The Wilmington morning star., 1946-10-11
As Pegler Sees 1t
Bv WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, by King Features Syndicate, lnc.)

to realize that they had been trapped into
sertdom under the masters OF unlonlsm. mus,
most of them have never known freedom ana
do not know what they lost during their po-
litical or civic infancy. They were II or ID
years old at the highest when Wagner's law
went whooping through under the frauoulent
p~retense that it's only purpose was to SAFE
guard Interstate m against the I'M
pediment of labor disputes. Millions OF them
were children of 2 or 13 years. Babies.
Few OF us who were adults at the time
nerceived that this was a revolutionary slick
trick bv W hich the union, masters, great,
pompous tyrants, some with truly baronlal
privile ges, and yachts, racing stables ana
winter palaces, were granted the power TO
fix the wages of the people. The stupidity mis-
taken belief of the mature citizens OF the
time was that here was a bill whose only
intention was the beautiful purpose OF pro-
tecting the right of workers to Join unions
and equalize the inequality between an enor-
nous, soulless corporation and the Individual
workman hungry and shivering at the en-
ployment gate. We who were old enough to
know better were guilty Of a disastrous error
of careless and emotional thinking. Intelligent,
sober study of the Wagner bill would have
shown US that this was not Wagner's intention
or Roosevelt's either, and that congress mad
no power to regulate relations between the
citizen and his employer within a state.
Wagner, Roosevelt and their legal counsel
knew congress lacked the power to do this.
That is why they used the ,pretext OF ex-
pediting and protecting interstate commerce.
They tricAed us.
Congress- does possess the specific right to
regulate commerce., so they hitched their
fascist scheme to the clause OF
the constitution.
Here is the language of fine pretext, Slightly
abbreviated: ut is the policy OF the United
States to eliminate the causes Of certain SUBJ
stantial distractions to the free flow OF COM
MERGE"
As a means Of doing this, however, they
would protect ''the exercise by the workers
of freedom Of self-organization and desig-
nation OF agents of their own choosing" for
collective bargaining.
II those people believed that congress really
had the constitutional power to encourage
the practice Of collective bargaining" another
phrase in the preamble, why didn't they state
that to be the policy Of the United States?"
The reason was that Wagner. Roosevelt. the
Department of Justice and the union lawyers
had in mind the plan, soon to become a
reality, through which the workers were not
merely "encouraged" to join unions, but
driven and<hounded into unions by hundreds
OI thousands lQTOuSn physical, eCOLOIillC dIu
social terror; were frankly and arrogantly de-
MED freedom to choose their own bargaining
agents and. like the serfs * old Europe, were
delivered from place to place in ~faceless
masses; disciplined, ordered and subdued, at
wages agreed upon by their union masters.
To say that they were Encouraged" to join
unions is like saying that a condemned man
was "encouraged' to be seated in the electric
chair.
When I speak of ~faceless masses delivered
from place to place by their union masters
I am not tossing you m overripe figure Of
speech. I saw it done one day in Detroit when
an industrial official remarked that he had
loaned a thousand men - he had loaned a
thousand American citizens as though they
were draft horses-to another big manufa ctur-
er engaged in war work, to meet an emergen-
cy. They were his faceless people allotted
him by the union and t h e government in
Washington. They had no more to say about
their pay or conditions Of work than so many
head OF work stock. All that was arranged
between the union masters and the employ.
ers, under government supervision.
1t is not uncommon to hear one general
in a war say that he loaned or borrowed
one or several divisions of soldiers to meet
an emergency. But these were civilian work
ers. who are supposed to be free men.
If you think that was only a temporary
condition you are mistaken. Long before the
war, many unions absolutely forbade their
members to find their own jobs. No, they
must 60 to the union hall and take their
turns in the hiring line and then 60 where
they are sent. They still must. II the union
happens to be on good terms with the en-
ployer the condition of The Individual worker
may be the worse, not better, for that. The
union master likes to show how efficient he
is in ruling the mass Of labor assigned to
his custody under Wagne-'s laws and he
makes The taceless man toe the mark. I can
tell you, he likes to be a big-shot. He is.
Under Wagner's law, the worst bum is as
good as the best man in the local. Better,
for that matter, If the superior man has a
little spirit and ambition and shows a little
of the white-eye Of rebellion against this
equalization of incompetence with ability, lazi-
ness with diligence. Even among musicians
this is the method of handling labor for
the benign purpose of removing impediments
to interstate commerce. Il a cafe or saloon
wants a fiddler. the local sends the next
fiddler, not a good fiddler necessarily, and
the best violinist in town may be walking
the streets awaiting his turn. In the news
paper business the guild wanted the power
to send around the top man on the list. even
a communist, if a paper needed an editorial
writer, as though all writer's were alike.
You all have heard the term outlaw
strike" An outlaw is a criminal, without the
law. Are such strikers outlaws? Not at all.