Supreme Court would
have made the same decision TOUR OF 1lve
years ago. In those years, however, the subtle
perfidy of the Wagner act and IT'S hldaen
European political design have been convmc-
ingIy disclosed and public opinion mas gradu-
ally turned against it. The people may take
credit for an assist on this play out i've years
ago they might have listened to an argument
that it is possible to abridge the Amerlcans
freedom of speech without impalrlng the same
right Of all the rest.
U