Dear Editor

...The answer, I would say, is a combination of all three...

...What weight are we to give to religion...

...But Bell evidently doubts that the idea of judging a man "on the basis of individual merit" is a "democratic" response...

...Is it that the Negro group, for a number of cultural reasons, has been less able than others to create its own leadership...

...Are we to divide offices and opportunities between men and women on the basis of their numbers...

...it "picked on" Jewish employers and ignored Italians...

...Are we to have representation on the basis of all of our various ethnic groups— or only one...

...TWO GERMAMES I read with interest William Henry Chamberlin's article "Two Germanies" (NL, January 7...

...there has always been one woman on its General Executive Board...

...Contrary to his capsule history, employers, including Jewish employers, of that early period were most unfriendly...

...Boroff's marvelously concise punch-line deserves repeating: "Television is not only a substitute for living...

...The basic value of his review lies in the implicit attack made upon the snobbish attitude which considers only educational and public service programs as worthwhile...

...We cannot deny that two Germanies actually exist today, and will probably continue to exist for some time...

...It appears to me...

...His main concern is with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and with the charges of racial discrimination recently brought against it by Herbert Hill, labor secretary of the NAACP...

...Bell argues, or seems to argue, that the ILGWU and other unions should give representation in their leadership to Negroes as Negroes: and that, in the process of selection, the unions should apply a "double standard:" that is...

...Nor is it restricted to the ILGWU...

...If we abandon "individual merit" as a standard, what remains...

...But because the iLGwu has had an excellent record in combatting discrimination, and is now under the gun, I saw in its particular difficulties the general dilemmas which face white society today...

...In politics, ethnic groups have been able to move up the complicated ladder of American society by organizing politically in group terms...

...His point, in any case, is that "friends" are "more vulnerable" to criticism than enemies, and therefore juicier targets...

...Bell performs a service, ? believe, by revealing Hill's charges to be "sloppy," "incorrect" and "pseudo-sociology...

...Appleton, it is a "familiar family chronicle" which has been the subject of dozens of novels and sociological studies...

...In the case of the high school, he advises us, these methods tend to limit opportunities for Negroes...

...But it is difficult to understand how any of this applies, as he assures us it does, to the ILGWU...

...What is the dilemma...

...As an officer of the ILGWU, I find two of his comments especially irksome...

...Such tactics, he tells us, with a great air of judiciousness, "are understandable...

...The entire affair collapsed for the very good reason that most of the union's members knew, out of their own experiences, that the charges were untrue...

...The members, in fact, made it plain at numerous meetings, as well as at the ILGWU Convention last May, that they had no use for either Hill or four...

...On the other hand, neither must we settle on their terms...

...Some extra effort is required...

...They employed swarms of hoodlums and bribed police to beat up pickets and strike leaders...

...The "parallel" Bell suggests, in short, simply does not exist in reality...

...and almost its entire present leadership is well past the retirement age...

...Reading Hill's charges and all the publicity issued in connection with them, it is evident that their single purpose was to turn the union's Negro and Puerto Rican members against the Jews and Italians...

...Oscar Handlin makes this same point...

...About the propriety of attacking one's friends, my reference to ILGWU history is confirmed very quickly by any standard source, say, Melech Epstein's Jewish Labor in the United States: When the ILGWU attacks on Jewish employers created embarrassment in the Jewish community, Jacob Schiff and other community leaders stepped in to bring pressure on Jewish employers and to help the union...

...I am quite willing to believe that Bell's anonymous friend exists...

...they should expect less merit in Negroes than in members of other ethnic groups...

...I find all of this not only irksome but hopelessly unrealistic...

...The tragedy is that the change is going on now, amid circumstances of growing resentment rather than of honor...

...It is, as Bell quotes Walter Reuther...

...But Bell's comparison is misleading...

...There is another point worth making here...

...Where does the process begin and, more important, where does it end...

...it is also a model for it...

...They simply have too good of a hand to give in completely...

...He makes some observations about labor in general but, since the ILGWU is the only union he mentions specifically, one is left to conclude that these observations apply mainly to it...

...For many years, the "original generation" has been developing "new generations" of leadership, which include members of its newer ethnic groups and which are now steadily rising toward the top...

