"The Weak Must Fall"

Ruddy and chipper, Bill Green arrived at Chicago's Drake Hotel one day last week for a meeting of the A.F.L.'s 15-man executive council. He was almost cocky as he talked to newsmen. He told them he would recommend that the A.F.L.'s officers get into step with the new National Labor Relations Board and sign the non-Communist affidavit, which is a prime proviso of the Taft-Hartley Act. He was sure that the other 14 members on the council felt the same way.

Bill Green had talked it over with most of the others. Uncle Dan Tobin, head of the Teamsters, was for signing. So was Boss Carpenter Bill Hutcheson. The newsmen, said Green, could expect the council's unanimous decision that very afternoon.

"Cowards & Weaklings." Bill Green, it turned out, was counting his chickens too soon. Four afternoons later, newsmen listened to an angry roar that boomed now & then through the closed doors of Parlor D. John L. Lewis, it seemed, was damned if he'd sign any such affidavit. Any members who would knuckle down to the Taft-Hartley Act, he cried, were "cowards and weaklings."

Bits of the blistering argument leaked out. It was all very well, said one council member, for the great John Lewis, sitting astride a union that dominated an entire industry, to defy the NLRB; he could not get hurt. But what about the small unions which have many cases pending before the NLRB? John Lewis' refusal to play ball would mean that every A.F.L. local might have to forfeit its right to go to the NLRB for help in disputes with employers. The Great Man's answer shocked some of his listeners: it was a heresy to the doctrine that in union there is strength. Roared Lewis: "The weak must fall."

When the council's meeting broke up, John Lewis strode off alone. His vote was enough in itself to nullify the other members' willingness to take the oath. Under the strict interpretation of the NLRB's General Counsel Robert Denham, every top officer must sign or no affiliated union may come before the NLRB. (This week Dan Tobin signed the affidavit anyway, sent his lawyer to Washington to contend that the Teamsters should be allowed to use the NLRB.)

Green was glum as he told newsmen of the decision. Said he: "The Taft-Hartley law is reprehensible and vicious and destructive to the legal and civil rights of workers. . . . [The council] could not conform to the Denham ruling."

War of Nerves. Fortnight ago, the C.I.O.'s eleven executive officers had wriggled away from a flat decision not to sign, had waited for a cue from the A.F.L. Now that it had the cue, the C.I.O. would almost certainly follow suit.

The war of nerves between Counsel Denham and organized labor was on. The courts might have to decide the winner. Last week in Fort Worth came the first test. A federal judge held the anti-Communist provision to be legal.

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