National Affairs: Two Other Fellows

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The Smith-Connally War Labor Disputes Act—the great trap which Congress designed to bring John L. Lewis crashing down into captivity—was a confessed failure. Having dug the pit in anger at the series of coal strikes called by Lewis in 1943, Congress was now filling it up in quiet shame.

In every respect, the Smith-Connally law had proved one of the most inept pieces of legislation in U.S. history. It had left John Lewis free to pursue a more arrogant path than ever, because it set up the machinery for dramatizing strike threats. It had angered labor, had prevented no strikes. It had made the Government a kind of silent partner in those that did occur.

Furthermore, its ban on election contributions by unions had not prevented the C.I.O.'s Political Action Committee from helping to swing the 1944 campaign by spending its own money in the primaries, acting as "broker" for contributions by individual union members in the election.

Last week the House Military Affairs Committee started hearings on a bill to repeal the law, heard testimony that by now the National Labor Relations Board had time for nothing except presiding over the strike votes required by the law, that the board could not possibly keep up with new disputes. Strike elections at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will cost NLRB $100,000 and inestimable time, although their results are foregone conclusions. In the first two weeks of October, 3,900 other requests for strike elections were filed.

Sponsor of the repeal bill was Virginia's Howard Smith, who was only too happy to have his name on the law when it still looked like a deadfall for labor. Smith and Co-author Tom Connally each seemed to contend that the law's mistakes had been drawn up by the other—or perhaps even by two other fellows.