Evening star., 1954-09-19
Labor Bosses ScoIded
For Labor Day ySpeeches
Writer DepIores Criticism
Of Friendly President
By Fronk R. Kent

By Fronk R. Kent
Among the interesting things accen-
tuated on the recent Labor Day were
these : Cd So far from wanting to keep
Labor Day bipartisan celebration, the
labor bosses strongly insisted upon
making it as political as possible; (2)
those Of the AFL as well as the CIO
made 1t clear that they are either DOM
inant in, or an appendage to, the DEM
ocratic Party; 90 regardless of facts
and figures they appeared doing their
best to talk the country into depres-
sion.
Wherever labor bosses spoke on that
day they echoed and repeated the
speeches and statements of Walter
Reuther and George E. Meany. The
first is head of the CIO, the second Of
the AFL. The speeches and statements
of the MeSSrs. Reuther and Meany and
all the minor bosses were consistently
and almost exclusively composed of
virulent attacks upon President Eisen--
hover personally, his administration
and his program. If among the scores
Of Labor Day speeches single labor
spokesman said a single word favorable
to Gen. Ike. 1t escaped notice. So far
as the labor bosses could do so they
made 1t appear they were unitedly
against him on everything. Their out
put for long time past can be summed
up In four words: ike amt no good"
This is a strange attitude for these
great unions to take. And it Is not
surprising an increasing number of the
.,l1 voI 90
follow their leaders. This Is not too
significant politically because. as will
be recalled, in 1852 the labor bosses
were unitedly behind Adlai Stevenson
and contributed all they could in
money. time and effort to defeat Mr..
isenhower-however, with an utter
lack of success. Considering these
things it seems remarkably stupid for
the bosses to so clearly display the fact
that their nonpartisanship is COM
plete humbug and that they actually
are now part and parcel Of the Demo-
cratic machine.
This. of course, has BEEN charged
many times before but never so openly
acknowledged. It is undeniable now
that the Democratic Party Is the labor
bosses party and that for 20 years
of the Roosevelt Truman regimes they
have been dominant in party councils
and welded more White House influ-
enced than all other groups combined.
But whenever the issue has been clearly
drawn the voters decidedly have shown
that they do not want labor boss Gov
ernment, and among these voters have
been many union labor members.
They did so in Senator Taft's last cam
paign for reelection in Ohio. They
did so most decidedly in the last Dewey
campaign in New York. And they over
whelmingly did so in the Eisenhower
campaign in 1852. In all these CAM
paigns the labor bosses exhibited in
ability to control their own followers
and lack of power to make good their
threats, such as driving Senator Taft
out of public life.
It is easy to understand that these
setbacks may have embittered them
and that they miss being the fair
haired boys about the White House.
But this does not excuse the folly Of
their violent and continuous attacks on
the President. Here they have a man
who is not only friendly but determined
to be fair to them. And all they do Is
abuse him. The way they talk almost
forces a comparison with the line taken
by the Daily Worker and the Commu-
mist Spokesmen generally. It tempts one
to say that little of this anti-Eisen-
hover energy might usefully be devoted
by the labor bosses to clearing Commu-
nists out of their unions.
Conceding that few OF these labor
bosses are themselves o-Communist
and that some progress has been made
in breaking Communist control, 1t still
is true that there is dangerous degree
of Communist saturation in some of
the important unions. In this connec-
ton, it may be useful to quote Mai.
Gen. j. F. c. Fuller, writing in Ord
nance for this month. Gen. Fuller
says: Lenln laid it down that I'VE must
be able to resort to all sort of strata
gems, maneuvers, evasions and Subter-
fuges only so as to get into the trade
unions. to remain in them, and to carry
Communist work within them at all
costs. Il. .. The Communist Party enters
such institutions not in order to do
constructive work. but in order to di-
rect the masses to destroy from within
the whole bourgeois state machine and
parliament"
These are impressive words and
ought to be read by every union man.
The present hostility of the bosses to-
ward the President does not greatly
disturb the Republicans nor surprise
them. OF course. it might be agreeable
to the bosses to have a man in the
White House whom they could pressure
into doing the sort of flop Adlai Ste
venson did when he switched from his
stand that the Taft-Hartley Act was a
good law but needed amendments to
the absurd labor-boss position that it
is a slave labor law which should be
wiped off the books.