Trial & Error

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Without a Constitutional quiver in his freckled right hand Franklin Roosevelt last week signed the Labor Disputes Bill. Then, lighting a cigaret, he leaned back and dictated a statement to the public: "This act defines, as a part of our substantive law, the right of self-organization of employes in industry. ... It may eventually eliminate one major cause of labor disputes but it will not stop all labor disputes. . . . Accepted by labor, management and the public, with a sense of sober responsibility and of willing cooperation, however, it should serve as an important step toward the achievement of just and peaceful labor relations in industry."

Day later Presidential Secretary Stephen Early called newshawks in, and told them very impressively that a whopping story was about to break at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. What was it? He would not even hint. All he would say was that the President had written a letter to a member of Congress. With this valuable bit of information the Press was left until Representative Sam Hill of Washington made public a letter he had received from the White House.

"My Dear Mr. Hill:

"Your subcommittee of the Ways & Means has pending . . . [the Guffey] bill to stabilize the bituminous coal mining industry. ... I understand that questions of the Constitutionality of some of its provisions have arisen. . . . Manifestly, no one is in apposition to give assurance that the proposed act will withstand Constitutional tests, for the simple fact that you can get not ten but a thousand different legal opinions on the subject. But the situation is so urgent and the benefits of the legislation so evident that all doubts should be resolved in favor of the bill, leaving to the courts, in an, orderly fashion, the ultimate question of Constitutionality. A decision by the Supreme Court relative to this measure would be helpful as indicating, with increasing clarity, the Constitutional limits within which this Government 'must operate. ... I hope your committee will not permit doubt as to Constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation."

This letter did not smite the world with quite the astonishment that Secretary Early had expected. But the letter and the statement on the Labor Bill together emphasized a number of points in New Deal policy--points which the Press had been gradually surmising:

1) Franklin Roosevelt had given something more than tacit consent to the retirement of Madam Secretary Perkins to a back seat in labor affairs. While the Labor Bill was in the making Mme Perkins fought to have its execution vested in her department rather than in an independent Labor Board. Congress rebuffed her. The President in signing the act hammered that rebuff home: "It should be clearly understood that [the Labor Board] will not act as mediator or conciliator. . . . The function of mediation remains, under this act, the duty of the Secretary of Labor. ... It is important that the judicial function and the mediation function should not be confused."

2) Either the President did not believe the virtually unanimous opinion of labor observers, or he did not care that the enactment of the Labor Disputes Bill would be followed by a series of strikes as the A. F. of L. sets out to attempt to unionize the country. Everyone knew that the idea that labor, management and the public would accept the act with "a sense of responsibility and willing cooperation" was but a pious hope.

3) Most important of all was the public announcement of the President's intention to have his labor bills passed no matter how "reasonable"' might be the doubt of their Constitutionality. There is such doubt about the Labor Disputes Bill. There is a lot more doubt about the Guffey Coal Bill which, in fact, amounts to NRA's Soft Coal Code being re-enacted into law although the Supreme Court ruled that, and all other codes, unconstitutional. Attorney General Cummings refused to furnish the Ways & Means Committee with a brief for its Constitutionality and, according to Washington talk, flatly told the President that the measure would never get by the Supreme Court. When to these two bills are added the AAAmendments, and others, Washington saw in the making a deliberate policy by the President to overwhelm the Supreme Court with a mass of New Deal legislation of doubtful Constitutionality. If the Supreme Court is forced to throw most of it out next year on the eve of a Presidential campaign in a series of unpopular decisions, President Roosevelt will presumably go to the country and say in effect: "We tried to do things to help you but the Supreme Court wouldn't let us. Therefore let us have a Constitutional Amendment which will limit the Supreme Court's power to wreck the country's welfare program."

P: At tea the President entertained a colleague from overseas, Prime Minister and Mrs. Joseph Aloysius Lyons of Australia, fresh from visiting King George in England and the Pope in Rome. Mr. Lyons' object: a friendly visit and discussion of a U. S.-Australian reciprocal trade agreement.

P: The Smithsonian Institution last week began to set up beside its model of the Leviathan an 18-ft. 5,200 lb. model of the late British liner Mauretania, received with the compliments of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

P: Motoring to Annapolis with Senator & Mrs. Hiram Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State R. Walton Moore,'his personal Secretary, Marguerite Le Hand, and her two nieces Barbara and Marguerite Farwell, the President put out for a weekend fishing cruise on the Chesapeake Bay, put back again on schedule.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.