LABOR: Interesting Question of Law

Tough little James Caesar Petrillo, boss of the A.F. of L. Musicians Union, who has won most of his battles with the methods of a dictator, triumphed again last week—in the polite precincts of a courtroom and with the blessings of law.

In Chicago, Federal Judge John P. Barnes dismissed the Government’s suit charging that Dictator Petrillo had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act when he forbade his 138,000 union members from playing for recordings, except those made “for home use only.”

After Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, chief U.S. trust buster, had argued for an hour that Petrillo’s edict not only established a closed shop but tried “to secure a closed country,” brusque Judge Barnes did not even bother to hear Petrillo’s side of the case. He had read the record, he said, and was convinced the case before him was a labor dispute between union musicians and record manufacturers and radio stations. The Norris-LaGuardia Act outlawed injunctions in labor disputes, said the judge; furthermore, he could find no violations of the Sherman Act.

Stunned Thurman Arnold said he would appeal. Said jubilant James Caesar Petrillo: “This shows what can happen in a free country.” Said Thurman Arnold’s boss, Attorney General Francis Biddle: “That was an interesting question of law.”