The Wilmington morning star., 1946-05-24
Fair Enough
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER

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in the 1914 campaign when he endorsed the
Wagner Labor Relations law without reserva-
ton. He did this as a bid for the support OF
the union movement and l thought he was dis
honest because as a lawyer and a public Of
fetal of long experience, including encounters
with some of the worst rogues in unioaism,
he knew that this was a bad law. He couldn't
win over the CLIO. or the American Fedora
ton of Labor, so his sacrifice of dignity and
self-respect got him nothing and cost him the
confidence of some adherents who would have
preferred that he dare to be right.
However, Roosevelt, in his first campaign,
promised economy and abused the Republi-
cans and especially Herbert Hoover for ex-
travagance and bureaucracy, so Mr.. Dewey
now might plausibly say that further expert
ence under the Wagner Act had brought i'm
projections to light which must be corrected
in the interests of labor itself and the crea-
ton of a sound prosperity.
But, that wouldn't be my way.
My way would have been to damn the Wag-
ner Act in 1914, realizing, if I had been Dewey,
that the Odds were against me-, anyway and
trusting that the events of the next four years
would uphold my condemnation as, in fact,
they have in less than two years since he de-
clared himself in Portland. In his present cir
cumstances he may gracefully ignore the sub
ject because in his next campaign he will be
running for reelection as governor of New
York and may confine himself to state ques-
tons, ignoring national problems, internal and
external, as he did in 1912, when he was elect
ed goveror.
But, again, that wouldn't be my way.
1 would come out fighting in this guber-
material campaign and dramatic the crimes
OF unionism under the Wagner Act and
promise not to quit throwing facts and naming
names until it had been stripped down to its
original stated purpose TO permit workers to
organize and deal collectively with employers
but not compel them to.
My line would be about like this:
The professed purpose of the Wagner Act
is to let workers bargain with their employers
through agents of their own choice.
1t defeats this purpose by forcing millions
of them to accept bargaining agents chosen
by the Labor Relations Board, and Roosevelt
and Wagner so intended all the time.
Henry Kaiser signed a. blanket contract with
the boilermakers union when ne had only a
nuclear crew, which was binding on a multi
tude who came along as his ship-yards ex-
banded. Every man and woman of them had
to buy life insurance and pay & royalty to the
son of the unions president and the Wagner
Act was responsible for this extortion. l would
rub Mr.. Truman's nose in this because the
home of this racket is Kansas City, Kan.
The Wagner Act forbids an American who
happens to be an employer or a plant execu-
tive to express to an employe this definite
knowledge, that the union president is a COM
munist or underworld racketeer and the IN
ion, itself, just a racket. 1t cornpels him to
negotiate and sign contr acts with communists
and gangsters,
1t makes the employer negotiate or bargain
but, as the nation saw in the Lewis case, it
doesn't require the union, itself, to bargain.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a few weeks before
Pearl Harbor, said the American government
wouldn't compel 5000 coal miners to join
Lewis under a closed shop contract because
that would be Hitler's way" The day after
Pearl Harbor, by a crooked device, he gave
Lewis his closed shop, adopting "Hitler's
way Frances Perkins, as Secretary of La
Dor, admitted that the closed shop was a denial
Of an inalienable human right but the govern
ment has forced thousands of employers to
sign closed shop contracts and million Of
American workers to join unions under those
contracts.
The eastern communists and Eleanor Roose-
velt's fascist friends have been campaigning
against Senator Bilbo OF Mississippi because
Mississippi is a poll-tax state. But Bilbo is a
Roosevelt senator and moreover he has never
been responsible for any damage to the ma
tional welfare comparable to the sabotage,
rioting, vandalism, political corruption, hatred
and disruption of industry that Robert Wag-
ner, of New York, set off with his vicious law.
Workers have absolutely no guaranteed
rights in unions. Wagner makes them join but
doesn't provide that they shall be allowed to
vote in union elections, provides no control
over their money, and throws them on the
mercy OF ignorant brutes or cunning manip-
ulators IN kangaroo courts who can fine them |,
without limit, shake them down for personal
graft and eXpel them for life even for the
most trivial and malicious reasons. An en-
ployer can't fire a man for impudence but a
union can blackball aim forever and starve
his family for talking back to some overbear-
ing steward or local union official. Wagner il
knows all this and l would horseWhip him /
thro lgh the street with facts that he couldn't /
deny.
The Wagner Act permits unions to extort
political slush funds from workers in COM
plete Illustration of their political freedom.
Employers have to abide by their contr acts.
Unions don't and millions of workers have,
had to strike and go without pay because the
union bosses called them OUT
Some unions collect income taxes as high as
10 per cent of the workers gross wages.
Some make the employers pay a percentage
o. the gross payroll in the guise of a welfare
and vacation fund. The workers never get
more than a quarter of their respective va
cation contributions and the union bosses de-
eide what "Welfare' is. Sometimes 1t is the
welfare OF their own racial, religious and ma
uonal countrymen in Europe and the Aneri-
can worker must feed and clothe them failing
Which he can't work to feed and clothe his