Detour

Organized labor, which likes to say it is on the march, hit a wide detour at the polls. At least 25 Congressmen who had generally voted in a way that labor approved lost their jobs; of eleven Senators marked by Big Labor for defeat, only one (Missouri's Donnell) went down.

Among labor's losers in the House were such union stalwarts as Andrew Biemiller of Wisconsin, who helped lead the northern faction against the Dixiecrats in 1948; Andy Jacobs of Indiana, a onetime labor lawyer; Thomas Burke of Ohio, a C.I.O. member; Stephen Young of Ohio, who had retired Taft's friend George Bender in 1948, only to be beaten by Bender.

Organized labor, which had spent more than a million dollars on the campaign, tried to console itself with the thought that if it had done any less, the Republican sweep might have been even bigger. Apparently its leaders did not consider an alternative conclusion: that its efforts had antagonized as often as they helped.

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