Is Compulsory Unionism More Important Than Viet Nam?

The U.S. Senate had been hamstrung for nine days by a filibuster that Minority Leader Everett Dirksen called "the second battle of 14(b)." As in the first, which was waged during the waning days of last year's congressional session, Dirksen's aim was to block Administration attempts to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which permits states to outlaw union membership as a condition of employment. The talkathon began when Majority Leader Mike Mansfield moved that the Senate take up the repeal bill; Dirksen got the floor --and held on for dear life.

By all odds, it was the most flaccid filibuster in memory. There was no reading of recipes or telephone books, none of the oldtime Bible-spouting, rip-snorting oratory. Dirksen and his filibuster co-captain, North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin, had assigned each of their 27 teammates to a group and a captain; each was prepared to carry on night and day if pushed. But nobody was pushing. Majority Leader Mansfield refused to hold marathon sessions, saw to it that the Senate always recessed in time for dinner, and once even in time for lunch--all of which moved Oregon's waspish Wayne Morse to complain that the Senate was keeping "banker's hours."

Dirksen used to advantage a Senate rule by which no committee other than Appropriations may meet while the main body is in session. "I must insist on that rule," he intoned in his best steamboat-Gothic profundo. "I cannot, helter-skelter, permit one committee to meet and not another." Arkansas Democrat William Fulbright protested in vain that his Foreign Relations Committee urgently needed to review President Johnson's $275 million supplemental request for economic aid to South Viet Nam. The problem could easily be resolved, Dirksen countered, by getting Mansfield to withdraw his motion to take up repeal of 14(b). "Is compulsory unionism more important than the young men who are slogging among the insects and the slime and the mud of Viet Nam?" asked Dirksen. "If Viet Nam is important, good. Then let the President come down to us and ask us to withdraw it. It is that simple."

By week's end the pressure had gotten too much for Mansfield, who announced that he would ask for a vote this week on a cloture petition to shut off the filibuster. That was fine with Dirksen. With all but six of his 32 Republican colleagues firmly behind him, and strong support from Southern Democrats, he was confident of getting the 34 votes needed to defeat cloture. For Mansfield to win, said Dirksen, "it would take nothing short of a miracle--or an earth convulsion."

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