Division at Unity House

Up the winding Pocono mountain road, past the guardhouse outside the 800-acre estate, along the driveway lined with spreading sycamores, skirting the garden with its orange zinnias and lavender petunias, purred the Cadillacs and Chryslers of organized labor's leaders. The executive council of the combined A.F.L.-C.I.O. met last week at "Unity House," the $5,000,000 Pennsylvania summer resort of David Dubinsky's garment workers' union, to answer an important political question: Should the A.F.L.-C.I.O. officially endorse a presidential candidate this year?

Before they got around to answering that question, the labor leaders had a day of routine business meetings and a chance to tour the nearby golf course, swim in Friendship Lake below the administration building, play tennis and shuffleboard (or, like the auto workers' Walter Reuther, have a fling at square dancing on the shuffleboard court), and view the movie Helen of Troy in Dubinsky's $750,000 lakeside theater. Their every want was tended by Unity House's regular staff of 400, plus 50 extras brought in for the occasion.

Fleur-de-Lis & Ham Hands. Finally with the null null Purchasing Director Bernard Green guarding the door against newsmen, the executive council members entered the conference room, settled themselves around a U-shaped table (its light blue cloth elegantly flecked with silverish fleur-de-lis) to hear genial Host Dave Dubinsky bring the major issue to a showdown. Said Dubinsky: "Let's decide whether we are going to endorse anyone."

Up bounced the teamsters' Dave Beck, who says he voted for Eisenhower in 1952, "I move that we do not endorse either party," snapped Beck. "If we endorse, it will give the appearance of a division of labor." A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany stood with Beck against endorsement--but for different reasons. Meany had been vastly disappointed by the civil-rights planks of both the Democratic and Republican Conventions; moreover, he recalled the injunction of an A.F.L. founder, Samuel Gompers, against labor becoming too closely identified with either major political party. "Look," boomed Meany, walloping the table with the flat of his ham-sized right hand. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not neutral--I'm against both parties."

Rude Awakening. Whip-smart Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers' leader whose political prestige was placed on the November line by his effective convention support of a Stevenson-Kefauver ticket, launched into a 20-minute argument for an all-out Democratic endorsement. Labor, said Reuther, must protect its bargaining-table gains in the political arena. "We did not choose the battlefield," he cried. "Our enemies have gone there, and that is where labor must go to protect itself."

Dave Beck persisted. Why, he asked, should labor leaders lay themselves open to criticism by endorsing a ticket? The electrical workers' slim, always-angry Jim Carey answered: "Certainly we would be subject to criticism. But don't forget for one moment that we get plenty of criticism anyway, any time, for anything we do. Fear of criticism shouldn't make us duck this battle." The musicians' tough little James Caesar Petrillo (who recently said, "If we ever had a friend in the White House, we have one now") spoke out against endorsement. "Election after election," complained Petrillo, "I vote Democratic and I watch the returns, and I go to bed and think we've won the election.

When I wake up, there are all those Southern Democrats back in there running things and cutting our throats. I think I'm getting a victory, and then I find I'm getting the Dixiecrats."*

Influence, Not Control. After three hours of argument, plus recess for lunch, Meany called for a vote. First, the executive council voted 14 to 8 to endorse a presidential candidate. That decided, the council voted 17 to 5/- to endorse, specifically, Adlai Stevenson. Although the decision still faced final ratification within the machinery of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., there seemed little doubt about the outcome.

In defeat, President Meany made it clear that he would go along with the council's majority decision and vote for "Adlai--What's his name now?--Oh yes, Stevenson, and Kefauver." But he said he did not pretend, and he did not think the other labor leaders really believed, that they would "control" any votes. "But I feel their position will influence some votes," he added. "I wouldn't be surprised if maybe my daughter voted Democratic this year--and she has always voted Republican."

* Petrillo's argument was similar to that advanced in a Harper's article this month by Under Secretary of Labor Arthur Larson, author (A Republican Looks at His Party), and a key Eisenhower speech consultant. Larson pointed out that in a Democratic-controlled Congress most committee chairmanships go by seniority to antilabor Southerners, and therefore, "under normal modern conditions, what actually gets done in the way of legislation under a Republican Administration is more pro-labor than what actually gets done when the Democrats control Congress." /- George Meany abstained on both votes, since the issue was already decided before his turns came. On the first question, those opposed were Petrillo, Beck, the bakers' Herman Winter, building service's William McFetridge, bricklayers' Harry Bates, boilermakers' Charlie MacGowan, carpenters' Maurice Hutcheson, sleeping car porters' A. Philip Randolph. On the second vote, Petrillo, Winter and MacGowan switched, cast their lot with Stevenson.

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