LABOR: Belated Test

When Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over his veto, President Truman promised that it would be enforced as written. Last week Attorney General Tom Clark belatedly set out to make good on this Administration promise. At Clark's request, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted the C.I.O. and C.I.O.'s President Phil Murray for violating the law's ban against spending union funds for political purposes.

Murray had deliberately invited prosecution. Three weeks after the law was passed last June, he signed a Page One editorial in the C.I.O. News endorsing the candidacy of Democrat Edward A. Garmatz in a special Maryland congressional election. Then he ordered 1,000 extra copies of the paper containing the editorial printed and distributed in Baltimore. Candidate Garmatz won.

Does this form of electioneering actually represent an illegal expenditure? The law, as written, does not specifically say so. But Bob Taft; one of its coauthors, once said on the Senate floor that the general ban on expenditures was meant to prevent labor publications from giving any editorial expression to their political preferences. In this case, cried Big Labor, the law is "a direct and unconstitutional assault" on freedom of the press. Attorney General Clark was inclined to agree. Last week, even Bob Taft admitted that the law needed clarification.