National Affairs: Never Again

When Communist-liner Lee Pressman was booted out of his job as the C.I.O.'s general counsel last winter, it was with the friendly understanding that he would still be called on for odd chores as a private lawyer. Thus bolstered, Lawyer Pressman moved to New York, bought a $30,000 house in suburban Mt. Vernon and started running for Congress as an American Labor Party candidate from Brooklyn. He spent his spare time helping mastermind Henry Wallace's campaign for the presidency. But last week he presented a bill for his first legal assignment from the C.I.O. It presumably insured him against ever getting another.

For helping to test the campaign-expenditures provision of the Taft-Hartley law (TIME, June 28), Pressman collected a whopping $37,500 for himself—with an equal amount for his co-counsel, Charles J. Margiotti of Pittsburgh, and $9,000 in additional expenses. Angrily ordering immediate payment of the whole bill, C.I.O. President Phil Murray noted bitterly: "The fee would have been outrageous, even for Standard Oil."