Victory in the Air

Instead of ripping into Harry Truman for I'affaire Vinson, Tom Dewey decided to let the President's action speak for itself. It was good judgment and good politics. He would gain both votes and stature by refusing to follow Truman's lead in playing politics with the nation's foreign policy.

For the record, Dewey said simply and reassuringly that the U.S. is solidly behind "the labors of our bipartisan delegation at Paris and specifically its insistence on a prompt lifting of the blockade of Berlin." Said Dewey: "The nations of the world can rest assured that the American people are in fact united in their foreign policy and will firmly and unshakably uphold the United Nations . . ."

Then Dewey was off again for a week's tour of nine states in the East and Midwest. The one big issue he had not yet touched was labor. Now, in the steel capital of Pittsburgh, he took it up.

Newsmen had expected that he might use the occasion to discuss possible changes in the Taft-Hartley law. But with victory in the air, why should he make any more promises? "Labor has its special problems," said Dewey. "But these problems have not been solved . . . by separating labor from the rest of America." He reminded labor that Republicans had voted for the Wagner Act, voted against Harry Truman's plan to draft the railroad strikers, that both parties had supported the Taft-Hartley law.

He made a few specific promises: an increased minimum wage, broadened and increased social-security benefits, a strengthened Department of Labor, vigorous antitrust enforcement, action to "break the log jam in housing" and to halt "soaring prices." But he left labor still wondering what Taft-Hartley changes, if any, he would propose. Said Dewey: "The new law is not perfect. No law, or any other human handiwork is perfect. It can always be improved and wherever and whenever it needs change it will be changed."

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