Screeching Pause

Louisiana's Dixiecrat Congressman F. Edward Hebert put it in language any politician could understand. "So the proposition is very clear," he said on the House floor "Your vote is for sale for a job or jobs." It was a blunt denunciation of the price tag Harry Truman had put on political patronage (see above).

The House machinery, which had been turning out bills like sausages, had come to a screeching pause. Its legislative teeth had ground into a major Harry Truman campaign promise: to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. On the floor, Truman Democrats were locked over the issue with a stubborn and derisive coalition of Republicans and the Southern colleagues of Edward Hebert. Labor agents and lobbyists -- close to 400 of them -- packed the gal lery, patrolled the corridors. So did as many lobbyists of industry.

Majority Leader John McCormack wrathfully replied to Hebert. What right did Hebert have to complain, McCormack wanted to know, since "he actively and openly supported a splinter party of the Democratic Party . . . Only through tolerance is he sitting here as a member of the Democratic Party."

Michigan's Clare Hoffman lifted a nasal voice from the Republican side. "Do not be too much concerned about these jobs, you Democrats," he mocked, "be cause in Michigan and ultimately in the nation these jobs are not going to be given to Democrats; they are going to the people named by the C.I.O. boys."

Views on Mules. Half a dozen Democrats were on their feet. What did U.S. voters mean in the last election if they did not mean the Taft-Hartley Act should be repealed? Northern Democrats warned that 103 members who voted for the act in the spring of 1947 had been beaten at the November 1948 polls.

Missouri's Republican Dewey Short was not impressed. "The ones who pussyfooted, sidestepped, straddled, carried water on both shoulders and compromised were left at home," he roared. "You still have a majority in both houses of Congress who voted to override the President's veto."*

Incidentally, Dewey Short was not against labor, he wanted it known. He had been a worker since he was eight years old. He had sold papers, shined shoes, handled cakes of ice "bigger than I was--they slide," he declaimed. "I know what it is to look at the south end of a mule going north down a corn row all day long."

Short had nothing on another Missourian in the field of the corn-fed anecdote. Homespun Democrat George Christopher wanted the House to know that he had been farming since he was old enough and he was for repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. Said Christopher proudly, turning Short's mule around: "I invite you all to look at another Missourian who has looked for long hours at the north end of that southbound mule."

Stiffening Changes. So the debate went. Underneath it, a far-reaching political and social battle was being fought. After eleven years of the Wagner Act, two years of the Taft-Hartley Act, Congress was trying to decide whether the U.S. should try some compromise between the two--and if there were compromises, how far they should go either way. On no other piece of legislation was Harry Truman staking so much of his political prestige. Beaten in the Senate on his civil rights program, he wanted desperately to win his labor bill.

The Truman legislation was wrapped up in the Lesinski bill, named after the House Labor Committee's tactless chairman, John Lesinski, a labor Congressman from Michigan since 1933. The Lesinski bill would 1) repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, 2) reinstate the Wagner Act with a few slightly stiffening changes. One of the changes was a wispy device for handling national emergency strikes by setting up presidential boards of inquiry and requiring a 30-day "cooling-off period."

But the moment the bill was opened to amendments from the floor, Georgia's John Stephens Wood was on his feet. He offered an "amendment" which was actually an entire bill. Congressman Wood's proposal would, in effect, re-enact the Taft-Hartley Act. The fight promptly became: Lesinski bill v. Wood bill.

Pink Distraction. There was one distraction from an independent source. New York's pink-hued Vito Marcantonio popped up with a bald amendment which, after throwing out the Taft-Hartley Act, would reinstate the 1935 Wagner Act as it stood. This was exactly what C.I.O. leaders had originally demanded. Marcantonio shrilled that he wanted to make the issue clear-cut. But it was just the kind of clearcutness that cautious Administration leaders wanted to avoid.

The Republicans' Joe Martin stepped across the aisle and whispered to Marcantonio. Vito got to his feet and demanded teller vote on his measure. Republicans stood as a man to support this demand, then filed down the aisle to be counted against the bill. Thus, angry and embarrassed Administration leaders were forced to make a public record of the fact that out & out reinstatement of labor's cherished Wagner Act was beaten by the House by an overwhelming 275 to 37 vote.

This week both sides danced nimbly and dizzily around, looking for parliamentary advantages. The main issue, however, was pretty clear. It was whether the U.S. was to have a tougher Wagner Act or simply a softer Taft-Hartley Act. The strategy of both sides was to find amendments to make their bills look more attractive to undecided voters. The fence-sitters, not the violent partisans, were the ones who would decide the outcome.

*In the present House, 226 members who were for overriding the veto were reelected; they are a majority. In the Senate, 68 members voted to override; 50 of them are left--also a majority.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.