...As Bell should know, the union for years has been encouraging members of its newer ethnic groups to take an active part in the affairs of their respective locals...

...The intention of my original exposition, as of this reply, is not to point a finger or to call names, but to describe what has become, ineluctably, a sociological tragedy...

...Once the older generation passes," he tells us, "the ILGWU will be a different union...

...It is also "incorrect...

...In the course of his article, he drifts away into comments on the methods used in selecting students at the Bronx High School of Science and the Ivy League colleges...

...Nor does it do to talk of "individual merit...

...The ILGWU would have been foolish not to use that leverage...

...Although such matters are beyond prediction, the probability is that the change in leadership, when it comes, will be an orderly one...

...They locked out their workers for long periods in efforts to starve them into submission...

...It simply means that reality must be given a fair shake...

...In practice, it is usually impossible to give preferential treatment to the members of any one group without discriminating against others and provoking their hostility...

...is it that when Negroes (and members of other minority groups on the rise, such as the Puerto Ricans) are trained and take jobs as business agents in the ILGWU they are quickly lured away by other unions or government agencies who pay them more money (than the general scale of the ILGWU as a whole) or can offer them a quicker rise to higher status positions...

...Perhaps it is enough that the obscurity is impressive...

...If Bell is referring to the Hill and four episodes, which are usually cited in support of this opinion, it must be said that they excited far more interest and resentment outside the union— where, unfortunately, the facts were unknown or of little concern—than in it...

...The ILGWU, in "picking on" Jewish employers, had a legitimate purpose: It wanted to end sweatshop conditions...

...Its legal privileges are lodged in the group, not in individuals...

...The ILGWU even recognizes social groups...

...Let us see what he has to say...

...Then we can seek the "ways and means," as Lippmann clearly states, by which this problem may be alleviated...

...But more, unionism is a group right, and necessarily so...

...some of the building trades unions...

...He is a formidable person—familiar, we are told, with Robert Michels' "iron law of oligarchy" and with Will Herberg's writings on union bureaucracy...

...After all, there is no "problem" in, say...

...It has prodded those with interest and ability into seeking union office...

...Appleton should know this was always the argument of anti-union employers against collective bargaining...

...They were not merely "sloppy," "incorrect" and "pseudo-sociology...

...Lippmann merely points this out, and suggests that we cannot expect the Soviets to settle the problem on "our" terms...

...I have puzzled over it a long time...

...incomprehensible argument...

...Nearly 20 years of bitter, and often bloody, conflict preceded the establishment of the arbitration councils to which Bell refers as if they were plums friendship yielded to criticism...

...The point here is that we are nor judging individuals, but an entire community which has been disadvantaged by the society...

...I suspect that Bell would, too...

...should recognize and open direct negotiations with the Ulbricht regime...

...Thus, what may be inferred from Lippmann's quote is not that either the East or the West must or even can capitulate to the other's terms, but rather that we must recognize each other's vital interests and take the situation for what it is...

...Tt is also brutally offensive to the large and rapidly growing number of Negroes who are quite capable of holding their own in any competition they enter...

...The problem "symbolized by my friend's observations about the apathy and ingratitude within his local," he writes, "is only part of a broader and more vexing issue: the propriety of attacking one's friends, rather than one's enemies, as the Negro organizations are now doing...

...Now no one believes that exact proportions is a sign of "democratic" principle...

...There is nothing evil or malevolent about the latter point: Yes, Mr...

...It is not...

...however, that Chamberlin has not done Walter Lippmann justice by inferring from a brief quote that Lippmann was advocating that the U.S...

...they coldly violate the principle of equal opportunity...

...Regrettably, he neglects to examine the alternative...

...The final question regarding "preferential" treatment to the Negro community is most vexing...

...As I interpret the quote, Lippmann is only urging a realistic approach to the German problem...

...In this context, it is "understandable" that as a tactical device—even though the charges are exaggerated—the Negro community is pressuring the liberals who are more vulnerable...

...I cannot see how Chamberlin draws this conclusion...

...It has gone further...

...A show like [Johnny] Carson's can subtly influence the way people talk and what they talk about...

