"Under Control"

In a glossy little brochure touting the industrial advantages of his bailiwick, Mayor Frank Hague boasts that "an outstanding feature of Jersey City has been the stability of its municipal administration and the fairness of its policy toward the worker and capital alike." Boss Hague has been mayor for nearly a quarter-century and lately declared without conscious exaggeration: "I am the law." It so happened that Boss Hague was addressing a gathering of church-going constituents on juvenile delinquency when he dropped that Bourbon remark, but it has plagued him ever since in connection with his conception of "fairness" in the treatment of organized labor.

It is impossible for C. I. O. to hire a hall in Jersey City, and C. I. O. organizers are simply run out of town. Last month, having given plenty of advance notice, a group of C. I. O. organizers attempted to enter the city, accompanied by reporters, photographers and observers from the Workers' Defense League and the Civil Liberties Union. The idea was to test the validity of Boss Hague's ordinances against distributing non-commercial literature. The organizers from New York had some difficulty getting into Jersey City at all, for almost as fast as they arrived waiting police and plainclothesmen put them back on the ferries and tubes to Manhattan. When their infiltration was nonetheless accomplished, they staged an orderly demonstration and were promptly picked up and whirled in waiting automobiles to the city line, where they were dumped with a stern lecture. Some promptly returned and were arrested. One Workers' Defense League observer was seized and searched, and when he asked the plainclothesman to identify himself, received the reproving answer: "Why don't you want to be a gentleman?" At the subsequent hearings even reporters and photographers were searched before they were allowed to enter the courtroom.

Last week, inspired by union officials in Washington, 26 Congressmen wrote to

Mayor Hague expressing concern over the reports of "wholesale arrest and deportation. . . ." It looked, said the Congressmen, as if "officials of your administration acting under blanket orders" were denying labor its constitutional rights. Back to Montana's Congressman Jerry J. O'Connell, one of the signers and a personal friend of Boss Hague, went an answer the same day:

"My Dear Jerry: ... I am very happy to know you have been thinking of me. My regards to your twenty-five associates who have also gone to the great inconvenience of communicating with me. I can assure you that everything is under control.

"There is nothing for you to be disturbed about that I can see. The people of my city feel as I do. They are very grateful for your interest.

"Give the boys my regards. Leave everything to me and don't worry. Yours very truly, Mayor Frank Hague "P.S.--Because of the importance of this communication, and because I feel that it would be very beneficial to you and your twenty-five associates in their respective districts, I would suggest that you have it inserted in the Congressional Record."

To this Congressman O'Connell answered :

"My Dearest Frankie: "Thanks for your reply to our letter. It confirmed our worst fears about you. "... We note that you say labor is 'under control' in your city. Knowing something about your methods of operation we're not surprised that you think it is. You've gotten away so long with profitable conniving between your machine and corporate industrial and financial interests that you can't imagine your 'control' ever coming to an end.

"Oodles of love and kisses.

Jerry J. O'Connell"

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