The Great Hush,

The hush along the industrial front was almost unearthly. Could it be that everyone was just hard at work?

In Florida the sun shone brightly on a group of old men. There was 76-year-old Bill Green, a little deafer and shakier than he was last year; Big Bill Hutcheson, of the carpenters; Dan Tobin, of the teamsters; John Lewis, of the coal miners. They, and eleven others, were the executive council of the A.F.L., the bosses of more than 7,000,000 workingmen, assembled at Miami's Alcazar Hotel for their annual winter powwow.

President Green had put off a heavy black winter suit to emerge in black-&-white checks. John Lewis had arrived by limousine, demanding to know whether the hotel barbershop was Unionized. Told that it was, he had the works--shave, haircut, shampoo, massage and manicure. The 15 men met on the Alcazar's top floor last week, their thoughts on Washington, where Republican Congressmen were grinding out labor legislation.

Congress, in fact, was the reason for the hush.

Anxiously the 15 A.F.L. elders said: "An era of good feeling is setting in. Industrial strife is definitely on the wane. . . . Demands for [labor] legislation have gained support because of the wave of strikes . . . . We wish to emphasize that the industrial disturbances of 1946 were . . . a passing phenomenon. . . ."

Enactment of the Republican-sponsored labor laws "instead of reducing strikes would have the opposite effect."

In other words, the U.S. would rue the day if the 80th Congress now undertook to undo the work of New Deal Congresses.

Mood of Nonviolence. In Washington, Senator Robert Taft's Labor Committee went on about its work. Congressmen were not in a violent mood. But they were prepared to curb labor as it had not been curbed in years. On the Committee's table were bills to set up a federal mediation board which would replace Labor Secretary Schwellenbach's conciliation service; bills to outlaw the closed shop, to end industrywide bargaining, to amend the Wagner Act.

Before the Taft Committee came an expert witness: 56-year-old Dr. Leo Wolman, professor of economics at Columbia University, onetime adviser to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, a longtime student of trade unionism whose practical and independent views have caused labor to damn him more than once. What kind of a future did Wolman see under present labor laws?

Unwise to Accept. "The comparative peace which has prevailed since October 1946," he said, "should not mislead us into thinking that the causes of strikes have been dissipated and that we are now on the threshold of industrial quiet and harmony." The chief reason for the great hush, he thought, was the November election results. "The heart of the problem is [still] the rise of a private institution, the national union, which has the power to close up the country's basic industries . . . impose on the country arbitrary, monopolistic economic decisions."

Two courses were open to Congress, he said. One was to continue the labor policy of the past 15 years, a policy which "rests on the assumption that union power will henceforth be used with wisdom and restraint, and that we need not fear in the near future another outbreak of severe and crippling strikes. . . . These are assumptions which it would be most unwise for us to accept."

The other course: to "attempt to reestablish equality under the law" by 1) "arresting the trend towards labor monopoly," and 2) amending the Wagner Act.

In Miami, the 15 A.F.L. elders gazed moodily out over Biscayne Bay. Bill Green, in his black-&-white checks, thought he would go out to Hialeah race track and watch the pink flamingos.

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