The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-07-13

WIN mem as much as many of his read
OF making people think)
BY WEsTBRoK PEGLER
'oopyr1gnt $780, by King Features Syndicate)
NEW 4ORk,-Two new members of the
Truman administration recently found it nee
essary to remind their holdover subordinates
to obey the law as written by Congress- and
to quit rewriting law to suit their personal
and theological prejucies.
The same week brought the retirement nj
an important officer of the old Roosevelt re-
gime who, several years ago, recognized the
same abuse in the administration of the In
come tax law and warned his agents to quit
prosecuting individual citizens
Lewis B. Schwellenbach, the new Secretary
of Labor, tacitly admitted evils which were
proved i'll detail by a House committee four
years ago.
Paul III. HerZog the new chairman of the
Labor Relations Board, issued 8 similar adj
monition to the staff OF that lawless bureau
whose rerfidies he had an opportunity to learn
by past association.
And the departure of Henry Morgenthau
from the Treasury recalled his own word of
caution to his field agents to take it easy at
time when they were scourging citizens in q
malicious prosecution of the class and politi-
cal war. each Shiny catch-poll law unto him.
self
Neither Schwellenbac1 nor Herzog deserve
credit for reform. They should have been
aware Of this nasty abuse of the individual
citizen at political odds with their party years
before they found occasion to take a stand
against 1t Therefore, honest men may suspect
that some political motive rather than moral
purpose has been responsible for their sudden
aWareness.
Moreover, the fact that both spoke lavishly
of Robert F. Wagner, of New York, the Sena-
tor whose name is appropriately attached tc
the Labor Relations law and its mpositions on
millions Of workers and countless owners Of
employing industries, suggests that they have
not changed heart but merely abandoned one
political course for another, more expedient.
In a general order to the Labor Department,
issued through the White House, a peculiar
method of addressing his own subordinates,
Schwe]lenbach said that in more than 10 years
of observation as Senator and judge he had
learned that the administrative branch of the
government interprets the law in its own way,
regardless of the intent Of Congress.
II am not going to allow that in my de-
partment," he said.
1.-THE duty of an officer is to accept the
laws as Congress has written them and as the
courts have interpreted them. The fact that
he may think the Congress should have written
or the courts should have interpreted them
differently, in case justifies him in ignoring
or attempting to circumvent the law"
It is rot necessary to believe Schwellen-
pach's supplementary remark that he had in
mind no specific instances of such arrogant
assumption of the legislative function by
panopled sergeants of the Roosevelt rule. If
he didn't know of specific instances why did
he address the subject in such positive Ian
guage.?
lail %Ha Toho ~ %ia
Board principle of administration that came
as complete heresy. He told them to re-
member that they were servants OF the whole
people of the United States. This is the first
time in its existence that this governm entail
Ku Klux has been regarded Is anything but
posse for the unions Of the Roosevelt political
adherence with any mission but to promote
unions, swell their treasures and the power
of their Bosses re-elect Roosevelt and advance
the communist revolution. Rep. Howard Smith
exposed this corruption by testimony and the
confidential records Of the Labor Relations
Board in a thorough report submitted to the
House in 1941. For this, the new deal smeared
Smith and fought him unsuccessfully in his
Virginia district as an enemy of Labor.
The persecution of the individual taxpayer
by Morgenthau's men was brought to light
by newspaper initiative SO convincingly that
Morgentlau, himself, finally had to call off
the dogs In one instance, IN the Bureau OF
Internal Revenue in Washington, terroristic
band of income tax field agents got up a
round robin pledging those who signed it to
get even if any of them ever got chance
to put their critic through the sausage grinder.
In another case, an agent admitted that
taxpayers return was correct 10 the penny
but penaiized him $40 anyway because he said
he was expected to earn his pay that way.
When the taxpayer protested the agent said
that he could bring his case before the Board
of Tax Appeals in Washington but that his pro-
cess would cost him many times the $19
Undoubtedly President Truman and Schel-
lenbach and Herzog, old devotees of the Roose-
welt union auxiliary and conscious of its fl
nancial power in politics, have taken warn
ing from the pleasant public reception OF the
Hatcn- Rurton-Bau bill in the Senate This bill
would not leave it to the bureaus to be decent
in their own bigoted discretion. BY law it
would compel the bureaucrats and unioneers
to respect the human rights of labor and ut
those millions of Americans who, by their
investments, are the owners OF property and,
thus, employers.