They Can't Tell Harry

The nearer he gets to the end of his term, the harder it seems for Harry Truman to keep from thumping his presidential chest.

At his press conference last week, the President was asked about using the Taft-Hartley law to end the steel strike. The Senate has approved a request that he apply Taft-Hartley. Truman sounded off: regardless of what the House and Senate think, they can't tell him what to do.

It took a while for this sharp assertion of presidential power to sink in. Then the newsmen returned to the point. Did the President mean he wouldn't be governed by congressional action? Shot back Truman: Congress can't tell the Executive what to do.

Then he capped his remarks by saying that the 80-day cooling-off period provided by the Taft-Hartley law would not help matters a bit; the unions, having previously delayed their strike for 99 days, might ignore a Taft-Hartley injunction.

There were two noteworthy points about Truman's chestiness. 1) He had reversed himself again in his attitude toward Congress. Earlier, he had asked Congress "to make the choice" of giving him a seizure law or directing him to use Taft-Hartley; this implied that he would abide by Congress's decision. 2) By his statement last week he had practically invited the steel unions not to obey a Taft-Hartley injunction, if finally he applies the law of the land.

Labor took the hint. "Taft-Hartley will not manufacture steel," said onetime miner Phil Murray, paraphrasing the old mine union cry against the militia: "You can't dig coal with bayonets."

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