Evening star., 1950-09-21
Lewis Threat 10 Close
Mines on Taft Visit
Goes Unanswered
transparent Hypocrisy
By So-CoIIed Champions
OF Civil Rights Shown
By David Laurence

since John L. Lewis announced
brazenly that, in effect. he con-
trolls the minds of the workers in
5 the coal mines and that if United
States Senator Taft happens to
visit any of the mines in Ohio.
they will strike.
Yet not an expression of dis
approval has come from single
labor leader of either the CIO or
the AFL. Nor has any comment
been made by the Democratic
, Congressional Campaign Commit
tee whose cause Mr.. Lewis seeks
to aid.
With one exception, moreover,
there has been no protest from
any civil liberties group against
the threat to use economic power
to influence the outcome of Ohio's
election.
Senator Taft's headquarters has
announced that he had had no
plan to visit the mines anyway.
But even if he did. does the Lewis
threat mean that. in supposedly
free America, the opportunities of
candidates to travel about in their
respective districts or States can
be controlled by labor unions?
Affects Democrats. Too.
The issue is not one related
solely to the Republican side. 1t
affects the Democrats. too. For.
If the Democratic nominee for
Senator, John Ferguson, wanted
to visit the mines, would Mr.. Lewis
send out word that it was per-
missible? And does this mean
the coal owners would be justified
in refusing him permission be-
cause the mine unions wouldn't
allow a United States Senator the
Z courtesies which any visitor at the
mines might enjoy?
If the protest had been made
against speech making by Senator
Taft, the issue would have been
altogether different. There has
been a controversy for some time
as to whether employees need lis
ten to speeches made during work.
ing hours by anybody, including
the employers themselves. The
National Labor Relations Board
has been wrestling with that issue
and some rulings by the courts
have indicated that there is no
compulsion to listen nor any
wrongdoing by employers in max
ing the speeches.
But this episode did not con-
cern speech-making. The head of
the miners union threatened a
strike, or to engineer one of those
so-called Spontaneous" walkouts,
If the Ohio senator as much as
. appeared at a coal mine. This is
going very far toward a dictator
ship over the miners, for pre-
sumably there are Republicans
among them who might want to
greet Senator Taft. Mr.. Lewis
himself not so long ago supported
a Republican candidate for the
Presidency.
Exercising Controls.
# a labor-union leader can
abolish all political thinking of
an independent nature and make
his followers call a strike as a
maneuver in politics, he is exer-
cising a combination of political
and economic control which most
liberals thought had come to an
end several decades ago. For in
the old days the Republicans
among employers did influence
the voting in, their plants and this
was bitterly criticized by trade
unionists, as it properly should
have been.
Today, however. the fair thing
would be to hold that political
candidates should not be permit
ted to make speeches at plants
but that. when such a rule is
applied by individual employers,
, they should bar both candidates
and not just one side.
IL Will De recalled that PreSl-
dent Roosevelt in his campaigns
of 1910 and 1914 visited defense
plants and not a protest came
from any labor union or en-
ployer. Just why a United
States Senator should not have
the same privileges that mem
her of the eYecutive branch ofI
the Government or any private
citizen enjoys-the right to visit
plants in his own State-will be
difficult to explain to the Moscow
boys. This is one item the Voice
Of America will not broadcast to
Russia, for it reveals the trans
parent hypocrisy of some of our
so-called champions of civil rights.
ak3n I-f.A