LABOR: The New Force

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Another broadside tells canvassers what to do: "Don't try to lay down the law. Try to gain your neighbor's confidence. Remember to make your visit brief. Don't interfere with family affairs. Leave them smiling. Whatever else you do, never get into an argument." As a slogan, P.A.C. recommends: "Love Thy Neighbor, and Organize Him."

P.A.C. is also skillful on the radio. A handbook advises PACsters how to get radio time. In the California primary, P.A.C. was especially effective against Congressman Costello with a transcription, broadcast at hourly intervals:

Phonograph Record: "I was absent I was absent I was absent. . . ."

Woman: "Stop that record. It must be broken. Nobody could be absent that many times."

Announcer: "Oh yes, Congressman Costello actually was. He holds the Congressional record for absenteeism. On 20 vital issues, he was absent eleven times. . . ."

This was corny, and it worked.

In Los Angeles, too, the United Auto Workers has completed an animated cartoon. This shows a race between two trains, the "Win-the-War-Special," on which the engine is a caricature of F.D.R. and the "Defeatist Limited," whose engine looks like a cartoon Senator, blowing hot air out of his stovepipe hat. In the nick of time, Citizen Joe throws the switch, derailing the Defeatist Limited, sending the Win-the-War-Special to Washington.

World to Come. Phil Murray, who has come a long way since his nonpartisan A.F. of L. days, has said: "What the Government gives, the Government can take away." P.A.C. well knows that labor's major dealings now and in the future are primarily with the Government, no matter how much unions might yearn for the simple days when they had only to deal with employers, P.A.C.'s program for 1944 is also aimed at making sure that the New Deal will not withdraw the generous hand it has held out to labor for eleven years.

But beyond its 1944 objective, P.A.C. has a far-sighted purpose. From now on, labor has political ambitions of its own. P.A.C.'s young thinkers—the Auto Workers' Walter Reuther, C.I.O. Secretary Jim Carey, Economist Ray Walsh—are already skeptical of the ability of private enterprise to provide full employment after the war. They argue that without Government initiative the U.S. cannot be effectively mobilized for peace; they are prepared to accept—and even seem eager for a postwar world in which the economic initiative belongs to the Government. P.A.C.'s 1944 platform is a specific blueprint calling for a planned economy, federally controlled—including everything from raising the standard of living in backward nations by granting them large credits, to free hot lunches for the 20,000,000 U.S. school children.

This is a lot more than Sam Gompers or Bob La Follette or Bill Green or John Lewis ever thought of. But if P.A.C. ever wins its objective, and becomes the balance of power in U.S. elections, the U.S. voters will hear a lot more about P.A.C.'s long-range plan.