Mr. Truman Invited Strikes

July 7, 1947

The series of crippling “protest” strikes which have taken place since the enactment of the new labor law ought to have surprised no one. The union leaders by their hysterical attack on the Taft-Hartley measure as a “slave labor” bill, and the President by the reckless language of his veto, openly invited precisely this result. Mr. Truman repeatedly called the measure “unworkable,” He declared that it would “open up opportunities for endless lawsuits.” He warned employers that they would “regret the day it was conceived.” He predicted that it would “cause more strikes, not fewer.” He repeatedly said that it left unions no means of protecting their rights “except by striking” and “no option but the use of economic force.” In the light of this provocative language, Mr. Truman cannot disown responsibility for the strikes that have followed the veto which he must have known would be overridden.

Under the Constitution it is the President’s sworn duty to enforce this act in good faith. Yet he can do this now only by doing everything in his power to disprove and discredit his own predictions. It is not realistic to expect this. By his reckless course he has thrown justified suspicion in advance upon every appointment he makes under the new act and every ruling or decision made by his appointees. For the President’s veto and warnings will be borne out only if the new law is so administered that it does cause more strikes instead of fewer, if it is so interpreted that it does open up endless lawsuits, and if it really does cause employers to regret the day it was conceived.

It has been suggested that Mr. Truman should recognize his self-created dilemma by asking the whole National Labor Relations Board to resign, and appointing only administrators recommended by the Congressional sponsors of the new labor law. Such a drastic course might solve this particular problem. But the major constitutional dilemma would remain. Mr. Truman’s fight a year ago for all-out prolongation of price control, and his veto then of the Case Labor Disputes Bill, were repudiated by the voters in November. It must be said in Mr. Truman’s favor that he then interpreted the sweeping verdict of the polls correctly, and appeared to accept it gracefully. He said: “The people have elected a Republican majority to the Senate and House of Representatives. Under our Constitution the Congress is the lawmaking body. The people have chosen to entrust the controlling voice in this branch of the government to the Republican party. I accept this verdict in the spirit in which all good citizens accept the results of any fair election.” And Mr. Truman promised to “cooperate in every proper manner” with the new Congress.

Mr. Truman’s course in recent months has shown that these fair words meant precisely nothing. For feeble and unconvincing reasons he vetoed a tax-reduction bill that had been passed by heavy majorities in both Houses. This was only the second time in our history that a President had ventured to veto a general tax measure. He then vetoed—but this time unsuccessfully—a major labor bill that had cost Congress five months of work—a bill that he himself described as “perhaps the most serious economic and social legislation of the past decade.”

Immediately after the political upheaval last November it was suggested, by members of the President’s own party and adherents of his policies, that he could create “a notable precedent in American history” by resigning, after allowing Congress to propose a man whom he would name as Secretary of State and who would then constitutionally succeed him. Those who dismissed this suggestion as “silly” could not have stopped to weigh the full consequence of the traditional course. It meant two years of recrimination and deadlock.

The present division and paralysis at the heart of our government makes it next to impossible today for either Congress or the President to frame sound economic policies and put them into effect. This situation darkens the whole economic outlook, domestic and foreign.