The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-05-02
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

| NEW YORK; don't quite get the idea OF
| those who deplore the Righteousness of Sewell
Avery, of Montgomery Ward, in refusing to
slgn under government compulsion a second
contract with union of the CLIO to extend a
first contract, signed under duress A con-
tract IS an agreement and Mr. Avery did not
agree, and had a right to disagree, and did.
The public counsellors who think he should
have signed again under protest appear to me
IN the role OF those who, after Munich, were
called app0aserS because they yielded to a
show OF force and surrendered moral and ter
ritorial ground in the hope that no further
demands would be made.
In dealing with the Roosevelt government
the people have ''gone to Munich many times
! and or each trip have come home the poorer
in their rights The closed shop which the
President himself, and Frances Perkins both
have dlSapproved (the President going so far
as to describe it Hitlers way, has been
| imposed on many government war works. The
right OF contract has been whitfield down to
submission to force. Countless American
workers, probably millions of them, have left
behind them Eat Munich their American
rights he was defending as well as his own
choice and have been compelled to accept
agents whom they do not trust and who exploit
and betray them. And Mr.. Avery, having
'gone to Munich once, discovered, on the
expiration of his limited treaty, signed under
protest, that he was now expected to accept
duress an established condition.
At this point he rebelled and forced the
government to call the Army to throw him
out of his own office. Mr.. Avery's indignant
cry of you can't do this to me- as he wrlg
gled In the arms of two young soldiers whose
rights he was defending as well as hiw own
may have sounded querulous and funny. But
it may yet become great popular cry and
challenge to relentless movement which
has never yielded an inch of its encroach-
ulents on the Constitutional and human rights
and the property rights of the citizen
In the course of their trips to Munich,
the people have submitted to compulsory tax
alton out of their wages to create political
campaign funds to continue in power over
their lives men who have not hesitated to
provoke instruction against local and state
governments. Many of them today are pay.
ing money into Sidney Hillman's CLIO cam.
paign fund knowing of Hillman's close politi-
| cal collaboration with the communists, but
realizing that if they refuse to pay they must
forfeit their jobs. These, too, when they re-
alize that their government put these condi-
| tons on them may cry you can't do this
to me" and make it stick.
Unfortunately, for the popular understand
ing. Mr. Avery is rich executive of a rich
corporation and the workers in his employ
are mostly in the lower brackets. This gives
the case the appearance of a soulless corpo
ration grinding the toilers, although that is
no issue in this rebellion and has not been
discussed at all. The fact is. however, that
the corporation is no more soulless than the
CLIO and certainly has not as much power.
1t cannot tax it's stockholders arbitrarily, it
must account strictly to them for their money
and it is forbidden to make political contri-
buttons.
! Mr. Avery is not a rebel against the gov
eminent here. He is a rebel against the evil
thing that the American nation is fighting
abroad, the thing which President Roosevelt
himself called ''F1itler's way