National Affairs: The Big Knife

In Cleveland last week, gathering for its eleventh convention and looking a little white around the lips, the C.I.O. got ready to perform a major operation on itself. The trouble was an old and chronic one — its chronically inflamed Communist appendix.

President Phil Murray had tried every other kind of cure, including just trying not to think about it. He had warned left-wing leaders to quit acting like Communists or get out. But the trouble still persisted. Party-liners continued to defy him. There was nothing left to do but use the knife.

Too Late. The Reds saw it coming, but they were demoralized by its suddenness and decisiveness. Communist Party orders were for them to stay and work within the C.I.O. In the last hours before Murray got down to business in Cleveland’s big limestone convention hall, they tried to save themselves with pleas for forgiveness and promises to be good.

Needle-nosed Harry Bridges hurried to Murray’s hotel suite. There, while Murray and members of his staff listened, Bridges blandly argued that he had never followed the Communist line; he had only done what seemed best for his longshoremen. C.I.O. Secretary-Treasurer James Carey, 37, unable to contain himself, yelled: “You’re a goddam liar, Bridges.” A few minutes later, Harry put on his hat and left.

The three bosses of the Red-wired electrical workers—President Albert Fitzgerald, Julius Emspak, James Matles—made the same fruitless overtures. Big Joe Curran, an ex-party-liner himself, boss of the maritime union and one of Murray’s chief aides, chortled: “It used to be when Jim Matles walked in the room, we all stood up. Now we don’t even let him in the room.” This was not quite correct: Murray did let him in, and listened before waving him out.

Post-Operative Effects. This week, the operation began. Phil Murray faced 600 delegates (representing 4,500,000 workers in 40 C.I.O. unions) and grimly explained why the job had to be done. “The Communist program for American labor is a program of destruction,” he said. The leaders of a small percentage of the C.I.O., men pledged to “harassment, opposition and obstructionism,” subscribe to that program. “They reject our basic policies; they flout the wishes of the majority. No self-respecting organization can long tolerate this dangerous division . . . The majority has the inherent right to protect its course of action and its future stability.”

The knife went in. The plan was to take out the electrical workers’ union first, then the farm equipment workers’ union (which had disobeyed Murray’s orders to affiliate themselves with the auto workers and voted to affiliate with the electrical workers instead), then the mine, mill and smelter workers’ union. The technique was simply to expel them by a resolution to that effect; the power to affiliate a union was also, said Murray, the right to “disaffiliate” it. After that, with new authority voted it, the C.I.O. executive board would deal as it saw fit with Bridges’ longshoremen, the unions of Government workers, office workers, other unions of workers in food and tobacco, furniture, communications, fur and leather, fishing and messroom jobs aboard ships. All twelve party-line unions represented a total of some 800,000, about one-half of whom Murray thought he could salvage and win back to the C.I.O. under right-wing leaders and new unions which he would set up.

It was the biggest crisis for the C.I.O. since John L. Lewis broke from its ranks. But not only the C.I.O. held its breath. More severe than the operation would be the post-operative effects.

New right-wing and old left-wing unions would lock in conflict. The National Labor Relations Board and the country’s courts would be busy for months, perhaps years, grappling with claims and counterclaims. Plants would be thrown into turmoil, racked by jurisdictional fights and wrangles over who got union treasuries. As these prospects sank in, U.S. shippers, electrical manufacturers, mine and mill owners—big & little businessmen—would probably also grow a little white around the lips.