The Silent One

Labor unions, unlike duchies or debts, are not customarily passed down from father to son. Except in the Carpenters' union. From the time he was a schoolboy, Maurice Hutcheson was groomed as carefully as any prince to take over the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, which had long been the personal fief of his father, the late William ("Big Bill") Hutcheson. On his retirement in 1952, after 36 years as the dictator of the brotherhood, Big Bill simply turned the union over to his son.

Under Maurice's leadership, the Carpenters continued to thrive. Membership grew to 850,000, and the members boasted that theirs was the largest craftsmen's union in the world. Maurice, as quiet and dutiful as his father was bombastic and domineering, rarely had anything to say. In the executive council of the A.F.L.C.I.O., where Maurice still ranks as a national vice president, he often sat through four-hour sessions without opening his mouth, soon became known as "Maurice the Silent." In the subsidized biography of Big Bill Hutcheson (for which the union, if not its rank-and-file members, cheerfully paid $310,000), Author Maxwell Raddock described Maurice: "He seems to possess all the qualities of a leader; he is tall, he has a good heart, and he is moderate in everything, even in the use of his intelligence."

Three years ago, silent Maurice and two other union officials were indicted on charges of bribing a state official and making a fast $81,000 in land sales for a scandal-scarred Indiana highways project. (They later turned the money over to the state.) When a Senate committee pressed him for the details, Maurice was as untalkative as ever: he ducked 18 questions without bothering to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Last May, Hutcheson was fined $500 and sentenced to six months in jail for contempt of Congress. Last week, his troubles multiplying like wood shavings, Maurice and Carpenters' Vice President O. William Blaier were sentenced to 2 to 14 years, fined $250, and stripped of their right to vote or hold public office for five years. When he heard the verdict, Maurice, as usual, had no comment.

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