Fair Target

With some disapproving sniffs here & there, the Senate Labor Committee last week approved the men whom Harry Truman had picked to help administer the Taft-Hartley Act. For the two new $12,000-a-year jobs which the act set up on the expanded National Labor Relations Board, the President had nominated one New Deal Democrat and one Republican; for key job of general counsel he had named a quasi-Republican.

The committee unanimously approved the general counsel: Robert N. Denham. He will have full and independent powers to investigate violations, file complaints and prosecute offenders before the board. As such he will be a fair target for both labor & management.

A jovial, mule-stubborn, Missouri-born Republican, Bob Denham switched to the Democrats in 1938 to help beat Franklin Roosevelt's attempted purge of conservative Democratic Senator Millard Tydings. Officially he has never switched back. He first turned up in Washington officialdom in 1933 to help reorganize the closed national banks, after a law career in Seattle and Manhattan financial circles. Since 1938 he has been an NLRB trial examiner.

Under the Smoke. Said Bob Denham, crouching uneasily in no man's land: "The act is not as bad as it has been painted. I am confident we will find that it will not be nearly as hard to get along with as some people feared."

But Bob Denham might find it hard to get along with some of his board members. One of the new appointees was Utah's ex-Senator Abe Murdock, a down-the-line New Dealer to whom three G.O.P. committeemen strongly objected. The other was New York's J. Copeland Gray, a liberal Republican and up-the-ladder veteran of the Wage Stabilization Board and the Regional War Labor Board. The committee vote on him: 9-to-3. Gray's proudest boast: in 17 years as labor expert for Houdaille-Hershey's Buffalo subsidiaries (shock absorbers and firearms), no time was ever lost through labor disputes.

Left & Right. The whole board, businessmen grumbled, had a decidedly pro-union cast. As businessmen saw it, Murdock would join ex-Kansas Congressman John M. Houston away over on the left; Gray would join young, earnest Chairman Paul M. Herzog, protege of New York's Senator Robert F. Wagner, a little to the left. Only Old Member James J. Reynolds Jr., brother of beefy Newsman Quentin Reynolds, would be on the right.

In the rush of last-minute business, the Senate did not get around to acting on the appointees. They will serve, nevertheless, by interim appointment, until the Senate does act--some time next January.

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