"The Time Has Come"

With deep relief (and some shame and resentment) the nation heard last week that John Lewis had relaxed his clutch. The nation's industry could get up.

While industry brushed itself off and examined its bruises and abrasions, some of them left over from the auto strike, the electric strike, the steel strike, the nation took stock. A lot of damage had been done. But it was possible also that some good might result.

The coal strike, which had come close to paralyzing the whole nation's economy, had shown--as had no recent U.S. strike--the full possibilities of uncontrolled labor leadership. Was there no way of protecting the country from such assaults?

One way was to restore the balance of responsibility between labor and management. Something--and this was one bright light in a browned-out week--might be accomplished while memories were fresh. A wrathful Senate decided to get down to labor legislation. Senators voted 66-9 to act at once on the Case bill, a toothless version of which had been passed along by the House.

Friends of labor, like Senators Scott Lucas and Joseph Ball, had asked for a new deal in fundamentals. Said Oregon's liberal Senator Wayne Morse, onetime member of the War Labor Board: "We . . . should write into law a distinct policy regarding labor and strikes. The time has come for us to take a stand to settle this question once and for all." The Senate might even be in a mood to restore the Case bill's teeth.

It was even possible that labor had learned something--namely, that it too had a stake in the nation's recovery. Labor might have learned that it also is a large part of the public, which always gets hurt, in any strike.

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