The Wilmington morning star., 1946-05-29
Fair Enough
BY WEsTBRooK PEGLER

i1O-ASS1 OIlL1Sldl dIlQ IIllSkulQSoI
or deliberately dishonest apologists for the
Wagner Act and the immoral decisions of the
United States Supreme Court which have sup
plenented that evil law. I have never en-
countered one who had quite the effrontery to
deny the possibility that has now become a
tragic reality since VI Day. I mean the
strikes that have brought us disorder. in
flatlon, and, in President Truman's word, dis
aster, since VI Day.
The answers to my contention that this law
gave a few men such as john l.. Lewis.
Reuther and Phillip Murray power to p~aralyze
the nation have always been that while this
might be theoretically true such q situation
would never occur or that I was a labor
batter, Which, even if true, would have nothing
10 40 with the case. I tempered my criticism
OF the Railway Labor Act because that law
does contain provisions, absent from the Wag.
ner Act, which legally, but not practically,
require the railroad unions to abide by de-
clslons OF a government agency established
Tor the purpose of averting strikes. The reason |
for the Wanted success of this law has been
that the board generally gave the unions their
minimum demands but, twice since the war
began, railroad unions have WEIGHED on their
agreement with the nation, implicit in their
acceptance of the act. The first time they
reneged the Roosevelt government placated
them with further concessions.
This time, Notwithstanding extraordinary
concessions which flouted the boards authori-
ty and the MISUNDERSTANDING, two big unions
struck nevertheless. So the same objections
that damn the Wagner Act are valid against
the powers possessed by the bosses of the
railroad unions.
During the debates on the Wagner Act and
for a short time after its passage. manv
Americans who now fear and detest it as a
menace to the peace and stability of the
nation and a sanctimonious fraud upon the
workers, either approved it or, disapproviag.
trusted to the future and the character of
the men VINO would receive the powers which
1t conferred. That approval vanished before
careful study of the law and that trust was
soon destroyed by rioting, racketeering, and
the persecution of Americans.
Inc exasperatlng and hypocritical answer to
all proposals of remedial law is expressed in
a phrase used by President Truman in his
radio appeal to the striking railroad men to
repudlate their bosses, Whitney and johnson,
and go back to work. He said he was =
friend OF labor and opposed to all unfair 7
restrictions on unions. {
That label, friend of labor" has been wor,,
by thousands of takers from George scalise
TO Franklin D.. Roosevelt whose private
papers, should they ever be published without
reservation, as they certainly will not, would
snow that ne was shockingly stingy in his 7
private role OF employer. And certainly no '
-A4i Aoo any 4lSuL 10 Call 0llQSelf q friend =
OF labor" who then has the gall to oppose :
amendments to the Wagner Act and supple l
men'ary laws, as we'll, which would liberate c
the genuine body of American labor from the
brutal cynlclsm, the extra-legal discipline. the
system CT banlshments and fines which tho /
wagner Act imposed on them and the pri-
vatlons Incidental to strikes that the whole S
american people have suffered under Wag- I
ner's law. c
What are thesa nroros.a ro,4.- ,. r
always are condemned as unfair to labor?
one would hold unions responsible for vio- 7
latlons OF their contracts, carefully negotiated
and Sooerly accepted by shrewd union agents D
ana approved by their lawyers. No honest G
American can argue that responsibility under c
a contract should be one-sided and Mr.. Tru-
man. hlmself, would not dare to 60 before T.
the country in support of that proposition.
another would forbid union gangsters, and t
L use the word gangsters in the literal, crimi- c
nal sense, to practise actual piracy on the I
highways winch has been a recognized custom
on the roads leading into the city of New a
York for years. Nevertheless, the American !
Federation of Labor has fought and twice de- t
feated unfair restriction t.
The secondary boycott is another evil FRAT d
would be forbidden. In a typical secondary r
boycott the Newspaper Guild, of the CLIO, or
gained ostensibly only to protect the editorial
newspaper workers, called a boycott against
national distillers for its refusal to violate adj
vertising contracts with a Hearst paper
against which a very small minority of tho.
editorial people had called a strike. National
dlstlllers was not a party to the dispute and
its compliance with the guilds demand would l
have been an intrusion in a private fight and :
an assumption that the guild was right and
the paper in the wrong, whereas DEVELOPMENTS
showed that the reverse was true. =
nevertheless, it would be an "unfair re- -
Slrlcton to forbid a practise which. in this "
case. II the secondary boycott had been sue =
cessful, would have thrown out of work tho,,- Il
SANDS OF employees Of national distillers =
another unfair restriction would comne1 :;
unions TO revise their constitutions in con- Il
1orfnlty with that of the nation which ,nanv =
unions hold inferior to their own constitutions . .
and laws. e
announcer would exclude criminals from o
places OF enormous arbitrary power in unions. h
MIR. Truman recently complained angrilv
That some states permitted morons to drive q
automobiles, a laudable position to be SIRE o
but it may be confidently assumed that he =
regards as an unfair restriction" the nro- G
posed requirement that criminals of the fou1- :,
est type and communist traitors tn tho I1n;tad y
States be prevented by law from ao1dino M. :,
sitions of power over the welfare. indeed The q
very lives, of millions of Americans snd tho 9
security Of the nation, itself. -
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