The Wilmington morning star., 1947-10-01
AS Pegler Sees 1t
By W~EsTBROOK PEGLER
downright, 1947, BY King Features Syndi-
oofo Inc\

By WESTBROOK PEGLER .
Copyright, 1947, BY King Features Syndi
cate, Inc.)
NEW YORK, Sept. 80. - In all the up
roar against the Taft-Hartley law, resclnd'
act. the voice of the American workman
mas lever been heard. 1t is a question jus'
what he would say if he could raise his
voice in the chorus because he IS a mix
ture OF many motives and traits and, being
Of humanity in the large, he is not ex-
c%ep1jonally bright. Only the exceptions are
exceptionally bright and they soon quit
working to become labor leaders"
or union bosses, public relations men, en-
lloyers or politicians. If the American
Workman could be heard, many of him
world be selfish and lazy and would praise
any law, such as the Wagner act, which
promised him more money than his work
was worth, free vacations and protection
against discharge for ~stalling, for destroy
ing material, whistle-Jumplng and agltat-
ms on company time. Others of him Ger
tainly would object to carrying the dead
weight load of these buns and would want
to be paid according to individual
ability, economy, productiveness and agree
ability in the place.
I may be denounced with fearless con-
temp for saying that employers would pay
txtra for charm, but that is a fact just
the ame John L. Lewis will pay more to
an office worker in the U. NJ. W. who works
with a will and a smile and doesn't send in
a doctors bill for every sneeze on the
unicr's premises, and the late Fiorello La
Guardia fired out of hand, in a terrible
temper, several of his secretariat who pull
ed mean looks at him. All bosses, whether
boss unioneers or productive indus
trial bosses, naturally prefer pleasant peo-
pie around them. Many a fine baseball
player has been waited out of the major
leagues and down into the leaky-roof minors
just because he was a nagger and an agi-
tator
| dc not undertake to say that the Ameri-
can workman would praise the Taft-Hart-
ley law even if he could make his voice
heard in the present uproar of propaganda
from the professional unioneers. He is dis
timely O the dumb side and nobody knows
that better than the professionals and the
politicians. Roosevelt knew it better and
expected this dumbness better than any
other American in our time. l guess he was
the alt-time champion to date at this bust
ness OF kidding the dumb average citizen.
He and Henry Wallace even went so far
as to call him the common man, knowing
thai he would be too stupid to resent this
superclliousness and would think they were
paying him compliments. So, in the pres
S1s AoAAS oOOaC Max o4t44d G4Cy law
the professional unioneers, the exception
ally bright Johns of the breed, keep telling
him that this law is a dirty outrage amount
ing, in the rough, to a new and mysteri-
JUS kind of slavery and promising him
that they will fight to the death to rescue
him from this fate which is worse than
death.
That is a laugh. They aren't going to
fight anybody. They all drew draft exemp-
tons in the war. They are the actual
Shareholders themselves and the common
man has been their slave for a dozen
years. However, the professionals have
reached the conclusion that he is too stupid
to know he ever was their slave. They
keep telling him that the emancipation or
liberation provided by the Taft-Hartley law
is slavery and it takes a pretty reckless
fellow to say that he is to smart to be
deceived by this. If you keep some brute
locked up for a long time and then let
him out, the chances are he will be back
his nice, comfortable howell.
around shutdown, paving at the door of
Flattery is a wonderful force in the work
Ct the professionals and the politicians,
such as Roosevelt, La Guardia and Sen
|ator Wagner. They tell the American work.
man he is a wonderful worker, as he GER
tainly is not and getting more ~slovenly,
frivolous and greedy every day. They tell
him he is the most intelligent common
man on the face. of Gods green footstool,
or something like that, and he comes up
yelling "yow" The American workman
agrees absolutely, although every one of
them knows dozens of bovine, sluggish,
no = account loafers who are close to the
limit of their intellectual powers when they
are asked to keep an eye on a red light
and an ear open to an electric bell and to
push a button when the light and the bell
go off together, indicating that the ma
chine which they are tending has complet-
ed a certain operation.
All the propaganda turned out by the
professionals against the Taft-Hartley act
follows this line. 1t flatters the American
workman lopsided, but how does anybody
know that he has the intelligence to disa-
gree with this goose-grease and suspect
that it is discoursed for the Interior motive
of preserving the old union racket? ! am
sure = don't know. I hav often written
about the nobility and cleaning
snrewdness of vapory ideal depicted as
the American workman, but he is nc more
substantial than Santa Claus. OF course,
but, as William Green so often says of the
many criminals, they are the rare excep-
tons.
So I am not going to say, because no
body knows, what the American workman
would say about the Taft-Hartley law ever
if the professionals who are running the
propaganda were to let him step up to the
microphone and speak his own little
piece, unrehearsed; from the heart and
without a script. He might be
stupid enough to say that it is an act to
enslave labor with a capital l., as he has
so often read in his union papers. You
%coulup't much blame him for saying the
Wagner act was labor's Magma Carta. He
heard that a million times, too. And if he
still thinks Roosevelt was his friend you
have to allow for the fact that he never
BETTE had the experience of climbing up
into a presidents lap and hearing a master
faker say, IN a confidential, personal way,