The Wilmington morning star., 1944-06-07
By WEsTBRooK PEGLER

Harry Posner, and known at his mysterious
convenience by several other names, will &c
to trial in the Federal court in New York on
an indictment charging false swearing on two
occasions in his dealings with the government
both as war plant worker and as an official
OF local 1865 on the united auto workers Of the
CLIO. He is lair on his oath by his own adj
mission before a congressional committee
which investigated production failure in the
Brewster plants manufacturing fighter planes
for the Navy and he said last year that if if
were question of sacrificing the lives OF
American naval fighting men or advancing
the interests Of his union he would let the
fighters die.
This is the union whose members last week
staged false strike sit-in demonstration
with emotional banners, at the Brewster plants
demanding that the Navy or some other de-
partment award further contracts to Brewster
to prolong their jobs. They include many of
the people who stalled, loafed or otherwise,
deliberately and by organized system, sabotag-
ed airplane production so outra geously that
at last, following the denunciation of de Lore1-
20 in Washington, Henry Kaiser was asked to
take charge Of the company and try to get
results.
Kaiser, UNDERSTANDABLE, despised de Lorenzo,
Many Of the same persons, calling themselves
workers and American labor, who last week
proclaimed their patriotic desire to produce
planes now that the urgent need is past, re-
fused to produce or produced as few as they
could ant at the highest possible cost in time
and the taxpayers money when the need was
tragic in far parts Of the world. This union re-
elected de Lorenzo president even after the
public revelation of the impostors character,
fhIrc oiryiv,r
lying sneak and repudiating every American
fighting man in the war. With some Individual
exceptions, including employees who, in the
Washington hearings, were said to have been
ashamed to face their neighbors with sons in
the service they were. in spirit no better
than the shifty, selfish liquor peddler who saw
the draft coming and moved into the union
racket for safety falsifying every document
that citizens must fill out and sign.
In all the loud publicity which attended the
sit-in strike in Long Island City and Johns
vile, Pa, last week, the name Of de Lorenzo
was almost entirely suppressed lest the public
be reminded that this was the union with the
most disgraceful record of -blooded and
selfish betrayal of the fighters in the whole
sorry story of unionism in the war. Instead, to
take the heat off and divert attention from the
unions past, Richard T. Frankensteen. vice
president of the national organization, moved
prominently into the scene to conduct the ne
EQUATIONS In Washington which now apparent
~, WILL result IN some appeasement of the
slackers at the expense of the patriotic body
OF the American people through the ALLEGATION
OF further orders to Brewster
Brewster has been shoclSingly bad COMPANY
throughout, but the fact remains, as brought
out IN the congressional inquiry, that de Lor-
EMO had been given union contract by the
War Labor Board under which no comapny
could have operated efficiently without the
good Will and sincere cooperation which this
aoVenturer never was willing to give he could
dictate to draft boards which men were to be
deferred or exempted, and inviting temptation
TO draft workers who didn't want to CO. he
coulo certify that he, himself, was indispen.
sable. And he could tell the Navy representa-
tlves to go to hell when they tried to wheedle
production out of him, and did. Much somber
editorial comment has assumed that this was
stralght case of labor LIQUIDATION causing
sudden mass unemployment, and a warning
OF other and worse mass firings and layoffs to
come. 1t was nothing of the kind It was a
special case in which the Navy department
mad justified patriotic grudge to settle with
thousands OF contemplate slackers with no
claim on the respect, sympathy or other con-
sheraton of their decent fellow citizens The
Navy, handcuffed by President Roosevelt's DO
Htlcal patronage over unions, however bad
had tried every way possible to induce de
Lorenzo to do the decent thing Finally in
desperation the Navy was forced to the HUI
initiating expedient of appealing secretly to
newspaper reporters to make the expose and
direct public opinion against the saboteurs.
De Lorenzo is charged specifically with con-
cealing his police record in an affidavit to
which he swore in obtaining place on labor
panel of the WLB and with swearing falsely
that he had previous experience in airplane
construction in applying for his first factory
job, where he would be out of the draft.
The maximum penalty is 10 years. But his
fellow patriots in the union have been making
propaganda that his police record was really
trivial although it included charges of riotous
plcketlng and malicious mischief in obstruct-
ing work at another airplane plant during a
wartime strike