MICHIGAN: Prodigy's Progress

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What smart labor leaders—like C.I.O. State President Gus Scholle and Walter Reuther—really want out of political control is not patronage, because they don't want to lose their active labor leaders to politics. The P.A.C. is supported by contributions of its members, and neither needs, nor wants, political kickbacks. Nor do the labor leaders want political publicity. They have learned the hard way (e.g., in Detroit's mayoralty campaign) that the C.I.O.'s open endorsement can be the kiss of death. During the 1950 campaign, P.A.C. workers deliberately identified themselves simply as "Democrats," even in dealing with C.I.O. workers.

What Scholle, Reuther & Co. wanted—and got—was effective control of policymaking jobs. At the outset of his first term Soapy Williams appointed as his press secretary and right-hand man Paul Weber, executive secretary of the Detroit Newspaper Guild. Weber was Gus Scholle's hand-picked recommendation. To this day Weber writes and edits most of Soapy's speeches, and thinks up the gimmicks of Soapy's "Build Michigan" legislative program.

"P.A.C. did not hesitate to bring pressure for sympathetic appointees to the Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission, the State Department of Labor, and the Public Service Commission," wrote a P.A.C.-C.I.O. research assistant in a study of Michigan politics published last week.* By 1950, she notes, the platform of the Michigan Democratic Party took on a striking resemblance to the P.A.C. legislative program.

Favorite Son. Soapy Williams has been an ineffective governor largely because he plays his legislative program from a strictly partisan angle. Like Harry Truman with the 80th Congress, Williams attacks his Republican legislature for failure to carry out the Williams program without trying to find a statesmanlike middle ground for action. For example, Michigan is rolling up an ever-increasing deficit. Soapy wants to lessen it by a corporate income tax (a C.I.O. project which would sock General Motors alone some $27 million a year). Soapy has vetoed major Republican efforts to work out substitute measures, which, say the Republicans, could have cleaned up the deficit.

As election gets closer, Soapy has taken a firm tone to prove his independence of the C.I.O., and C.I.O. has cheerfully joined in this chorus of innocence. When Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg died, the C.I.O. came forward with its candidate, C.I.O.-man George Edwards, onetime Detroit city council president. Soapy, on Hicks Griffiths' advice, rejected Edwards and told the C.I.O. he was going to pick Detroit Newsman Blair Moody, an old, personal friend. The C.I.O. publicly beat its breast over this "defeat," but had no really serious objections. And any doubts about Moody's relations with labor were dispelled at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.