THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome. Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 61«
$1.50 PER MONTH $16.00 A YEAR
W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER. Editor**
Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943, at the postolfir^*
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Wednesday, December 18, 1946
Green, Murray and Lewis
j
(Rocky Mountain News)
AMONG THOSE who profess to see John L. Lewis as
a persecuted champion of labor’s rights are President
William Green of the AFL and President Philip Murray
of the CIO.
The government is “applying the rule of the jungle”;
to the coal miners and “their chosen leader,” according
to Mr. Green, who proposes a compormise to get coal!
out of the mines—and Lewis off the spot on which he
has placed himself.
Mr. Murray accuses the government of “a shocking
attempt to force American citizens to work against their
will through economic coercion,” and announces that
the CIO will join in appealing the federal court fines
imposed on Lewis and the miners’ union.
The gentlemen felt otherwise when Lewis was at
tacking their organizations, not merely the people of
the United States.
In January, 1942, Mr. Green’s official organ, the AFL
Weekly News Service, called Lewis “an unprincipled
master of duplicity,” and asserted that the AFL’s offi
cers “wouldn’t touch him with a 10-foot pole.” (Lewis
has since rejoined the AFL).
In June, 1942, Mr. Murray described Lewis as “hell
bent on creation of national confusion and national dis
content.”
(Mr. Murray’s official organ, the CIO Union News
Service, accused Lewis of “betraying” the miners’ union
by associating it with “a conspiracy to disrupt labor and
national unity and to preach hate, division and dissen
sion among Americans.” (Lewis was moving to take his
union out of the CIO).
Earlier, in October, 1941, when the country was only
two months from war. Mr. Green even got indignan*
about a Lewis coal strike. The AFL Weekly News Serv
ice then referred to Lewis as a “headstrong, insane, ar
bitrary, ungovernable, false leader.”
It described that strike as “not only a betrayal of
America, not only a betrayal of the workers involved
but a dastardly and indefensible betrayal of the best
interests of all labor in America.” Lewis it added was
“gambling not only with the rights of his own miners
but with the freedom of the whole labor movement.”,
(Lewis was still active in the CIO).
Messrs. Green and Murray know John L. Lewis
from away back. They know that everything he was in
1941 and 1942, he is now, plus.
They know, too, that the government has been fair
and generous to the coal miners; that it gave them the
best contract, providing them the highest wages and
the greatest benefits they ever had, and still stands
ready to honor that contract; that only as a measure of'
desperation, only because it became necessary to try to
save the country from a Lewis-caused disaster, did the
government seek penalties against the miners’ union.
We can understand why honest members of organized j
labor should be distressed by the government’s resort'
to court injunction, that weapon so often and so unfair- i
• ly used by employers in days when unions were weak.
We would have preferred to see the government in-;
voke laws plainly and carefully written to protect the
rights of labor and the rights of the American people
against reckless abuse of unionism’s power.
But such laws have not been enacted. For the fact
that they have not been enacted two men bear major
responsibility—two men who have opposed and de
nounced and obstructed every attempt to write such
laws.
Those men are William Green and Philip Murray.
• * •
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ANYONE T
V T*E
\HeeDV
National Responsibility
(Seattle Times)
THE SHELTERED SEAPORTS of Puget Sgund sym
pathize deeply with the people of Nome, who have suf
fered so many disastrous blows from the Bering Sea’s
arctic storms.
Sentiment for moving the town inland is reported,
and in Seattle, Army Engineers are urged to make a
full study of Nome’s exposed beaches to determine;
whether a breakwater would solve the problem.
Whatever course is adopted, the people of Nome must
have federal assistance. So sparsely populated a com
munity‘could bear with difficulty the expense of ton
costly remedial measures. Nome is a strategic and vital
American outpost. Its security from onslaughts of the
sea or attack from any quarter is a “National Respon
sibility!”
—
Free Speech Means Peace
(The Denver Post)
The newest spokesman for worldwide freedom of press
and speech comes from a sector not often associated
with such thinking—the military. He is Robert P. Pat
terson, secretary of war. He spoke out at the recent .'.a
tional convention of the A. F. of L. in Chicago.
Germany could go to war, he asserted, only be au.se
the Nazi leaders had suppressed free speech and p^ess
and misled the German people. This fact was clearly
brought out, he said, in the Nuernberg trials of the Nazi
leaders.
