The Wilmington morning star., 1947-01-27
As Pegler Sees 1t
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1947, BY King Features Syndicat

the same be outlawed,
Like the lilly-white primaries of the South,
and jim.crow, this is a thing, this closed shop,
which came about as a desperate eNpedient to
combat immediate inequalities and dangers,
and I doubt that it can be cured, suddenly, by
any firm national law or a number OF individ-
ual state laws except in states which are moi
strongly unionized.
Ironically. but not strangely, for they are
as inconsistent as a bouncing football, whose
whimsical behavior Knute Rockne used to
dwell upon in lectures to his battalionS at Notre
Dame, the bleeding-hearts of the late new deal
upheld the closed shops as angrily as they
damn racial discrimination for substantially
the same faults.
The South went lily white and adopted jim
crow in desperate circumstances. The white
patriots, and they were patriots to their own
land and included the best people OF the South,
had been barred from the polls and from the
rights of citizenship by hot-eyed fanatics of the
North. most of whom had taken an aloof and
sedentary part in the long war, but now rush
ed in as profiteers and fore-runners OF our lat
ter-day AMG and UNRRA. These furious and
greedy oppressors could not forgive the late
rebels for having fought SO well. So. as a
humiliation, in addition to other punishments.
they were subordinated to the freedmen, most
of whom were absolutely ~illiterate and could
be manipulated by the carpetbaggers. The
liberated slaves could vote but the white war
veterans could not and the poverty stricken
rebels saw their government taken over by
rascals from the North who operated through
Negro puppets to tax them for all kinds of ex-
travagances that they simply could not afford,
to steal their state railroads and to t~errorize
their families. That was the condition that
brought about the Ku Klux rebellion and the
Negro exclusion from the polls and social seq
regation.
With the passing of time the nconsistencie
of the political exclusion with the principles OF
the American system has become gradually
apparent. However, the idea that a sudden and
absolute remedy can be wrought is as danger
Gus as the idea that the closed shop can be
abolished by law in the same abrupt way. The
abrupt method would cost many lives but not
the lives of the few lecturers, editorial writer's
and remote opinioneers in Washington who
counsel that method.
In theory, the open shop is ideal. It's cor
~rectness has been conceded, in slurred and fur
tive passages, even by Franklin D. Roosevelt
and Madam Frances Perkins. But the closed
shop is a practice and a condition whose sud-
den abolition by the enforcement of a national
law would raise hell in American industry and,
undoubtedly, cost lives.
The closed shop was a method OF COMPEL
ing workers to join unions for their own i'm.
mediate good the good of them all. 1t was
a way to prevent employers from bringing in
temporarily distressed hands to undercut the
going wages and to force the free-riders, or
slackers, to pay into the union treasures a fair
price for the benefits in wages which the
unions had won or claimed to have won.
In a very short time, however, a union
card in d closed shop became a new version OF
the yelloW-dog contract by which employers,
long ago. tried to break unions through individ-
ual agreements with individuals. 1t is a yellow
dog contract today, the closed-shop union work
man has signed way his right Of contract and
agreed to live henceforth in the status of an
average under severe discipline, he is not a
man and an individual. He must not work any
faster or better than the union allows him to.
Many ~offenses for which he may be fined
heavily and expelled from his union are not
offenses at all under our public laws. His
right of appeal is only theoretical at best and,
in some unions, is not even a theory. He may
not even find his own job but must take his as
signment from the union hall which means
that some racketeer, as evil as any employer
ever was, may shake down the members for
preference in hiring, he must pay political as
%sessnents to elect candidates whom he op-
poses and oppose propositions on the ballot
which he approves. The union constitutions are
rugged in favor of the union bosses, most OF
whom, in the upper classes of the movement,
live in luxury and never suffer from strikes.
The closed shop means that the human being
and American citizen may not sell his labor
at all if some individual g%angster, such as Joe
Fay, Of Newark and New York, personally
Strikes a job to enforce a shake-down Of
S10O, 900 for himself and a few other vicious
[enemies of labor. He may not sell it at all if a
half-dozen political unioneers in Washington
come out of a smoke-filled room with a de-
cision to strike an entire industry across the
nation. Neither can the non-union worker get
the job.
These are only a few of the evils of closed
shop unionism and yet I forsee that any at
tempt to enforce an open shop abruptly I'M
der law would start another season of that an
archy which ratified the structure of the Ameri-
can state in the formative years of the CLIO.
A "mass-mind" has been created which
controls enough men to tie up industries large
and small, moreover, many employers OF
masses now prefer to deal with unions,
hiring labor by the thousand under con-
tracts. They are adjusted to closed shop union
ism and they are not fastidious about the rights
and dignity of the individual after their ex.
perience with malingerers, ~loafers, locker-room
lawyers and saboteurs. Let the union bosses en-.
force discipline and they will be content.
The closed shop developed its own iniquities
as bad as any that ever existed under the
open shop but more dangerous because il
concentrated so much political, financial anc
human power in the hands of a few.
The safe way and a feasible way is to
trim those power by laws which can be passed
IN the present MOOD OIL congress-, Wnlcn Car
be enforced and would be approved by the
union members themselves. These would be
laws to reform unionism from the outside
Such reforms would include revision OF theil
constitutions and restriction of their powers te
raise money and the purposes for winch they
may spend it.
believe the rank and file would like THESE
| reforms because they would inJure only te
personal and political interests OF the unloi
bosses. They would not damage the unions o.
! the workers in them. .
Do this and, in a few years, we might Try
1 an open shop law for perfection's sake ane
find that only a few individualists preferred
: Ito remain non-union, after al.