The Wilmington morning star., 1947-10-14
AS Pegler Sees It
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK, Oct. 13. - President Tru-
man has had some oIninous demonstra-
tions lately of the decline OF the prestige
of the office which he holds. He took to
the air to advocate voluntary curtailments
of the consumption of food. He was widely
disregarded. This is bad for him. But it is
much worse for all the rest of us that
President should invite the people to hold
the office in contempt and leave them no
choice but to.
come to Mr.. Truman's telegram con-
cerning the death in San Francisco of
Joseph Padway, the chief counsel of the
American Federation of Labor. Padway
collapsed in the midst of a speech against
the Taft-Hartley law. William Green, the
president of the A. F. of L., sonorously an
nounced that he had died fighting labors
battles. This was to be expected from
professional unioneer, tarred with the
same stick.
But if Harry Truman, the politician who
gave the Russian propagandists so m'"h
Kansas City muck with which to smear
our political institutions, feels thus about
his late friend he should speak m his pri-
vate name, not as President OF the United
States. Certainly the President in his Of
ficial person has no reason to feel sad
dened'' by the passing of a man who had
seized every chance to corrupt organized
labor and to profiteer in the union move
ment.
Padway could have been an honorable
man and a fighter for the right against
evil. He chose instead, of his intelligent
will, to be a hypocritical shyster, serving
the foulest crooks in all the rotten history
of the unions housed in the vermlnous edl-
flee of the American Federation OF Labor
This greedy faker, always for sale to
the fabulous rascals OF an unlmaglnaole
| Lo Iod w Con and
by the public as "spokesm an for labor,
as though "labor'' sometime had elected
him to some representative position. he
never represented '1abor" in his life. He
was the ssspokesman'' for the union move
ment only in the sense that any unscrupu-
lous lawyer would hire out to clients en-
gagged in sinful works under vlrtuous pre-
lenses. Thus Padway regularly sat at the
long board table of the executive council
of the A. F. of L. and not only picked up
clientele from other members Of the
who controlled ltigous unions, but came to
know the inner secrets of the gang.
He was so audacious that when the anti
racketeering act was up for passage IN
Congress, he dictated an amendment
exenpting murderous highwaymen from
the penalties for extortion by assault or IN
timidation provided that they had the tore.
sight to buy membership in the Teamsters'
union and other unions. Padway wrote this
amendment, the Attorney General approv-
ed it and Congress, in it's servile degrada-
ton in those early days, enacted Pathways
exemption into law. This provlso meant,
as the supreme court later agreed, that
unions had the power to issue licenses to
highway robbers and that the Department
of Justice must respect those licenses.
In 1872 Roosevelt selected Padway and
Dan Tobin the president of the Teams
:1I. DoIx y'c lJIor otiU
client, to fly to England and represent"
American "labor'' at the British Trades
Union congress. They both were scared al
most to death and old Tobin's report to his
subjects on his return is heros account
of a great adventure. On Roosevelt's part
it was Just the dirty trick that Padway and
Tobin should have learned to expect.
He smeared them with goose grease and
they were so greatly obligated that they
couldn't refuse him any favor. And then he
asked these bombastic old windbags to soar
away DER the raging billows in one OF
those new-fangled flying machines not fall
ing to titillate their fears with little touches
about planes which had gone down with
ice on their wings or had been shot down
by mistake or spattered themselves against
Greenlands icy mountains in the fog They
had to 60 and the most precious point OF
, his Jest was that it made no slightest dH-
ference who Represented American labor
at the British u c. Those gobbling, ade
Modal cockneys knew nothing about the
American union racket and on past occa-
sions had shown elaborate honors to gang
sters who went over accompanied by the
fetchingest trollops our of their brothels,
cast as their secretaries.
Padway was so greedy that he pulled the
rug out from under himself.
He hired out to two of the Infamous rack
cts by which the heirs to the Capone gang
turned from bootlegging, narcotics
and prostitution to organized labor. He took
the dirty shilling from George Browne and
Willie Bioff of the moving picture union
racket and George Scalise of the Building
Service Employees union. Padway impli-
Gated himself so heavily in the filthy af-
fairs of the BrowneBioff racket that on
that score alone any decent aggregation
of membership societies would have repu-
dated him the instant that his conplicity
was discovered Yet the A.F. ofs L. re-
tanned him even after this horrid corrup-
ton had been exposed. Again 1t was
: shown that Padway took ST 900 from
Scalise, ostensibly for drawing UP new
, constitution for his union. Actually, this
was his price for his personal plea of in
tercession with Roosevelt to get Presi-
dental pardon to permit Scalise to exer-
else the ordinary rights of American cit-
zenship which he had lost when he was
convicted of violating the White Slave law.
He eagerly sold for money even to a
: notorious Capone gangster convicted of
prostitution the spurious prestige which he
t had amassed He was a traitor to labor
and prostitute himself, peddling his per-
verted talents to his own evil kind. Would
: an altruist in the labor movement charge
struggling little union of scrubwomen
81 900 for pulling a standard constitution
out of an office file and causing $50
a week typist to copy It with three car
80 :. i,e. 4b,p half an ho11r7