Lethal Chamber

The House got into one of its periodic anti-labor huffs last week. In a dither of debate and determination, by a vote of 270-to-107, it passed the Hobbs bill to end labor racketeering. Authored by Alabama's drawling, union-hating Representative Sam Hobbs, the bill would make criminal such tricks as stopping out-of-state trucks, forcing the trucker to hire a local union driver or pay his day's wages.

But no labor leader got excited: since 1938 many anti-union bills have passed the House only to get lost, frayed or pigeonholed in the Senate's powerful Education and Labor Committee. There, session after session, year in, year out, union-loving Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, committee chairman and New Deal labor watchdog, quietly, firmly, fatally sits on the bills.

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