National Affairs: Rip Tide

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"Jimmy" Byrnes is one of Franklin Roosevelt's most useful, trusted and intimate Senate lieutenants. Stunned, therefore, were other Administration Senators when the clerk read off the terms of his amendment: "It is further declared to be the public policy of the United States that no employe of any producer of coal whose employment has been terminated, or who for any reason has ceased to work for such producer, shall remain upon the property upon which he was employed after he has received a written notice from such producer to leave such property."

For a moment, while the implications of those words sank in, the Senate sat in shocked silence. Then the storm broke, and in one of the most exciting spontaneous debates of this or many a past session, the Senate talked Sit-Down, and nothing else for the rest of the week.

"I yield to no man in adherence to Union Labor," cried California's venerable Hiram Johnson. "But I am opposed to the Sit-Down strike."

"I am not going to condemn the Sit-Down strike," boomed Idaho's venerable William E. Borah, "until I know all the facts and factors which enter into the question, both legal, moral and economic."

Majority Leader Robinson, who until President Roosevelt's return had been one of the most vehement in calling for action on the Sit-Down, leaped into action as Administration field marshal, bellowed that Senator Byrnes was proposing to turn striking miners and their families who lived in company houses "out into the storm," that a Senate pronouncement would only "inflame" Labor disputes, demanded that the amendment be referred to. the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee for study.

Senator Robinson admitted that he disapproved of the Sit-Down. considered it illegal. So did other Senators who sprang up to object that the amendment was badly phrased and unjustly applied to coal miners, to blame the Sit-Down on employers' anti-union tactics. But Senator Johnson roared: "We do a great disservice to this Nation when in this body, gentlemen debate the Sit-Down strike and say it is unlawful but—but—but, and then begin to give fanciful reasons for its existence."

As his colleagues squirmed and dodged. Michigan's plump, thin-haired Vanclenberg, Republican might-have-been of 1936 and maybe of 1940, put their agony in unequivocating words. Declared he: "One of the reasons why we in the Senate find ourselves in trouble at the moment in connection with this problem is the fact that Governmental agencies dealing with labor relationships have been so completely silent respecting the Sit-Down strike. They are very vocal indeed respecting the obligations of the employer, but as silent as the tomb respecting obligations to law and order and the maintenance of civilized society. ... If this proposal goes to a vote on the floor of the Senate and is defeated, the inevitable interpretation will be that the Senate has declined to condemn the Sit-Down strike. . . . That is the terrible feature of the situation in which we now find ourselves."