The Wilmington morning star., 1946-11-04
As Pegler Sees 1t
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

the A and P grocery chain had formed
artificial organizations, in the gulse OF indie
pendent public groups, to promote the COM
pany's interests. The grocery company argued
that its own Interests were the publlc's in
terests, inasmuch as it was admittedly driv-
ing down the cost of good, sanitary groceries
to the consumer and was resisting state tax
proposals which might have frustrated that
purpose. Those who are naive enough to
believe that the company put the public
interest first and was pleasantly surprised
to note that these movements could do A and
P no harm, have my permission.
This was the antitrust case in which the
court found the defendants guilty of illegal,
though, laudable, operations, with the remark
that to buy, sell and distribute to a SUBJ
stantial portion of 1870. million people ST $50
million worth of food annually, at a profit
of one and one-half per cent, rs an achieve
ment one we'll may be proud Of"
mo place in the world, I take it, Judge
Lindley wrote, ARE people So well fed as
in the United States. Nowhere else, l suppose
do food distributors accomplish efficient dis
at so low a margin of profit
But, the court was constrained to hold in
the end, they can't do that for us and, with
rather plain indications that this hurt him
more than it hurt them, the judge took the
culprits to the woodshed, which is a homely
old temple in our mythology where boys are
believed to nave been hair-brushed for steal
ing apples. For the record, let it be shown
that exhaustive research has verified no case
in which any woodshed ever housed such
ceremonies, no case in which the
hair-brush actually was the instrument of
justice nor any authentic charge of stealing
apples. Watermelons, yes, but not apples.
1t was clever but stupid of the A and P
to deceive citizens by masking its parentage
OF these DrOna BANDA fronts S1Icb &C tho ono
called the Emergency Tax Council of New
Jersey, which campaigned against special
taxes on superma-kets, and, if my opinion
is demanded, it was dishonest as well. The
better way would have been to admit that
A and P was backing and organizing this
front and to put the proposition to the citi-
zens on the basis that they and the company
had a common interest. Consulting my own
psychology, 1 think the people who Joined
the council would have been resentful had
they found out that they and their honest
had been used to promote the
cause OF an unseen principal, even for their
own incidental good. Anyway, it was a tricky
scheme, though common practice these days,
which is the point of this essay, after all this.
Here We have a court ~frowning on this
sort OF pressure in the case of a beneficient
company, but, in the index of the Dies
Committee, we have lists of hundreds of
AoAoS llOIS, lldUy OIL llGIQI
ephemeral, which were set up with the stated
purpose of fighting for truth, justice, freedom
and other pea-ly monuments which have be-
come grlsly platitudeS from their very own
Ii use. We have not only councils but COM
congresses and institutes, forums,
foundations and schools, societies,
brotherhoods and guilds useing every conciev-
able combination and variation Of such bait
as human right FREEDOM" liberties
and 'defepc GO - Most Of +boc. ~, Al. NAL
lists are, Or were, political traps
either organized by the communists or, at
their suggestion, by sneaks in more or less
decent guise. The purpose of most of them,
II not all, was to Wreak the wreck of that
economy of which Judge Lindley
could write that it fed our people better than
any Other people on earth were fed.
There are Americans now SO skeptical and
confused that they would not join a pants
pressing club or a league of nature lovers and
would leave me cold to be informed that
the Audubon Society was encountering resist
among a wary nation once noted for it's
joinery and proud of its lodge buttons. The
word veteran" in a new society of Whilom
has become a ruddy alarm to the
cautious, thanks to the bolos who went march
ng forth beneath the starry flag and steered
he parade to the Senate chamber at Albany
With Mike Quill, of the CLIO, showing the way,
although Mr.. Quill was otherwise employed,
organizing strikes, while the soldiers were
issues with the Germans and the
No court, no law, no bureau of the gov
eminent deplores these fronts save that the
Department of Justice bully-rags some which
a surly devotion to the U. S. Consti-
luton and thus invite suspicion of Hitlerian
Many are able to advertise that con-
,%ributions to their funds are deductible from
he donors taxable income as gifts in the
interest of education and/or charity. This
means to George Spelvin, American, who
will show his worst side if you call him a
'commo man" that he is required to make
Up the loss of taxes to the national treasury
which might have been paid by others who
'oguishly gave money to the striking auto
workers last winter. The auto workers could
1ave been at work, paying income taxes
themselves and feeding their own families,
their union padrones kept them idle for
100 days and were unwilling or unable to pay
hem an adequate union dole. Money spent for
advertisements to solicit these gifts also was
legitimate, deductible expense, but the pur-
BOSE, or issue, of the strike will not be readily
recognized as one in which the public as a
whole had a profitable interest, as the A and P
could argue in the case of the Jersey council.
I dare say that the transfers and the
hardy bridge-players who sail the seas could