THE CONGRESS: Smothered in Aliens

The U. S. has in recent years heard more about civil liberties than about the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee. Senators Robert Marion La Follette (Wisconsin) and Elbert Duncan Thomas (Utah) spent $200,000 and four years studying the seamy side of U. S. industry. They uncovered a grubby array of labor spies, gunmen, strikebreakers, provocateurs of labor strife, propagandists, munitionists—and industrialists who bought these seamy services.

Last week Bob La Follette and Elbert Thomas finally had up in the Senate a bill to “give vitality to the rights of free speech and assembly . . . which have been denied by private spy systems and by private force.” They proposed to ban i) spying on labor; 2) professional strikebreakers and strikebreaking agencies; 3) armed, private guards anywhere except on company property; 4) the private possession or use of such industrial munitions as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, gas bombs.

No worse time could have been chosen for such a bill; Congress and the country had no eyes nor ears for anything but Defense. La Follette & Thomas watched the Senate hack away. Trying to save the essence of his bill, Bob La Follette conceded, placated, did some hacking himself. But he did not concede enough to satisfy Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina.

Resplendent, redundant Bob Reynolds has devoted most of his Senate career to saving the U. S. from aliens. (In 1938, despite this prejudice, he returned from a trip to Germany, admonishing the U. S. to stop hating the Nazis, and one of his subsequent speeches was heartily endorsed by Fritz Kuhn.) Last week Mr. Reynolds’ somewhat poppy eagle eye saw his chance. Down he swooped on the La Follette-Thomas Bill, tacked on an amendment providing that no more than 10% of the employes in any interstate enterprise may be aliens. Caught in a national wave of fifth columny (see p. 21), the Senate dared not object. Exultant Bob Reynolds then produced his master stroke:

“. . . It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in interstate or foreign commerce … to have in his employ any alien, Communist or member of any Nazi bund organization. …” Maximum penalty on employers: $10,000 fine; five years’ imprisonment.

Bob La Follette jumped to protest. “I very much dislike even to appear disagreeable,” crooned Bob Reynolds. Reminded that his previous amendment left a few jobs open to aliens, he stripped his prohibition down to employment of Nazis and Communists. A few Senators ventured that under Senator Reynolds’ terms all employers would be suspect, that none could ever be sure of his innocence. Senator Reynolds waved this objection aside, got his unenforceable amendment passed without a recorded vote. The Senate then passed what was left of the La Follette-Thomas Bill, sent the measure on its uncertain way to the House. The La Follette Bill had been smothered in aliens.