The Right to Loyalty

No man can serve two masters.

--Matthew 6:24

The Communist party has long since been exposed as a secret conspiracy whose followers cannot give loyalty to any other master. In 1952 nobody should therefore deny the right of a newspaper to fire an employee who is a Communist. The American Newspaper Guild; having fought hard to fire Communists from its own paid jobs, could scarcely deny it. Nevertheless, last week the Guild found itself upholding the fantastic claim that a newspaper publisher has no right (let alone duty) to rid himself of Communist writers.

In Los Angeles, an impartial arbitrator had just decided that the fuzzily liberal tabloid Daily News had acted properly in firing Rewriteman Vern Partlow, and in refusing to rehire Movie Reviewer Darr Smith. Both men had been named by former Communists testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee as their onetime fellow members. Both men had refused to say under oath if they were, or had been Communists. The News's Executive Editor Lee F. Payne fired Partlow and struck Darr Smith's name off a rehiring list.

But News President Robert Smith soon made it plain that he was as concerned with a practical fear of possible "business" boycotts as he was with moral principles. Conceding that Partlow was an able employee who had never "slanted" his copy. Smith & aides promised Partlow his job back if only he would swear that the charges were not true.

Then the Guild brought the weird charge that the dismissals violated its contract with the News because no "sufficient cause" was given for dismissal. It also cited a state labor clause forbidding dismissal for "political beliefs." Arbitrator Paul A. Dodd, dean of Letters and Science at U.C.L.A., ruled that nobody had proved Partlow or Smith a Communist, and that anyway, that was not the issue. Dodd got to the heart of the matter: "A newspaper has. . . a quasi-public responsibility . . . In view of our nation's struggle today against the forces of Communism throughout the world, all those who hold a place of public influence and trust must be ready to stand up and answer the Communist charges . . . The management of a [newspaper] has a right to expect its employees who are so accused to answer these charges . . . This both men refused to do."

In spite of the obvious fairness of Dodd's decision, the Los Angeles Guild stuck to its anachronistic view that because the national Guild's constitution (written in 1933) specifically forbids any discrimination for political beliefs in admitting members, the Guild must therefore defend members fired for political reasons. President Smith might have done better to stand on a clear-cut principle, rather than the argument that Communists damage the paper "businesswise."

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