The Wilmington morning star., 1946-08-26
Fair Enough
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, By Kings Features
Syndicate, Incl

escort to the mourner's bench a sister who
has seen the light, Mrs. Gilmore Moorehouse
Herrick, who fell in with evil companions in
the National Labor Relations Board and the
C. I. o. and went traipsing from the fold with
a passel of sinners who Knocked the true faith
and chalked up h%eretical notices on the meet
in house door.
Stand up. Sister Herrick, and leave US sing
'HalleluJah!"
Mrs. Herrick, who is now a sort of house
mother of the New York Herald Tribune under
the title Of Director of Personnel has COM
posed an article in defense of General Bill
Donovan, a candidate, and by far the best
one, for the Republican nomination for United
States Senator from New York, and of princi-
pies which these essays have been advocat-
ing Tor about ten years, much of that time as
a solo. Some reactionaries of the State
Federation Of Labor had condemned Will as an
enemy of labor and this charge. on close
examination, turned out to be a plea for
special privilege for dynamiters who hold Of
flclal credentials from unions. The general,
incidentally, is a Medal of Honor man of the
first war and was commander of our snies
in the second one.
THE anti-union act complained of was
Mr.. Donovan's prosecution, in 1922, when he
was United States District Attorney, Of some
misguided and calluos union members who
dynamited a railway line, wrecked an ex.
cursion train and injured several persons, d
Sister Herrick wrote. Surely, the 4. F. and
L.. does not condone such acts of violence,
jeopardizing, moreover, the lives of innocent
people"
To give her the benefit of every doubt,
let us assume that she was being sarcastlc
here because certainly the sister ought 10
know that, short of formal resolutions to that
affoo+ .,,ob hoe haep tho sentiment of mdQY
of it's component unions in many specific cases
and that the president of one of the oldest
national units of the A. F. of L. to this very
day is a man who served a hitch In prison
for dynamitlng as a member OF the OLD NC
Namara team of demolitionists.
Surely, Mrs. Herrick knows about a distin-
guished degenerte from Cleveland, an official
of Joe Fay's union or racket OF the operating
engineers, with tWo previous convictions on
charges of molesting children, one a girl, the
other a boy, who was convicted in Akron
of procuring two dumb Oklahoma yokels to
blow up a new building because the labor
employed were members of the c.. l. o. in
that episode one of the yokels was killed be-
cause the two boys. brothers, were so igno-
rant that, between them, they hadn't the intel
llgence to tell time by the alarm clock which
worked the bomb. The prosecution here got
no help from any part of the A. F. of L., and
there, as in the present experience OF Bill
Donovan, the county prosecutor was denoun-
ced as a union-buster and labor-baiter. He
got no help from the A. F. of L..
So, if Mrs. Herrick isn't being sarcastic l
think l could whip up enough incidents to
convince her that the A. F. of L. has condoned
dynamiting by members of its family to the
extent that it has failed to do anything to
punish them.
NJ. KHu. JJoSr;,l- ocLc cuynrp pl1hIjc
officials to violate their oaths of office simply
because the offenders happen to be members
or officers of a labor union?
General Donovan has put the issue square
ly,'' she continues, Saving: one of the most
vital issues before the American people is not
whether a public official favors a particular
group. 1t is whether he can be trusted to live
up to his oath of office and impartially en-
force the law in the interest of all people To
this he might have added and can be trusted
to enact laws which are for the country's
welfare
Here are representatives of the oldest and
most mature group in the labor movement
betraying complete responsibility"
Although, Mrs. Herrick S piece is a rational,
objective, non-partisan reminder that our
government and its agencies should not exist
to serve any particular groups or elements
Wv ohO0Ao IS NIlOlS
community impartially under impartial laws.
In that respect, it strikes me as a severe,
though sidelong condemnation of the Wagner
Act itself because, obviously, that law was
intended to and does favor a political sub
Sldlary of the Democratic administration.
cannot understand how a person lntelll-
gent and fair enough to write as she has IN
this discussion of outrageous and predatory
unionism could restrain herself from damnlng
the Wagner Act, itself, as a wicked law and
the source of most of the abuses which she
recognizes, because she served an interesting
term in the early days of the Roosevelt rule
first with the old N. l. r. A. and later as
regional director of the Labor Relations
Board.
However, it is gratifying to an old and by
now somewhat cauliflowered crusader to find
Mrs. Herrick writing further that the truck
ling to labor influence is to be seen in very
high places in the government.
Let us not forget the report issued by
Secretary Wallace at a time when 1t aided
the C. l. O.'s demand for wage increases IN
the automobile industry and Wallace's With
drawal of that patiently incorrect report as
mot intended for publication'-but only after
the strike had ended with substantial wage
concessions which, in turn, led to government
awarded price increases, to a considerable
extent, labor leaders seemingly have come to
think in terms of control not alone OF the
legislative but of the administrative. arm of
government. 1t is easy to smear a public
officiaI hut the plain truth is that the nation