Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1950-03-24
Satevpost Editor
Has Been Talking
To Wrong People
BY BRADFORD v. CARTER
For Labor Press Association

TT SEEMS that political pressure is pretty
nearly left-wing monopoly these days. So
says the Saturday Evening Post, in an edi-
torial wailing Must Propaganda Be the
Monopoly OF Our Leftists?"
Now, the Sateveposts brain department
operates out of the giant Curtis Publishing
Co. (non-union) building on independence
Square, Philadelphia, but its editor lives in
wealthy neighboring Montgomery county
Represented by Rep. Mcconnell, who faith
cred the phony FEEPC bilD, and the editor
must have been talking TO the wrong people
The boys at the Union League may believe
the editorial, but the SEP readers will suspect
the editor is trying to slip something over.
Kind of cute, that editorial. 1t says mod
crates and conservatives" are way behind
while well-oiled organizational triumvirate
seeks TO push the country faster and faster to-
ward the handout state" The editorial lists
as 'leftists" groups Americans For Democratic
Action, run by people who are hankering for
a super-New Deal and which works hand in
glove with the CLOS Political Action Com
mittee and the AFL's Labor's League for
Political Education Next the editorial points
4 out that the AFL decided at its last conven-
tion to assess its 100000 members two dol
lars apiece for political l-education work dur
ing the 1850 elections"
Mr.. SEP, the AFL merely set So as goal,
and anyone who gives So does 1t voluntarily.
In fact there's little law authored by one
of your "moderates' Ca feller named Taft
which forbids such assessments. And if you'd
listen to that AFL five-times-a week man on
nationwide network you'd learn that the
only propaganda on that 15-minute spot is the
opening announcement and the sign-off. And
If that broadcast is 'leftist" your magazine is
really Fanny Farmers Cookbook.
And you're worried also about the FM
radio network "centered around station
WCFM in Washington, owned by the Cooper
ative League of the USA," with links to union
FM stations elsewhere. You quote Joe Harsch
In the Christian Science Monitor that this
new politically conscious network has been
created to promote the point of view of labor
unions, the cooperative movement the Amer-
can Farm Bureau Federation and the Ameri-
cans For Democratic Action, for these are the
influences behind IT,"
So, all these groups also are "leftists" The
Farm Bureau Federation especially will love
that one.
And then you quote the good gray Arthur
Krock, of the even grayer New York Times
who speaks of the superior articulation of
the Left" and Donald Richberg as saying the
moderates better organize before they are
"flattened by the steam rollers of left-wing
propaganda" and Raymond Moley with his
wistful idea that the "moderates" should form
sort of ADA too, outside the Republican and
Democratic parties.
Now let's really add up, Mr.. SEP.
Not one daily newspaper is pro-labor. So
the entire commercial press speaks for your
"moderates," to put it charitably
Not one network radi 10 commentator
speaks for labor The AFLs Frank Edwards
concentrates on news So the commercial radio
speaks for your 'moderates"
Not one mass-circulation magazine is pro-
labor. So the magazines speak for your mod
crates"
The movies, the only other "mass med
ium," certainly are not pro-labor. So they too
speak for your "moderates."
And on the moderate" side the American
Medical Association alone in two years Is
spending about S4,000000 on propaganda.
The ANA pays its publicity team 100000
year, and that team in one year alone put out
$4,000, 900 pieces of literature, to say nothing
of its strange alliance with the real estate
lobby and others all out to knife the Fair
Deal Add the political pressure and the
OF propaganda put out by the Com
mittee for Constitutional Government and
Freedoms Foundation and the Freedom For
ums (where union workers are forced to listen
to anti-union propaganda); the so-called Ma
tional Tax Equality Association, and the oil !
lobby, gas lobby power lobby. railroad lobby
why, * you laid them end to end they'd
stretch from here To there-and good thing,
too
What do you mean, monopoly" All the
lobbies last year reported spending $4,000 600.
OF that, all of labor put together spent $751;
3Ol, Whit do you mean. pressure groups?"
or course, Mr.. SEP, you really give the
show away by the "leftist" tag If you mean
that anyone to the left of Mckinley is left
list thorrid word) why. certainly, the unions,
and the ADA, and the co-ops are leftists"
But II all these groups were 1eftsts in the
sly way you mention, there would be dancing