Guild Referendum

"Mr. Broun, who calls me the Benedict Arnold of American Labor," is, in the opinion of Mr. Green, "a stooge for the avowed Communists in the C. I. O."

With this exchange of tentative pokes in the public prints, pudgy William Green of the A. F. of L. and puffy Heywood Broun of the American Newspaper Guild last week started something that neither of them could finish before the week was out. Mr. Green suggested that the Guild would be better off if Mr. Broun would resign as president, since his activities had left it "torn to shreds, with its subordinate officers set out like ducks on a rock for the publishers to shoot at."

Next day Mr. Broun replied: "On the extraneous subject of Communism, I might reveal the fact that several years ago I promised my wife, Constantina Maria Incoronata Fruscella, that I would never join the Communist party unless I joined the Catholic Church within the same week. I imagine that probably I will not ever be admitted to either." Mr. Broun said the main objective of the Guild is to stay in the C. I. O., added that "Mr. Green is the greatest single obstacle in the path of the labor movement. . . . The stone must be rolled away."

Mr. Green then announced that wherever local units of the Guild would repudiate the C. I. O. they would be chartered by the A. F. of L., whose organizers were already at work in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul.

Meanwhile, Guild members were boring from within. Pundit Walter Lippmann, New York Herald Tribune columnist, wrote a letter to the Guild refusing to pay his dues because he would not commit himself to political opinions adopted by them. New York Guild Secretary Milton Kaufman attempted to straighten him out with the assurance that "individual members of the Guild are no more committed to resolutions of this character than are editorial employes of the Herald Tribune committed to the editorial policy" of that paper. In Seattle 40 Guild members on the Post-Intelligencer, whose publisher is President Roosevelt's son-in-law, John Boettiger, also balked at paying dues. The Columbus, Ohio unit called for a Guild referendum on affiliation with the C. I. O. and five other points in the program adopted at St. Louis (TIME, June 21).

When seconded by 16 units, the referendum demand went before President Broun and the International Executive Board, who will schedule a national vote of 11,000 Guildsmen as soon as the motions are found in proper order. Thus, after a week of squawks and counter-squawks, the four-year-old Guild found itself ready to take inventory of what it has done so far, what its future course will be.

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