The Chicago Star

If the labor movement goes we all go

By HOWARD FAST

An old uncle of mine who sells insurance - a life which is no bed of roses, I want you to understand - has told me that many men in their twenties fondly believe that even though death is a historic and proven part of the human experience, it won't happen to them.

This is a state of mind which we term adolescent, and in time most folk grow out of it. Others, however, don't.

I refer in main to the type of thinking which says:

"It's true that there is a monstrous drive beginning against organized labor. It is also true that over two hundred anti-labor bills are being or are ready to be introduced into the 80th Congress. It is also true that the outspoken program of American reaction is to smash organized labor - as best expressed by such characters as Taft and Vandenberg. All of this is true; all of this is gospel fact: but somehow, it doesn't affect me. I live outside of all this. I'll pull through."

But the curious part of it is, my friend, that you probably will not pull through. I don't care whether you belong to a union or not, whether you are employed or a small businessman or a professional or a housewife or a college student or a mailman; whichever you are, if organized labor is smashed, you're going to feel the effects of that smash from the top of your hair right down to the soles of your boots.

In other words, if organized labor goes through the window, every freedom, every liberty, every right you have valued so dearly yet taken so lightly and casually, will go with it.

And I don't care if you are Democrat, Republican, Communist, Negro, Catholic, Jew, or Seven Day Adventist the foregoing holds just as true.

You know, there is an old wive's tale about the brother lodge member who died in illness, suffering and poverty. A special meeting of the lodge was held in order to raise some funds with which to bury the poor soul and see his family over the hump.

At this meeting, the chairman, who did the pitch, pulled no punches, and since he was an orator of the old school, his words were markedly effective.

He began by describing virtues of the brother lodge member who had passed on, his honesty, his sincerity, his devotion to duty and work and family.

Even this introduction brought tears to many eyes - except for one man at the rear of the hall, who sat with a face of stone.

Then the chairman described how this deceased brother lodge member was one of those whom luck habitually passed by. Fate confounded his industry.

Success passed him by. If he got a job, the firm went out of business. When he started a little store, it burned down. When he saved some money, the bank failed. And by now, every eye in the place was wet with a tear - except for this one man in back who sat with a grim, expressionless countenance.

Then the chairman wound it up. He described the poverty that struck the family of the brother lodge member, the hunger. He told how his three little children whimpered for food. He told how this last, lingering illness took hold of him, the pain and terror he suffered.

And he told it well. Indeed, there was no face in the hall now that was not wet with tears. Sorrow communicated itself and took hold of the audience -- of all except this one poker-faced gentleman in the rear. And finally, a lodge member next to him, unable to bear this witness to inhumanity, nudged him and said:

"My friend - that is a sad, tragic tale, no?"

"Yes, the saddest I ever heard," the poker-faced man admitted.

"A tale that would wring tears from a stone."

"And tears from the trees of the woods," the poker-faced man admitted.

Then would you explain how it is that you are not even moved?"

The poker-faced man sighed and said. "I don't belong to the lodge."

Well, the moral has at least some small validity.

Don't count yourself out." If labor goes, we go; there are no two ways about it.