The Wilmington morning star., 1946-05-15
Fair Enough
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright BY King Features Syndicate, Inc

1 tell you again you deny yourself importar
knowledge Of the tricks that are played {
YOU, and a sort of entertainment, too, if y,
don't read selections from the current opinio
of our Supreme Court. ~Frankfurter writes pu
zle-talk so woolly and complex that even o.
studious analysis you would swear that old
Vicente had tagged himself out in hidden.
ball trick. Forward, backward and both ways
from the middle he reads like that old trick
sign in Heinie Gaboob's saloon on South State
street, in Chicago, which the Saturday night
sports from the bottoms used to pucker their
brows about while the talent lifted their wages
from their pants. The trick was that
you read the first line forward then the third
line from left to right and picked your way
around until you got the message of the man
agement that il you could puzzle out the sign
you weren't drunk yet so what about buying
another drink.
And then there is Frank (Hubba : Hubba)
Murphy, who can take a law as simple as
keep of the grass OR mo admittance, this
means YOU and pull it and stretch II like
taffy on Halloween and decide it means just
the opposite, and sometimes w and Y.
Between them and James Byrnes, our Secre-
tary of State now, these fellows have decided
that it is all right for one party to tell mali
cious lies about another with intent to destroy
his business, that it is all right to violate sign
ed contracts, that it is all right to practice
highway robbery and to call a loyal, true-be-
lieving American a fascist if any of these
evil things be done in the interest of any dirty
pack of low racketeers calling themselves a
labor union and they have further decided that
a communist is not a communist unless he
shows you his tattoo mark.
Strangely, of late, I have found old Vicente
on the dissenting side in a couple of these
cases, but Hubba-Hubba is consistent, what
ever else you may think Of him, as I do.
A long time ago, Vicente said a law didn't
necessarily mean what it said, but in a recent
case, he grabbed himself by the toe, gave it
a ferocious twist, Topped himself over on his
back with both shoulders pinned squarely to
the mat, and wound up sitting triumphantly
astride his own chest. In flat disagreement
with Murphy, who took him at his word and
held that a law didn't mean what it said,
Vicente said it meant exactly that and nothing
else.
You won't be reading it SO let me tell you.
Back in 1910 and 1941, I did some work on
a gang Of racketeers in the laborers' union,
which hadn't held a convention or even an
election ir 30 years and discovered that they
were shaking down neighborhood farmers and
poor pick-and-shove workers who were work.
ing on army environments and the like. They
took them for $50 each, %ostensibly as the mi
tiation fec payable IS a week, failing which
these good old common men, for whom the
heart of Henry Wallace ever bleeds, couldn't
help in the war effort, and In a time of labor
shortage too.
Well. the common laborer phase Of most OF
those jobs didn't last 10 weeks so these poor
suckers would pay in anything from S. to say
$45, toward their limitations and then be laid off.
So they didn't become initiated member and
the gang just packed off down the road to
the next job and did it all over again. Or, if
a fellow got paid up to $40 or $45, the mob
would get the contractor to lay him off, any
way, on some pretext sno pledge a new class
of saps. The judiciary committee, of the House
Of Representatives decided that this was just
too raw and pretty soon there comes up in
the Department of Justice a bright young Eel
low from Dallas named Tom Clark as head of
the antitrust division. Young Mr.. Clark, now
our Attorney General, approached the outrage
with a my God, can such things be?' Ex-
preston and studied about five pounds of let
tiers from victims of the shake and other mat
tiers which had come 10 me.
A little later, the D of J invoked the kick
back law against the bunch in Massachusetts
and what do you think happened? The district
court tossed the indictments out.
So up she goes on the governments appeal
and a few weeks ago down she comes again
with an opinion by Murphy unfolding the lower
court and a dissent by Frankfurter, scream
ing, in effect, that his brethren of the ma.
jority were as wrong as acey-deucy.
The law says: Whoever shall induce any
person employed in the construction of any
work financed (by) the United States to give
up compensation to which he is entitled by
force, intimidation, or by any other manner,
whatsoever, shall be fined or imprisoned"
incidentally, on this job, at Fort Devens,
Mass, the contractor had to pay wages, paid
ultimately by you and me, through our taxes,
to 40 Union stooges to police the job for the
shake down and see that the good old COM
mon maa didn't hold back on his payments.
The mob didn't even pay their own chiselers to
collect the shake.
Between evenings at the Shoreham and the
Statler, Murphy gives us this for the MAORI
ty: that mot every person or act falling within
the literal sweep of the act necessarily comes
within its intent and purpose. The broad lam
guage must be interpreted and applied with
that background in mind meaning that. in
passing the law, Congress didn't spit, touch
shoe leather and specifically affirm that It
applied to shake-down unioneers.
That has been the courts position in all
cases tried up to now. Doctors, lawyers, mer-
chants, preachers, taxidermists and all others
are meant in the general language of the laws
OUT unloneerS are exempt unless they are
especially included, as of course, they never
are.
Speaking for the minority, Vicente holds that
the phrase by any other manner Whatsoever
is plain language meaning what it says and
that Murphy had immunized that which Con-
gress plainly had condemned.
So is IS all right to clip the citizen on gov
Il ~ n~% s~Iz ---x:I- =, L>1l 1T