A. B. A. Rival

Officers of the American Bar Association met in Grand Rapids in 1933 and inaugurated a National Bar Program designed to put "on a firmer footing the position of leadership in the affairs of state . . . belonging to the lawyer, but which he now stands in danger of losing." Expressly, the officers wanted to make the A. B. A. representative of all U. S. lawyers, planned State and local participation in the A. B. A.'s policy-making House of Delegates (see above). And, boomed the reigning A. B. A. president, West Virginia's Clarence Eugene Martin: "Whatever the ultimate determination [of the Program], it is apparent there is room for one national organization--and only one --in the U. S."

About the time of the A. B. A. officers' Grand Rapids gathering there took place in Manhattan in the apartment of Scripps-Howard Columnist Heywood Campbell Broun a meeting which had nothing to do with U. S. legalists. At Mr. Broun's were gathered a group of liberal-thinking newshawks, and, with them, Mr. Broun's friend, bright-eyed little Lawyer Morris Leopold Ernst. Hatched at this and subsequent meetings was what has since grown to be the American Newspaper Guild. Lawyer Ernst had a lot of ideas about the newshawks' union, became its lawyer, drafted its constitution.*

Germinating in Mr. Ernst's mind the past three years has been another idea: a guild for lawyers that would give them a freedom for liberal thought and action not provided by the A. B. A. and its House of Delegates. Last autumn Mr. Ernst and some friends wrote a terse 500-word "Appeal to American Lawyers" which pulled no punches, sent it far & wide to U. S. legalists over the name of Frank Patrick Walsh, onetime member of the War Labor Conference Board, now a Manhattan attorney, who agreed to act as Guild president in its organizational stages.

Excerpts: "In recent times, . . . certain groups within the legal profession have done much to block progress and to befuddle the legislative processes. Such activities . . . have served to bring the profession into public disrepute." "The impression [has been created! that the profession serves as an instrument of obstruction. We believe this impression is fundamentally false."

"The profession has become popularly characterized by that minority portion of its membership which has consistently taken a hostile stand to proposals and legislation of a forward-looking character . . . [concerning] child labor, reasonable business regulation, security and labor." "[The minority's concern for liberty has been property." secondary to its concern for Earnest Morris Ernst's clarion call did not go unanswered. Within a fortnight more than 250 letters came into the National Lawyers Guild's Manhattan offices, others were addressed to Mr. Walsh personally. Preceding a national convention in Washington next month, scores of cities sought charters in the Guild, affiliation with which, the Guild's manifesto set forth, "will not conflict with membership in any other organization," i. e., the A. B. A.

Last week in Manhattan more than 500 legalists, old and young, liberal and radical, gathered in the stately chambers of the New York Bar Association to elect temporary local Guild officers. Looking down from their gilt frames, first U. S. Chief Justice John Jay and 19 past presidents of the Bar Association beheld a scene of fine parliamentary confusion, as scores of pent-up legal spirits strug gled to express themselves. In a two-hour session, highlighted by a plea "to call in a few lawyers" to restore order, Paul Kern, Manhattan Civil Service Commissioner, was elected president, two steering committees were appointed to act until the national convention.

Most uproar was caused, almost before President Kern mounted the rostrum, by a proposal to do something about Judge Edward D. Black's strike injunction at Flint. After much discussion punctuated by cheers and hisses, tabling and enabling votes, the proposal was tabled on grounds that the National Lawyers Guild really did not yet exist.

* To be published next week are liberty-loving; Mr. Ernst's ideas on another constitution, a brisk anecdotal history of the U. S. Constitution and its makers which barely leaves the Supreme Court justices a bench to sit on (The Ultimate Power--Doubleday, Doran--$3).

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