Barrel No. 2

Labor worked out a catchy name for it --the "slave labor" bill--and launched its campaign. To beat the bill, the A.F.L. alone poured $1,000,000 into newspaper ads, radio programs and mass meetings, all adding up to a demand that the President veto it. In Pennsylvania and Indiana, 17,000 of Jonn Lewis' mine workers walked out in protest strikes. From California, A.F.L. and C.I.O. delegates moved on Washington in a "veto caravan" of 100 autos; they hoped to stage an eleventh-hour demonstration at the White House.

Henry Wallace, Harold Ickes, Leon Henderson, Eleanor Roosevelt cried out against the bill. New York's Mayor William O'Dwyer, his eye on the governorship, went so far as to proclaim a municipal "Veto Day." Two former chairmen of the old War Labor Board, William H. Davis and George W. Taylor, said the bill was unworkable. The National Catholic Welfare Conference (membership: all U.S. Catholic bishops) condemned it as playing right into the hands of Communists. The Communists cried that the bill was a sellout to reactionaries.

C.I.O. President Philip Murray sounded the deepest organ tones. When he arose to address a jampacked veto rally in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, his voice trembled with bitterness. The bill was "dastardly," "dangerously provocative," a "foul brew," he roared. "Our liberties are threatened by reactionary monopoly, driving us on the first long step toward domestic fascism. . . . From here henceforward, if this bill becomes law, the organized labor movement is on the defensive in this country. . . . Let us return to private life the backers of this ugly measure."

If Harry Truman signed the Taft-Hartley labor bill, which Congress had overwhelmingly approved, organized labor would never forgive him. At least that was what labor's spokesmen were telling him. On the other hand, if the President vetoed the bill, he would bear the brunt of public resentment over any new strike crisis. One crisis built up this week when U.S. shipping was threatened with immobilization by a strike of five C.I.O. maritime unions. Another crisis was ahead: John Lewis made deep rumblings. A strike threatened in the soft coal mines, when they go back to private operation on July 11.

The President had until Friday to act; he had to think fast. Republicans waited coolly at the bottom of the falls.

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