Firing Line

Some Congressmen and most businessmen were still peering suspiciously at the men President Harry Truman had picked to administer the Taft-Hartley Act. His interim appointees to the expanded National Labor Relations Board, they grumbled, had loaded the whole board in labor's favor. But the choice Harry Truman made last week to head the autonomous Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service was one that both business and labor could applaud. The man was Canadian-born Cyrus S. Ching, a towering (6 ft. 7 in.) pipe-smoking oldster (71) with 28 years of experience in labor relations.

Republican "Cy" Ching has had a good look at labor-management troubles from at least three different positions: labor, management, government. A native of Prince Edward Island, he started out in Boston as a streetcar motorman, got his law degree at night school. He soon hopped over to the other side of the fence. In 1919 he became labor expert for U.S. Rubber Co., ten years later took over as the company's director of labor relations. As a onetime member of NRA, the National Defense Mediation Board, the old NWLB, he knows bureau procedure. His formula, which thus far has been unusually successful: moderation, cooperation, sit down and talk it over.

Signs of Peace? When he takes over his new job next fortnight, Cy Ching will have the chance to give that formula its most searching test. In labor's determined campaign to bypass or discredit the Taft-Hartley Act,* there were only faint signs of peace last week.

One sign came, strangely enough, from John Lewis' soft-coal miners, who had gotten the best contract in their history under the shadow of the new law. They were now digging nearly as much coal in a 40-hour week (12.1 million tons) as they had before in 54 hours (12.5 million). Another note of cooperation came from A.F.L.'s David Dubinsky. who ignored the tactics of other A.F.L. and C.I.O. strategists and advised his International Ladies' Garment Workers locals to continue writing no-strike clauses into their contracts.

But neither the miners' nor Dubinsky's gesture amounted to any general change of heart on labor's part. All along the firing line labor kept sniping at the bill's provision prohibiting political action in dues-supported union papers. In Baltimore last month, the C.I.O. backed a winning candidate for a vacant congressional seat and thus invited a court test of the political-activity clauses of the law. But Attorney General Tom Clark did nothing. Last week, in Pennsylvania, C.I.O. tried again.

In Allentown and other Pennsylvania towns, C.I.O. electioneers began ringing doorbells, collecting funds, shipping in union-supplied campaign material for congressional Candidate Phil Storch, an ex-reporter and Newspaper Guildsman on the Allentown Call. Candidate Storch got a formal endorsement from C.I.O. President Phil Murray.

At week's end, A.F.L.'s Harry Lundeberg went Phil Murray one better. In a brawling, slugging state labor convention at Sacramento, he threw down a new declaration of all-out war. Seaman Lundeberg's ultimatum: unless he won an extension of his closed-shop agreement (now illegal under the law) in his new contract next month, nearly 70,000 A.F.L. sailors would hit the bricks. That should be enough to flush Tom Clark. It would also give Cy Ching a job to tax his talents.

* George Gallup reported last week that only 33% of polled U.S. citizens approve of the Taft-Hartley law as it now stands; 39% disapprove (52% of Democrats, 22% of Republicans); 53% think it should be revised or repealed.

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