Or Hang Separately

The vast transcontinental distance which separated this week's national conventions of the CIO and AFL is strictly coincidental in terms of organized labor's unity in the coming countrywide elections. On the surface the unions may appear a long way apart. CIO's president calls for a meeting "to formulate an immediate joint program" and the AFL hierarchy declines in a huff. But under the surface of intra-labor jockeying the plain fact persists that both CIO and AFL have common political aims in the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and the defeat of its Congressional supporters.

From the two national conventions have emerged two programs for electioneering which, agreeing on these common aims, will supplement each other rather than conflict. One looks to the need for improving labor's stock in the public eye: this is the AFL's 38-cent per member assessment for a $3,000,000 propaganda agency. The other moves to intensify labor's block-by-block doorbell ringing; this is PAC's registration drive to bring out 60,000,000 voters next Fall, 12,000,000 more than in 1944.

Outside the unions themselves, however, in the ranks of the politicians who speak for labor, the intellectuals who think out labor's problems, and that scattered army of professional men, students, and politically-alert citizens who fight labor's public opinion battles, a tragic breach seriously threatens labor's current political potential. This is the independent-liberal split between Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and Progressive Citizens of America (PCA).

Top-level chieftains of both groups are intent on "recapturing" the Democratic Party. ADA's very formation stemmed from feeling on the part of liberal Democrats such as Chester Bowles that Henry Wallace's involvement with Communist Party supporters would hamstring honest resolution of public issues--as well as prove "bad politics." Now the defensibility of this premise has been weakened; for ADA's careerist Democrats seemingly cannot face up to foreign policy unhandcuffed by their own Truman-tied Party Line. The resultant bitter feuding between ADA and PCA on international questions has prevented coordinated planning on domestic policy--where the two see eye to eye for the most part. Neither of course holds any appreciable number of votes. But separate endorsements of different Congressional candidates and different vice-presidential nominees next spring can only weaken everyone's bargaining hand in Democratic Party councils at an hour demanding top power.

Fortunately CIO and AFL political action programs will work arm-in-arm in '48. But if the PCA-ADA division ever becomes institutionalized in the two sections of labor, a schism reaching into '50 and '52 will undoubtedly occur. Now is the time to search with determination for common ground. Philip Murray has demonstrated in the sessions at the Bradford this week that great leadership can find ways to unite divergent factions in a crucial hour. The Henry Wallaces and Chester Bowleses do not deserve a look until they too demonstrate this statesmanlike faculty.