The Man from Hardscrabble Hill

(See Cover)

One of the things William Green likes best about being president of the American Federation of Labor is the opportunity it gives him to ride on trains. Mild, deaf, ministerial Bill Green travels 20,000 miles a year on them, but he never tires of the cushioned delights of Pullman bedrooms, is never bored by the sight of flying landscapes. To Bill Green, an old and often lonely man, the railroad ticket is a badge of success, a heart-warming reminder that he is in demand as a speaker, has a salary of $20,000 a year (plus expenses) and a place in the ranks of Prominent Citizens.

In San Francisco this week 2,883 enjoyable miles from his bare and fusty Washington office, he was engaged in the most stirring of his official privileges—presiding over the annual convention of the A.F.L. Standing on the stage of San Francisco's echoing Civic Center auditorium, he could look out at and appraise the great men of U.S. labor's oldest clan—the hard-eyed and corpulent satraps in serge suits and blucher shoes, the sleek attorneys, the jovial bully boys, and all the delegates, great & small, from all the temples and parishes of craft unionism.

To a man who had sweated in a coal mine for 23 of his 77 years, and who could remember when organized labor led an almost furtive existence, it was a thrilling sight. In October 1947, the A.F.L. had 7,600,000 members—45,000 of them gained in the last twelve months. It was rich and powerful and often spoke to the public in the rich basso of full-page newspaper advertisements.

"Slave Law." As the convention began all this wealth, power and ballyhoo was committed to relentless war on the Taft-Hartley Act.

To the average citizen, labor's fury and consternation over the Taft-Hartley Act was a cause for mild astonishment. It had long seemed inevitable that the Wagner Act would be replaced by a more conservative measure. Labor excesses and labor's stupidity—its irresponsible use of strikes, its scorn of public opinion, its tolerance of gangsters in its ranks—had hastened the advent of such a law.

But the new law had not denied labor the right to bargain collectively, had not broken its big sword, the strike, and had not deprived it of minimum wages. The A.F.L.'s expensive attempt to brand it a "slave labor law" had fallen dismally flat. The average citizen simply looked at U.S. wage rates* and asked: "Where are the slaves?"

But organized labor, which is committed to the doctrine of always asking for more and of never making a retreat except under the pressure of a greater counterforce, could not and did not take such a view. Even the pinkest of labor leaders would admit, privately, that as long as the U.S. has prosperity—uneasy as it might be—the Taft-Hartley Law would work few hardships on labor. But for tactical reasons, and because it feared that the combination of the law and a depression might do them mortal harm, both the left and the right of organized labor stood solidly against the law.