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Show Labor's Interests Fused With Average Citizen s By BAUKIIAGE Nrivs Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, IGlli Eye Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. "There never will be a Labor party in the U. S." In the aftermath of the election, I couldn't help cogitating these words, spoken to me several years ago F by an official who f helped write . ... ; some of the most :: m important New ; - Deal labor legis- ..-, " 0 lation a decade i -r.. t ago. f The reasons V " f given were that . j Sa ? workers in Amer f K J ica were individ ? j uals first and p ' members of la- L.-.: .v ..T bor unions after- feii b ,y -s ward they were primarily citi- Baukhage zens with group interests common to other citizens. They didn't look at themselves as a political unit. In analyzing the new congress, some people have made the mistake of pointing to the defeat of candidates candi-dates conspicuously endorsed by the CIO-PAC and the victory of those marked for purge. Then, because the PAC is an institution which has behind it one of the two big international interna-tional union organizations, these people imply that because of the defeat de-feat of the PAC, labor itself was defeated. As a matter of fact, labor la-bor was not beaten by any opposing oppos-ing group. It was not a question of labor, politically organized, meet ing organized political opposition. It was a case ol a lot of men who happen hap-pen to belong to unions plus a lot of others who don't going to the polls and utterly disregarding the wishes of a group which had tried to attach itself to the labor union and thus proving (as my friend said) that American labor is an American Ameri-can citizen drst and a lot of other things next and when he sits in his union meeting he is a member of that local and not a member oi a political party. I haven't the slightest doubt that many an American citizen, who otherwise might not have voted, did so because of the energetic en-ergetic efforts of persons inspired in-spired by the CIO-PAC booklets and contacts, the chief aim ol which was to get voters to the polls. I am equally certain that of these voters who exercised their franchise chiefly because of CIO-PAC nudging, many voted vot-ed quite the opposite to what the CIO-PAC wished. GOP Win Stems . From Many Causes But this election was something more than a revolt against the frank effort of CIO to reward those who had espoused specific measures or to punish those who didn't. When GufTy, Mead and Murdock were mowed down in the senate, men who certainly spoke the speech as labor considered it should be spoken, when 20 congressmen, marked for the purge at the PAC meeting in Atlantic At-lantic City last spring, were all reelected re-elected with one exception (and that was Representative Slaughter, beaten beat-en by the President's own special efforts in the primaries); when things like that happen, you know that plenty of perfectly good union members in perfectly good standing were voting against the preachments preach-ments of the PAC. Perhaps if it had not been for two other circumstances circum-stances PAC's views might not have ! been so vehemently opposed up and down the line. Both have to do with good old American customs which spring from frontier days when emergency situations had to be met with emergency measures for the sake of simple self-preservation. One of those customs which has precedent implied all through the constitution is that too much power isn't good for anybody, and in a republic you don't elect people for life, or put one party in power indefinitely. in-definitely. That is one thing that accounted for most of the votes against the "ins" regardless of the candidates' persuasions. Another factor which added to the landslide quality of the vote is the old law of action and reaction. re-action. Americans have a habit of going to extremes. They have certain cer-tain tastes inherited from pioneers that make them like their music loud, their horses fast, their stakes high, their goals worth winning. They are not as fast to start either a fight or a frolic as some nations, but when they do get "het up" oh, my! Failure to recognize that fact has caused what was the greatest military nation of its time to be licked twice in a generation. It was this characteristic, I feel sure, which caused Americans Amer-icans of all sorts to swing much farther toward the conservative side than they normally would have done. Their patience had been exhausted by the efforts of a screaming minority to implant Communism on our soil and thus attempt to bring to this country the very thing from which America was supposed to be the escape, tyranny of the minority. minor-ity. Of late it has become the style to sneer at the majority. The "vulgar herd" and the "mob" were the contemptuous con-temptuous epithets of kings. The modern majority-scorner is more careful of his language. He phrases it so that it will appeal to the "peasant "peas-ant and worker" or to the readers of persuasive and expensive page advertisements ad-vertisements in metropolitan papers. The language differs when it comes from the extreme right and the extreme ex-treme left, but its purpose is the same: minority rule. Totalitarianism Totalitarian-ism as produced by a Hitler or a Stalin is not too different from that more subtly suggested by the powerful power-ful pressure group in a capitalistic country. The 80th congress has a tougtier job than the 79th. We hope it will be able to handle it. It was not elected to smash labor. It was elected elect-ed to carry out a mandate (among others) to help keep labor from 1 mashing itself. Parties Split On Hot Issues It may be that after the next election elec-tion we can get down to the old party par-ty lines again, but it can't be done yet. There is still a pretty bad scrambling of Democrats and Republicans Re-publicans on many issues which will split parties as it has before. It will be a relief if we do get back to honest labels again. The British are still having their troubles on this score. The Conservatives, who are the "outs," have discussed changing their name. They have done it before. They have been known as the "Tory," the "Unionist" and the "National" as well as the "Conservative." Sir Hartley Shawcross, brilliant British prosecutor, taunted them about this recently and even went as far as calling them "neo-Nazis." This sounded strange from those dignified lips which hurled one of the most restrained and yet most devastating dev-astating charges against the Nuernberg Nuern-berg war criminals that I have ever heard in a courtroom. It would take a pretty inflamed imagination to see in the great majority of American or British conservatives, a similarity to the Nazis a different differ-ent breed of cats! Marianne Ready To Forgive Fritz 'Twas the day after Christmas in Frankfurt, Germany, 1945, when all through the ether there was static enough to make a trans-Atlantic broadcast impossible. I had an exclusive ex-clusive story, so I sent it as a dispatch dis-patch to David Wills, my substitute, who was sitting at the microphone in Washington to cope with such contingencies. The story (I said in my dispatch) would probably be denied, and I admitted ad-mitted it seemed incredible, for it revealed a plan of the French government gov-ernment to help re-populate France by admitting German war prisoners to citizenship. It seemed impossible, impossi-ble, that, with the ancient Franco-German Franco-German hatred so recently fanned to new fury, Marianne would take her "traditional enemy" to her bosom. The story was broadcast and that was the end, until, some 10 months later, it was confirmed in a matter-of-fact statement of the Fr-ich minister min-ister of population, then touring America. A copy of the original dispatch which I exhumed from the files reflects re-flects my feeling in its incredibility as I stood admidst the ruins of a German city with the memories of a twice-devastated France clear in my mind. The idea now apparently is accepted without comment. How well the plan will succeed, I do not know. But to me it is a comforting thought that it has been proposed because it shows so clearly how war hates are artificial things, and bear no part in the relationships re-lationships between individuals. BARBS . . . by B aukhase f What's happened to the man who I used to brag about never having j gone to college but having three col- j lege men working for him? When the G.I. students get through, a man who h.isn't been to college will be a r:.r.y !:' !ie of '! e girls who want mini; ;i t . .'.y cold at all. The reason some of the Democrats wanted the president to resign after the Republican victory may have been because they were too young to remember there were two parties in the country. All's well that ends well, as the man said when he s'ruck water in the desert. |