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Ball's bills might very well provoke labor into being even more belligerent.
Ball's bills were not politically expedient. Even if he did push them over on the Senate floor and get the House to go along, they would certainly face a presidential veto, in whole or in part. Then the fight would start all over again.
But Ball diligently applied his touchstone. He saw a growing labor monopoly driving employers to an even greater concentration of power, which would lead to more & more Government control. He concluded: "A free society cannot survive a labor monopoly."
Freedom & Equality. He placed his principles against such theories as those of the left-wing English scholar, Edward Hallett Carr, who wrote: "Equality in the abstract is purely formal... Even equality before the law may be a mockery when the law is framed by members of a privileged class. Freedom itself can be equally formal. Freedom to choose or refuse a job is unreal if freedom to refuse is merely tantamount to freedom to starve." It is a powerful and seductive line.
But Joe had an answer to this kind of dialectics—and he thought it was an important one for Americans to ponder. Whether he stood on the side of the angels depended upon where the angels stood. Let his decriers call him reactionary. Is Liberty reactionary? His philosophy embraced two objectives: I) the greatest political and economic freedom for the greatest number, consistent with the enjoyment of some freedom by all; 2) equality for all individuals—not absolute equality but equality of opportunity and before the law.
Said Joe Ball emphatically: "There is a real danger today that in our discussion of political issues we will place so much emphasis on achieving economic security for everyone that we may achieve it at the expense of freedom—both political and economic—for the individual. We have a tendency to confuse economic security with freedom. The most secure individual in our society today is a prisoner serving a life sentence."
No matter what the fate of his labor bills, that was a thought Joe Ball wanted to get across to the U.S. people.