The Wilmington morning star., 1946-10-07
As Pegler Sees 1t
By wEsTBRooK pEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features Syndicate,
Incl.


Inc.).
NEW YORK, Oct. 6. The tragic fraud
Of the Wagner Act, the principal cause of the
growing menace of violent collapse in a victo-
rious nation today, has been discussed from
many angles. This fake, whose purpose is said
to be to permit workers to bargain through
agents 'of their own choosing, has actually
been used to deny that right to millions by
forcing them to accept, as masters, under
world crooks and Stalinist traitors who are
political proteges of the dominant party. Not
since the American revolution have the peo-
pie OF this country been so arrogantly OPP
pressed by violence, threats and the systematic
pressure of persecution. Never was the Ku
Klux Klan a comparable force of terror and
civil disruption.
That the Wagner Act is at the bottom of
the present economic collapse initiation, the
famine in food stores and the lack of new
homes, clothing and automobiles is a fact too
apparent to need argument. 1t is enough mere
ly to mention the strikes in the automobile,
farm implement, steel and coal industries, all
provoked by the Wagner Act.
But these and many other disastrous ef-
fects of this continental cancer in American
life have been emphasized to the neglect of
the fundamental wickedness of the law itself.
1t is a fascinating occupation but a
gloomy one to wonder what thoughts may
trouble or rejoice the mind of Senator Wagner,
of New York, an old man now but with time,
still, to repair to some extent the damage
wrought by his law to the country that gave
him freedom from the furies of his native
Germany. Does his conscience remind him in
the night that every passing day aggravates
the harm he inflicted under atmocking pre-
tense of human intent and that every tick of
his heart and the clock brings closer that
inevitable instant when it will be too late?
have thought of asking him, but refrain.
II hn h. rn5t 4L4 L. IT.
wrong he did, in the presence of the horrible
consequences, prompting would hardly move
him to more than a vain old mans reiteration
of the political sophistries that made him his
toric in his unenviable way. 4
The indecency OF the Wagner Act is found
in the preliminary declaration of policy as
compared with the frightening condition of the
United States today. 1t never was an honest
law and the hunger and fear, the sullen note of
desperate anger in every area of the United
States are his contribution to the people whose
faith he thus requited.
Wagner, as a lawyer and Tammany Judge,
whatever you may think of his political doc
trine, knew that the constitution of the United
States gave Congress no right to compel George
Spelvin or G. I. Joe to join a private club as
a prerequisite to his employment, or to grant
those private clubs the power to suppress
Whatever his colleagues in the law
may have thought of him as a lawyer, he must
have known that much. Everyone with the
adult intelligence to understand the c%onstitu-
ton knows these facts.
Powers not delegated to Congress are re-
tanned by the people and this power that Wag-
ner sought was not so delegated. Those cunning
minds which drafted this inquiry to bear Wag-
ner's name knew there was no authority for
Congress to make this law, so they hit upon
the clause. Yes, that would be it.
The constitution gives Congress the power to
regulate between the states. and.
although labor is not a commercial commodity.
still the products of labor are. So they would
seize upon the m clause as their iusti-
flcatlon for a law which, now, in a nation bad
lysshaken by the e~xertions of a victor in the
greatest military effort in all history, has de-
stroyed all but a wrath of our commerce.
1T is not unusual in Congress to precede
the provisions of a proposed law with an ex-
cuse. But the Wagner bill was so obviously un-
constitutional on all other grounds that the
consplrators realized that they must lead off
with a pretext and a defense, like a notorious
liar who says, believe me -"
The Wagner preamble said interstate
commerce had been obstructed by the refusal
of employers to deal with unions. This refusal
had caused strikes. and these strikes had d.
unfinished prices and the flow of goods. And
all this had diminished employment and wages
SO badly that was substantially i'm
paired.
Proceeding, the excuse argued that the in
equality of bargaining power between organ
lzed employers and unorganized workers
tends to aggravate recurrent business de-
presslons by depressing wage rates and the
purchasing power of wage earners."
Experience has proved the preamble
then said, that where the right of employees to
organize and bargain collectively is protected
by law, m is promoted by the re-
mOVdl of "reCOPnlZed causes of unrecto No
such experience or proof was offered.
Therefore, lit is the policy of the United
States to eliminate Instructions by encouraging
collective bargaining and protecting the
workers freedom to organize and select rep.
reSentatives of their own choosing to speak
for them.
The hideous mockery Of all this is only an
incidental subject of today's discussion, al
though I shall labor and belabor the fraud to-
morrow. But the people do not read laws, much
less analyze them for bidder purposes, and
my own melancholy experience in dealing with
this evil thing is that not even lawyers or
members of Congress have ever realized that
all this damage was done by subterfuge in the
guise of an act to regulate, not labor relations,
contract relations or wages, but inc be-
tween the states.
BY consequence, today, that mn is
almost totally extinct and there is a rumble
of resentment in streets where pickets forbid
drivers to replenish the vanished abundance of
the American way on the shelves Of the groc-
cry stores.