OCR Text |
Show Inside Labor Murray Hits 'Plot' Against CIO By Victor Rlesel All wss quiet on the corner of Broad snd Wsll streets this morning ss I hurried by the pock-msrked marble of the "House of Morgan" msrks left by the famous bomb of flapper days. For yesrs after that explosion, ex-plosion, detectives watched from Its doorways snd sidewalks, until the "House" became a public bank. And though it's been out of the front "class war" lines snd headlines head-lines for a long, long time, for the past few weeks the best informed in-formed government officials hsve sst snd wsited for a verbal blast which might ahake thinga aa much ss the more gory attack at-tack of yesteryesr. With ths strike crisis growing tenser, ths new blsst wss inevitable, inevita-ble, the federals felt, and Inevitably Inevita-bly it came from the C I O's Phil Murray, whom government officiate offi-ciate have not been able to shske from the following hsrassed and bitter frame of mind: Murray had told ths federsl conciliators who are trying to end the steel stoppsge thst he wsf convtnreiJthat " i Walt Street comblnstion, led by the "House of Morgsn." waa deter- mined to do three things. What Murray Thinks From the psneled rooms In ths littls bsnk, standing on what's probably the world's most valuable piece of real eatate, there apurted a campaign, according ac-cording to Phil Murray, to smssh sll unions, to destroy the striking strik-ing United Steelworkers snd keep it from being "the hard core" of the entire CIO, snd to drive labor Into s bitter bsttle against President Trumsn. How could this Isst be sccomplished? Mr. Murray's thesis waa that Wall Street's flnsncisl interests wsnted the criticsl strike so thst ths Whits House would be forced to go Into court, under the Taft-Hartley Taft-Hartley law, and get itself a court order stopping the steel wslkout. Such action, ths C I O's embattled em-battled chief ssid, would, of course, antagonise all labor and break up the vote-catching coalition coali-tion which has elected snd reelected re-elected the Democrats for two decades. Mind Made Cp And no amount of argument by Mr. Trumsn's conciliators could shske this triple idea out of Murray They ssid, in effect, thst It sounded like blood and thunder out of an old Jsck London Lon-don novel. But Mr. Murray wss convinced there wss and is a plot sgslnst C I O and hit the road to tell his story in a different city each time, so thst the newspaper news-paper play would be big and would carry right bark to New York and Washington. At about ths very moment Murray blasted ths "House of Morgsn" in Chicsgo. Mr. Truman's Tru-man's aids were preparing to throw preasure on ths steel industry in-dustry to yield to the C I O's chief. They hsd two mighty important im-portant ressons for wanting immediate im-mediate Induatry compromise one economic, the other political. So ths federal peace makers were bsdly shaken by the blast, even before they stopped to think sbout the Justice or injustice injus-tice of Murray's attack. Why? Because the government mediators medi-ators want a aettlement before the steel strike Is four weeks old. For, It's the documented opinion of the U. S. lsbor departments experts thst the impsct on the nstlon's prosperity of the steel strike will be feather-gloved and "negligible" if the wslkout can be held down to a month. gecrei Report? Despite the strike, these experts ex-perts hsve finished a report to the White House (which msy not be publicized) disclosing thst the country's economic health our prosperity is not only holding hold-ing up but actually seems to be Improving. And these experts sre cheered by the discovery that "consumer "con-sumer buying is keeping up very well: unemployment claima have continued to drop, except, of course, in striks sress; federal reserve reports i Indicate healthy financial activity: production ia good, and the, stock msrket, which nesrlv slwsvs snticipates conditions six months off is running run-ning up higher , prices." Tnimaa Moves la So, to keep this prosperity, Mr. Truman decided to move in snd try through personal Intervention Interven-tion to kill the steel crisis within a month. As for the political reason: The conciliators know thst Phil Murray will be in an awkward position st his CIO convention unless he can face the overheated over-heated and overmilitant leftists with a strike victory in his pocket. Otherwise, how csn he refute the howling extremists' charge thst "big business" ia trying to crush CIO? And the government knows thst unless It gets a compromise settlement before the convention. conven-tion. Mr. Murray will be in the mood for a long, long strike sfter I the convention. Such s steel ' strike would not only hurt our nstional economy, but our inter-national inter-national politicking and ' rearmament re-armament ss well. And thst's why ths second historic his-toric blsst at the House of Moi-gaa Moi-gaa shook Mr. Trumaa as well. |