“Their first step was to put down freedom of s; eeeh
and freedom of press, which meant that Germans re
ceived only such information as the conspirators saw
fit to let them have,” the secretary said. He continued:
“In no nation, not even in Germany, do the mass of the
people want war, unless they have been persuaded that
someone has done them an injustice. Then they will
fight.” ,
THAT’S THAT
Housing expediter Wyatt has*
made himself ridiculous by trying
to force the RFC to make 90 mil-;
lion dollars of loans to finance
prefabricated housing concerns. If
these ventures were economically
sound, there would be no need for 1
government financing. Billions of
dollars of private capital are look
ing for investment opportunities.
If prefabricated housing is too
much of a gamble for private in
vestors, the RFC certainly is jus
tified in shying away from it. Af
ter all the RFC is a lending, not a
give-away, agency. The money it
has to loan is taxpayers’ money.
And when it makes a loan it
should be reasonably certain of re
By BRUCE GUSTIN
payment.
The constitutional amendment
adopted in Nebraska, outlawing
the closed shop has been selected
the closed shop has been selected
bor for a judicial test of the con
stitutionality of such measures.
One of the union’s attorneys has
announced it will be challenged on
the ground that it is an excessive
and arbitrary use of the state’s
police power and that it conflicts
with the Wagner Act. The sooner
this controversy is settled by a
United States Supreme Court de
cision the better it will be for ev
erybody.
In fighting for the closed shop,
labor leaders are in the paradoxi
cal position of insisting that work
ers must be free to join unions but
must be denied the freedom of re
fusing to join. They are advocat
ing in reverse, the very thing they
fought for years in opposing ufie
notorious ‘‘yellow dog” contracts.
Union insistence upon closed shop
and union shop policies, under
which men and women must be
members of and pay tribute to la
bor unions or be denied the right
of working and earning a living,
amounts to an admission that the
only way they can keep man^ of
their members is through co:
sion. If union membership
voluntary, then it becomes a sys
tem of involuntary servitude
which is intolerable in a supposed
ly free society.
Moscow must be rejoicing. John
L. Lewis’ coal strike fits perfectly
into the Russian Communist world
revolution pattern. If the Reds
themselves had organized the min
ers’ walkout, they couldn't have
planned anything better suited to
I heir conspiracy to overthrow ihe
government of the United Siauf^.
The spectacle of this nation facing
industrial paralysis, with millions
of people shivering and suffering,
with schools closing, is grist for
tne Communist propaganda mill.
Gieefully they hail the govern
ment’s seeming impotence to con
trol one arrogant, power-mad la
bor leader as evidence of a break
down of the American democratic
system. Lewis’ coal strike was
made to order for both Communist
and Fascist agitators.
Whether Lewis had any legal
right to break his contract with
the government and precipitate a
nationwide coal strike will be de
termined in the courts. Certainly
he had no moral right to do that.
From a humanitarian standpoint,
he perpetrated a monstrous cn"e
in attempting to freeze and starve
the American people into putting
pressure on the government to
submit to a sandbagging.
The coal strike affects every
American pocketbook. Congress
man Carlson of Kansas is abso
lutely right in warning that it
“gravely threatens” Republican
plans to make a 20 percent cut in
federal individual income taxcjg.
As he points out, “everybody must
realize that tax reduction depends
on a high level of national income.
Continued strike and work stop
pages would reduce the national
income.” A high level of national
income cannot be maintained un
less there is high production with
everybody working.
Senator Thomas <Dem.» of Ok;
lahoma, chairman of the senSie
agriculture committee, is all in a
dither because a three-day break
in the cotton market dropped cot
ton prices $25 a bale. He claims
the price break was the result of
a “bear raid” and that it has cost
cotton-growing farmers 225 mil
lion dollars. So he has promoted
an investigation by the depart
ment of agriculture. Entirely over
looked is the fact that lower pri^fes
for cotton should bring lower
prices to consumers. When prices
start down, there w’ill be as much
political scheming in Washington,
D. C., to keep them up as there
has been to keep them from rising
in the last few years.
District Attorney Simon says
that Tony Lombardi, Denver boy,
who died a few days after being
spanked for breaking a silly not
talking-during-meals rule at the
State Industrial School for Bo^Jt
never should have been committed
to that institution. “But,” he asks
“where can a boy of 14 years
with a rheumatic heart, be prop
erly cared for when his home ha