Reckless Partisan

Congress' immediate reaction to Harry Truman's seizure of the steel mills was a volley of polysyllabic denunciation: "usurpation . . . socialization . . . intemperate . . . dangerous implications . . ." New Hampshire's Republican Styles Bridges demanded a Judiciary Committee inquiry. South Carolina's Democrat Burnet Maybank called a halt to consideration of the controls program, due to expire June 30. Even the most ardent friends of labor warned that Harry Truman was wielding a two-edged sword--one that in the hands of another President might be turned against labor itself.

There was no question that past Presidents, in time of crisis, have stretched their vaguely defined constitutional powers. When defense production was threatened in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt seized aircraft and shipbuilding companies. A famous example was Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in the Civil War. "My oath to preserve the Constitution," he explained later, "imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that Government, that Nation, of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the Nation and yet preserve the Constitution?"

Was there no other way out this time? There were arguments of a sort against using the Taft-Hartley law. The steelworkers had already postponed their strike, voluntarily, for an even longer period than Taft-Hartley could have enforced. There was certainly a sound argument to be made for a pay increase in steel. The steelworkers had been without a raise since 1950, while workers in the auto and electrical industries had got raises up to 17-c- an hour.

But the President's reckless action was not simply a question of constitutional law, to be argued out in the courts. And more than a matter of dollars & cents for either side was at issue. Harry Truman, like all U.S. Chief Executives, must play two roles: President of all the people, and boss of a political party. In seizing the steel mills and violently taking sides, in unnecessarily stretching the vast powers of the presidency, Truman had acted primarily as a politician, not as a President.

A tipoff on the Administration's motive came inadvertently last week from Price Stabilizer Ellis Arnall. "The steel situation," said Arnall, "is the stuff on which campaigns--political campaigns--are won & lost." Politician Harry Truman was obviously operating on the axiom of political arithmetic that there are more votes in Big Labor than in Big Steel.

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