The Wilmington morning star., 1946-12-11
As Pegler Sees 1t
Bv PEGLER

american government 1IOm EIe DOSS uulOn-
GERS, the fact must be sounded again and
again, as the Hyde Park hant used to say,
and S u n d e d a bove the clamor of
their mechanical propaganda, that the men
who claim this power over the nation are old,
old, old. They are old and reactionary. They
haven't had a new idea in is years and the
last idea they did have and the one they cling
to today is that they are not mere princes Of
privilege, to employ another Of the spook's
corn-tassel posies, but kings, emperors. OF d.
vine right and wisdom. Often, they are rogues
and liars to one another in their own, arcanal
repartee, however, as when old Philip Murray,
the president Of the CLIO, after comparing
his own paltry megrims to the passion Of
Jesus Christ, howled to the 1912 convention Of
the CLIO. that John L. Lewis was a national
prevaricator, universally recognized oy the
workers and the citizens of our country"
Lewis had a 'diabolical mind" Murray
whined in selt-pity, after charging that an
agent OF Lewis had ordered his followers ito
keep after this fellow Murray until you kill
him."
Those are the things that are going on he
walled. "Organized despotisms, the devices
used by Hitler are being rescrted to In the
20 puppet districts Of the United Mine Workers
over which John L. Lewis has complete dorni-
nation
Yet, when Lewis called the miners out and
popular government made a desperate stand
| d6AA1ASk CAS 4I&O al 0(Sf~s3
clio. were found on the side Of Lewis and
against the republic. And this, think, would
be an occasion to notice that Judge Colds
borough, in passing sentence on the Little
Man with the 'diabolical mind" did not
prattle of democracy but properly called this
nation a republic and said it must prevail.
They are old.
Lewis is 81. Alex Whitney Of the Brotherhood
o. Railroad Trainmen, who laid a similar.
bony clutch on the nations throat last spring,
is IA and has been riding the cushions on the
gravy train as a union politician for the last
rs years, almost half a century. He served
only 10 years as a working stiff, but a portion
of even that short qualifying career as a horny
handed son of toll was spent in the romantic,
Algeresque business Of swaying through the
aisles of an Iowa local under a uniform cap
with a patent-leather bill selling sailed pea
nuts, nickel novels and the Omaha Bee. For he
tells us that he began as a news agent at
Is and became chairman of the unions griev-
ance committee at %. In the years since ne
has acquired not mere wealth but riches of his
own, regal and opulent status, and the eff-ont-
cry common to his caste who treat the work
ing stits as subjects and president Of the
United States as their employees.
William Hutchinson, of the carpenters, is 70.
Dan Tobin, of the teamsters, II. Lewis is 81
and William Green is IA. ia. Franklin. the
president of the boilermakers, held on until
the scandal of the insurance shakedown Of hun
dreds of thousands Of wartime ship-builders
in favor OF his sedentary son, Harold. aroused
the Jury of penniless old men with tattered
union cards and he was kicked upstairs on a
pension. His age I do not know in years but he
is up among the res. of those 50 long aIoof
from toll and the sweaty smell o. men who
do, that they can't even remember when "la-
Dor" was a verb and not a political commo-
dity.
These five old hitching-rack dictionaries,
alone, Lewis, Hutch, Whitney, Tobia and
Franklin, taken at their own boastful word.
bossed 1900, 900 Americans in their respective
unions during the war. Now. even with Frank
lin counted out. no thanks to the Roosevelt
government or the union movement they
still rule l 800, 900. All their lives, until Roose.
welt came, they aspired to a day when they
would be above the laws that put sporting
occupational risks in the way Of the brisand
and extortioner and, finally, to their amaze
ment, they got their way. Accountable to no
public authority, for the squanderins or even
theft Of taxes Wrung from their subjects. at
liberty to organize murderous rnobs and in
cite to bloody anarchy, paaoplied, saluted and
feared. they found themselves in offices from
which a telephone call could frishten senators
and governors and send Americans raging
through the streets in civil war. Working men
and women couldn't even hold meetings to
protest against persecution for, as Murray
said in his piteous elegy that day. Lewis for
babe his subjects to petition him for the right
to elect their own officers, under penalty of
starvation for the women and the kids"
Murray, only 81, himself, but puny, COM
planning and pious after long and servile as
s%ociation with the man he now denounced,
had no criticism. however, of the law that
gave Lewis this power. His only grievance
was that Lewis had used Hitlerian methods
against him. On the fundamental issue of the
wrongness of the possession and exercise of
such covers by any other despot who should
agree with him, he had no complaint at all.
Murray though only 81, also is old and re-
dictionary. Like Robert Wagner, the senator.
age 70. who was willing that his name should
live in association with the infamies that Muir
ray %ascribed to Lewis, Murray saw the end
Of progress and the fulfillment of 'labor's"
destiny in a law which put the bosses at
their luxurious ease and guaranteed their
power.
They are old, old, old. Break their power
and they NOPE. They totter- forlorn, bitter
and toothless to their graves, barked at by
dogs and Knocked by the liberated inmates of
their slave-compounds. Even mayors and con-
gressmen would circle out of range of the
quavering strokes of their canes. yapping at
their harmless old rage. Cops would call them
''gramp'' and gravely humor them.
The secret of it all has been vanity and
selfishness. When these men speak OF the
toilers they are thinking of their own prlvl-
leges, their brief but swollen Importance and
&heir a,,,a ;~axy;%oh1n oo11opeo Tho mnTnent the I