Speech Freed

"In the history of jurisprudence in the U.S. everyone has been equal under the law until the Wagner Act dispelled this privilege."

That was what Big Bill Knudsen said in 1938. He and most other businessmen were outraged because an employer, if he so much as remarked that he did not like unions, could promptly be hauled before the National Labor Relations Board and charged with unfair labor practices. But unions could say anything they felt about management, short of libel.

Last week in Philadelphia the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did something to correct this one-sided conversational rule. Before the court was a motion to cite the $59,000,000 Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. for contempt of court.

The case was typical of hundreds brought by NLRB during the great labor-management fights of the late 19305. After the company had dissolved its company union in 1942 at NLRB direction, shock-haired, persevering President Edward G. Budd wrote a letter to the 15,000 employes of his Philadelphia plant suggesting that the company union was a pretty good thing after all. He pointed out that in ten years it had raised the base-pay rate from 55-c- to $1.09 an hour. The C.I.O.'s United Auto Workers, working to unionize the plant, screamed "coercion" and got NLRB to file the motion for contempt.

When the case was heard in oral argument fortnight ago, NLRB Attorney A. Norman Somers told the court that if the letter were not judged an act of contempt, NLRB was "about to . throw in the sponge." Retorted Judge Charles Alvin Jones: "Where is the prohibition against a man saying he doesn't like a labor organization?" He proceeded to contradict the common understanding of the Wagner Act's ban on free speech for employers.

With the court's two other judges concurring, he ruled: "It can hardly be questioned that the constitutional guarantee [of free speech] protects the employer and employe alike. Thus, to make known the facts of a labor dispute has been recognized as a constitutionally protected right of a member of a union. . . .

"The Wagner Act does not purport to authorize a restraint upon freedom of speech in any circumstances. . . . Had there been such a provision in the statute it would have been invalid as in contravention of the First Amendment."

The Jones ruling seemed certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court. Meantime it will be difficult for New Dealers to dismiss Judge Jones as a crusty reactionary. He was appointed to the Federal bench by Franklin Roosevelt--on the recommendation of Pennsylvania's 1,000% New Dealing Senator Joe Guffey.

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