Today in Washington

Washington, March 17, 1934.

WHEN General Hugh Johnson told the assembled industrial representatives last week "You ain't seen nothing yet," he may not have been thinking of the bill sponsored by Senator Wagner of New Your, but the employers of America are ready to admit today that they never saw, read, heard, or imagined anything in the way of a legislative proposal that could remotely resemble the new "Labor Disputes Act."

It is a measure intended to strengthen the rights of labor to organize and bargain collectively. Nobody except some of the old dealers would stand in the way of such a progressive and forward looking principle today. But the bill goes far beyond any such objective. It prohibits an employer, ranging all the way from the small business man or merchant with two or three employees or clerks up to the industrialist with his large army of workers, from opening his mouth to utter a word that could possibly be construed as "influence" upon the "policies" or "operations" of any labor organization.

Bill Gives Workers Immunity

The bill is devoted entirely to a statement of what the employer cannot do. Not a single sentence prohibits the employee or the labor unions from doing anything as, for example, exercising coercive influence or campaigning among the other employees in a shop. Indeed, while a lockout by an employer is specifically prohibited and is to be made punishable, the new bill gives the workers complete immunity in the following sentence:

"Nothing in this act shall be construed so as to interfere or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike."

The courts declared that there are certain illegal strikes. Justice Brandeis held in a famous case that strikes could not be permitted in certain circumstances. But the language of the Wagner Bill wipes out all doubt.

Another amazing thing about the Wagner proposal; which is to be the center of the biggest fight ever staged in this country between employer and employee groups, is the list of "unfair labor practices" which can be held by the suggested national labor law to be violative of the provisions of the proposed law. Here is an excerpt from the section which crystallizes the whole controversy:

"It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer, or anyone acting in his interest, directly or indirectly to attempt by interference, influence, restraint, favor, coercion, or lockout, or by any other means, to impair the rights of employees guaranteed under section four (collective bargaining) or to refuse to recognize and deal with representatives of his employees, or to fail to exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain agreements with such representatives concerning wages, hours and other conditions of employment.

What is a "Fever?"

What is a "favor?" How can an employer's mind be held up to scrutiny and a discovery made as to whether he failed "to exert every reasonable effort" to make an agreement with his employees or to maintain it once he had agreed? To determine the motive, the board is to have power to compel the submission of all books, papers, data, and figures and to subpoena anybody in the United States in any jurisdiction and summon them to Washington by telegraph or letter and compel attendance.

If an employer wants to give his employees a price below the current market quotations in selling the company's own stock or if it is desired to give a bonus to deserving employees, can such a "favor" be given without running the risk of prosecution under proposed law?

In order to buttress the constitutionality of the proposal, the Wagner Bill has the following sentence:

"The board is empowered to prevent any person engaging in any unfair labor practice that burdens or affects commerce or obstructs the free flow of commerce or has led or tends to lead to a labor dispute that might burden or affect commerce or obstruct the free flow of commerce."

Abolition of Evidence

As if the revolutionary purpose was not adequate, there is another section which contains this startling paragraph abolishing the necessity of bothering with such a troublesome thing os "evidence". Here is the prohibition:

"In any such proceeding, the examiner or the board shall not be bound by the rules of evidence prevailing in courts of law or equity."-

Yet when it comes to review by the courts, the findings of the board on "facts" are to be specifically accepted as "conclusive."

Undoubtedly there will be amendments, but the audacity of the proposal in the face of Anglo-Saxon traditions of law and fair dealing in individual relations will bear examination. The labor unions in a political year are striving to get every advantage they can. This is the heyday of their power.

What is the President's position in all this? He tells his callers he is "not informed" about the bill--that he really hasn't read it.