Schwell Party

If methods for making Communists more effective were the object, the recent proposal of Secretary of Labor Schwellenbach could hardly find a peer. When he told the House Labor Committee that the Communist Party should be banned from the ballot and, generally speaking, outlawed, the Secretary showed a surprising amount of naivete on the problem with which he is concerned.

The heart of the Secretary's argument is his contention that, above all else, the bona fide CP member is devoted to a system of thought which has as its end the overthrow of the American Constitution. There is, indeed, some justification for this thesis. But when Mr. Schwellenbach tries to apply this line of reasoning to the problem of eliminating Communist influence he trips and falls, for his premise does almost everything except support his conclusions.

If the Communist is consumed with as fierce a religious fire as Mr. Schwellenbach says, then it becomes obvious that a mere Congressional statute will not stop his mode of thought, his beliefs, or his actions. He will merely remove the name tag which, until now, he has been allowed to wear.

Party members will, of course, go underground. They have never been a serious threat at the polls, and their only effective mode of operation has not been as Communists at all, but as parts of other organizations, whose purposes they have sought to control and subvert.

Until now, the leaders of groups threatened by Communist infiltration have at least had the comfort of knowing who was and who was not a CP member, and could with some acuity predicate their course of action on this knowledge. The proposal to outlaw the Communist Party would only make it increasingly difficult--or impossible--to deal with this most difficult facet of the problem.

Another, and possibly even greater danger, is inherent in legislation of this kind. Historical evdence is full of lessons on what happens when a minority group is put in the martyr class. Mr. Schwellenbach, or any other member of the Administration, can hardly relish the thought of having crucified Communism so that it might double its appeal to susceptible political groups.

There is, besides, the larger though less immediately practical consideration of civil rights that should serve to slow down any frenzied Congressional attempt to be rid of the Communists "once and for all." No Court has yet chosen to decide that American citizen Communists constitute a clear and present danger to the government, and it is doubtful that such a suppressive law would be found in accord with the Constitution. Until the Supreme Court finds that a man, by belonging to the Communist Party is automatically an enemy of society, Mr. Schwellenbach's little plan for clearing things up in America should be gently but firmly laid to rest on a good, high Congressional shelf.