Rarely had a U.S. President taken such a rawhiding from a single, powerful group of his constituents. Harry Truman's call for merciless anti-strike action (TIME, June 3) had hardly died down over the nation's radios when organized labor set up its counter-cry.
In Manhattan's Madison Square Park, Alexander Fell Whitney, boss of the Railroad Trainmen and the man whom the President had roasted to a turn, rose to his feet and cried: "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and you can't make a President out of a ribbon clerk." All around him the crowd—drummed up by the militant National Maritime Union—cheered.
The crowd said the same with its placards, on which the paint was hardly dry. "Down with Truman," they said. "Break with Truman . . . United Labor must defeat Truman. . . . Labor must organize a third party now." And on a sign in the background that ugly word "Fascism" appeared. "The hell it can't happen here," trumpeted the sign. "Fascism is here today" (see cut).
In the speeches and statements that issued from union halls, President Truman was a "double-crosser," a "strikebreaker" and the author of a "slave bill." Red Mike Quill, New York City's noisy American Labor Party councilman, shrilled: "President Truman has sold out to our native fascists . . . betrayed the program of Roosevelt."
Dictator? Labor's topmost bosses cried the alarum. Placid Bill Green roused himself: "Fascism may grip America unawares." P.A.C. Boss Sidney Hillman stirred on his sickbed: "The most extreme and autocratic controls over the liberties and democratic rights of American workers ever seriously proposed in the history of our nation." Phil Murray could see "destruction of the labor movement" as Harry Truman's sole aim. John Lewis, fresh from his handshaking with the President, was discreetly silent.
The liberal and leftish press was in similar full cry. Wrote the New Republic's knowing Washington Correspondent "T.R.B.": Draft men who strike, in peacetime, into the armed services! Is this Russia or Germany?" Screamed New York City's PM: "A dictator's life-and-death power over American labor." Speaker after speaker—Senator Pepper, Harold Ickes, Henry Morgenthau — cried that Franklin Roosevelt would never have done what Harry Truman did. They were right. True, Franklin Roosevelt, only three years before, had asked Congress for exactly the same power.* And twice-in 1944 and again in 1945—Franklin Roosevelt had called for a national service law which would have made every U.S. worker subject to Government discipline. In his 1944 proposal, F.D.R. had specified to Congress that he wanted a measure "which . . . will prevent strikes."
But that was when a fighting war was on. Truman's bungling was measurable by the fact that he had asked for a kind of totalitarianism which Roosevelt had not pushed for even during war. From labor's point of view, there was little excuse for Harry Truman's extravagant attempt to be a "strong man."