True to the Red, White & Blue

Ever since it gave the old heave-ho to the United Electrical Workers at its convention last November, the C.I.O. has been steadily scraping the rest of the Communist-dominated unions off its shoes. Last week, with six already expelled, it called San Francisco's lean, hawk-nosed Longshore Boss Harry Bridges to Washington to stand trial on a charge of following the Moscow line and sabotaging C.I.O. policy.

For three days the hearings went on, behind closed doors in the C.I.O.'s limestone headquarters on Jackson Place, which looks out on the garden of Blair House (Harry Truman's bedroom is not much more than 50 feet away). William Steinberg, president of the pint-sized American Radio Association, was the prosecutor, and three C.I.O. union officers the judges. Bridges, accompanied by a gaudily shirted Hawaiian aide, argued back that all the charges were red herrings. Since a San Francisco federal jury had already decided that fiery Harry Bridges was a Communist, there seemed little doubt about the outcome.

Two more unions--the Marine Cooks and Stewards and the Fishermen & Allied Workers were scheduled for hearings this week. The Fur & Leather Workers would get the business in June--so would the United Furniture Workers unless a right-wing faction was successful in gaining control. After that the C.I.O. would be able to boast that it had done almost everything to preserve the "basic American trade union objectives" except to order George M. Cohan music on its picket lines.

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