The Penalty of Failure

At the C.I.O. convention a month ago, Phil Murray stormed at some of his union leaders for being Communists, at others for failing to work hard enough at their jobs. He struck out immediately at some Redlined wrongdoers.* Last week his wrath fell on one of the failures.

He pulled the rug out from under Samuel Wolchok, boss of the strife-torn Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, and ordered the C.I.O.'s powerful Amalgamated Clothing Workers to take over Wolchok's territory.

In a Bargain Basement. It was not an altogether deserved fate for Wolchok. A onetime grocery clerk, an earnest and unpolished man, he had been president of the department store union since its founding in New York in 1937. From the very beginning the union was ridden by Communists. Department store clerks --sometimes college-educated, generally low-paid, and frequently resentful--were susceptible to Communist colonizing. It was once said: "When the revolution comes it will start in a bargain basement."

Wolchok and his organizing director, an oldtime Socialist named Jack Altman, had to spend a good deal of their time fighting the Communist Party. Last year, Altman organized a trade union group in New York to fight the Communists who dominated the Greater New York C.I.O. Council. At that time, Murray was pussyfooting around the Communist-C.I.O. situation. Instead of supporting Altman, Murray ordered him to disband his anti-Red group. Meanwhile, the Communists in hapless Sam Wolchok's union went their own defiant way; one Red local after another seceded.

Fine Opportunity. Nevertheless, Murray's action came as a shock to Wolchok and Altman, who had hoped for aid and sympathy from Murray, not liquidation. Murray's order did not dissolve Wolchok's union; Sam would be allowed to hang on to as many of his members as he could. But in the face of an organizing drive by the Amalgamated, that probably wouldn't be very many or for very long. The Amalgamated has a membership of 375,000, a treasury of $6,000,000, and a hustling set of hard-nosed organizers. For the Amalgamated's president, spade-bearded Jacob Potofsky, Russian-born but no Communist, an elegant old warhorse of trade unionism, it was a fine opportunity. An estimated 6,000,000 store workers in the U.S. are still unorganized.

* He liquidated the Communist-dominated Greater New York C.I.O. Council, and ordered the left-wing Farm Equipment & Metal Workers to merge with the United Auto Workers.

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