REPUBLICANS: Landon on Labor

After years of earnest but unsuccessful campaigning as a candidate for everything from Alderman to President, Socialist Norman Thomas remains today one of the most polite and well-mannered politicians in the U. S. Last week the onetime Presbyterian minister again made courtesy pay dividends in the form of headlines when he drew from Governor Landon a notable clarification of the Republican Presidential nominee’s position on Labor.

Perhaps no part of Governor Landon’s acceptance speech provided more uncertainty among his friends or louder yelps from his foes than the following passage on Labor unionization: “Under all circumstances, so states the Republican platform, employes are to be free from interferencefrom any source, which means, as I read it, entire freedom from coercion or intimidation by the employer, any fellow-employe or any other person.”

In the midst of the widespread debate as to precisely what Nominee Landon meant, Mr. Thomas wrote him as follows:

“The history of the American labor movement shows that repeatedly employer’s organizations like the National Manufacturers Association have used the phrase ‘free from interference from any source’ to mean a denial of the right of a labor union or labor unions actively to promote the organization of an unorganized factory or an unorganized industry. It is absurd to talk about Labor’s rights to organize if in every factory workers, more or less at the mercy of the owners of their jobs, must organize spontaneously without any help from their fellows. Is this the interpretation to be given your words?”

Last week Governor Landon obliged Socialist Thomas with the following interpretation of his meaning:

“In my statement, which you quote, there is nothing to suggest that I am in favor of infringing in any way the right of free speech or free assembly. I am opposed to any such infringement. The workers have the right to meet among themselves or with others of their own choice to promote organization, with complete freedom from interference from any one whatsoever. The workers should be fully protected in this right by the public authorities. This necessarily includes the right of a labor union to promote by lawful and proper means the organization of an unorganized industry, which includes the right to send in an organizer.”

Mr. Thomas’ interpretation of Governor Landon’s interpretation:

“It still implies an endorsement of the company union, but at least it does not now hold that a union organizer is ‘outside interference’. . . . The principle he has now stated would seem to recognize the right of the Committee on Industrial Organization to carry on the steel campaign and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union to organize the sharecroppers and field-workers in Arkansas without being subject to the tyranny of local sheriffs or of mob law.”