Biddle's Battle

Outwardly, the great Chicago plant of Montgomery Ward & Co. seemed to operate as if nothing had happened. The long rows of bundles poured out into trucks; long rows of typists filled out the endless ills & orders. Company executives, except those at the very top, sat in their offices supervising work, initialing memos.

Then, suddenly, it became evident that G-men were patrolling the plant. Posters appeared on bulletin boards forbidding the firing of any employes without Government sanction. A sub-executive tore one of them off, was instantly handcuffed, hustled off to jail and charged with stealing Government property. His explanation: he just wanted to show it to his boss.

Tattered Banners. Back to Washington went Attorney General Francis Biddle, the President's faithful messenger, who had argued for his boss by reading the Declaration of War, in which Congress had pledged "all of the resources of the country ... to bring the war to a successful conclusion."

In the public mind the Attorney General's banners were somewhat tattered. Asked by Gallup pollsters if the Government "did the right thing" in seizing Montgomery Ward, 61% of the answerers said "No." Congressional mail sacks bulged with letters from furious constituents denouncing the seizure. Francis Biddle, who had never been so busy in his life, had other troubles. The trial of eight ladies of the evening from Washington's Hopkins Institute--a trial initiated by the Justice Department and ballyhooed by Government prosecutors as an assault on "a million-dollar call house" --turned out to be little more than a routine police-court case against a rather drab group of prostitutes. And in the sprawling, unmanageable trial of 29 alleged seditionists not one word of testimony had yet been taken, after three weeks of legal skirmishing. Both cases obviously had had top management.

This week two issues in the Montgomery Ward case would approach decision. NLRB, acting with unprecedented swiftness, ordered an election to determine the union's right of representation. District Judge William H. Holly promised a ruling --sure to be appealed--on the Government's right of seizure.

But beyond these there remained the greater issue. Do the American people really want their President to have such immense power as his Attorney General claims for him? While Francis Biddle fights his battle through the courts, the U.S. Congress decided last week that that question would bear investigation.

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