LABOR: Curran, 1-A

Selective Service Appeals Board No. 4, New York City, voted 4-to-1 to classify the registrant 1A. But the Board was not sure of his address. Joseph Edwin Curran, 37, fellow-traveling president of the National Maritime Union, was at sea.

The State Department had refused Big Joe a passport to see how torpedoed seamen fare in Britain, Russia, North Africa. Curran shipped as a seaman, disappeared into wartime censorship. The New York World-Telegram’s Westbrook Pegler, longtime Curran-comber (TIME, Aug. 30), attacked this “vacation,” asked why the N.M.U. chief was not drafted.

Local Board No. 18 replied that Curran was classified 2-A as “the leader of a union vital to the war effort.” But Colonel Arthur V. McDermott, New York City’s draft director, had already announced: Curran was a draft delinquent for having left the country without notifying his board. McDermott personally certified the case to the appeals board. The decision: Curran is 1A, has until Oct. 15 to appear before the local board. Said its chairman, Baptist Clergyman Francis K. Shepherd: “We’re a draft board and we have certain obligations to discharge. We try to do that honestly and fairly, without considering a man’s politics—whether he’s a union official or an industry head. . . . We certainly will not be influenced by any columnist.”