...I was trying to place its dilemmas—-which are real-—in the broader context of the Negro's drive for a better place in American society...

...they said that they wanted to reward workers on the basis of individual achievement, but every union has pressed for a common rate...

...But he then goes on to offer what appears to be a "scholarly" justification for these charges...

...Bell has a fondness, it seems, for explaining one situation by examining another and irrelevant one...

...It does not do to talk of "equality of opportunity" when, as I pointed out...

...Kearny, N. J. Benedict Martorana...

...an official of one of the out-of-town locals" of the union, on the "apathy" and "ingratitude" of that local's members, and invites us to believe that this is a fair picture of the ILCWU as a whole...

...such equality would still leave the Negro at a disadvantage because of previous deprivations...

...He quotes an anonymous friend, whom he describes as The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...

...There is also the implication, perhaps unintended, that the ILGWU ought to pay Negro and Puerto Rican officers at a higher rate than its other officers so that they will not be lured away, as some already have been, to other jobs...

...and the problem for the trade unions, as well as for the entire nation, is how to make that group so truly equal in American society that we can then talk of individual merit...

...The argument continues to pyramid, but I shall leave it here...

...It is better, I think, to face the alienation Continued on next page of some intellectuals, if this is necessary, than to yield to their "reality-transcending" ideas...

...But what, I wonder, are the "circumstances of growing resentment...

...It is that the ILGWU, despite its good intentions, and with no conscious idea of discrimination, is in a situation where the Negro group in the union finds no place in the leadership commensurate with its general numbers...

...It seems to me that this is what he describes in Hill as "pseudosociology...

...But the judgment attributed to him is not valid for the local I head, or for most of the others with which I am intimately familiar...

...Finally...

...To begin with, the title is far broader than the author's material...

...if he applied his argument to the Columbia University faculty, the Ford Foundation or any other institution with which he has a real connection...

...or is it that an aging leadership, which built that great union, now holds on and does not want to retire...

...he makes no clear statement on the colleges...

...I know that this has become a kind of "vogue" opinion in some circles...

...He suggests, for example, that Hill, in attacking the ILGWU and other unions with outstanding records in the area of civil rights, is behaving exactly as the ILGWU did when in its early days, according to him...

...He writes, for example, that the union presents the "familiar family chronicle of the original generation that built an institution (or a business or a store) and won't let go for the next one...

...They have no desire, or need, to be patronized...

...but high disproportions or disparities do lead one to assume that a problem exists...

...If this is Bell's evidence, and I can't imagine what else he has in mind, it is, to put it gently, inconsequential...

...Why and how these things are related...

...He finds that advertising and television have become the models for the "good life" which the masses emulate...

...The ILGWU, on the other hand, has always welcomed Negroes, along with members of all other ethnic groups, and has provided multiple opportunities for them to improve their skills...

...Neither Hill nor the organizers of four managed to involve the members in their resentment...

...If this be so, and I think it is, it becomes even more urgent for television programming to be improved...

...In sum, Lippmann urges a realistic settlement to the German problem, not recognition and capitulation as Chamberlin suggests...

...Nevertheless, Bell builds it into an elaborate and, to me...

...My own knowledge of ILGWU history suggests that this is inaccurate...

...Another of Bell's opinions on the ILGWU, I regret to say, is entirely unfounded...

...Columbus, Ohio George Y. Coats TV TALK SHOWS David Boroff rendered an excellent service in his insightful review of television talk programs ("The Death of Conversation," NL, January 21...

...I can cite another union which passed a resolution stipulating a retirement age and when an officer of the union who was persona non grata to the "family leadership" retired, that resolution was effectively rescinded...

...Their sweatshops were notorious...

...Bell does not explain and I cannot guess...

...What legitimate purpose was served by Hill's charges...

...The charges were, in fact, dishonest—that is, deliberately false— and demagogic, and they were accompanied by efforts, in which Hill was involved, to stir up racial conflicts within the ILGWU...

...This difference in perspective, understandably, makes Appleton see as an irrelevancy what I find as a parallel or an analogy...

...It must be said, however, that Bell is on much safer ground in his irrelevancies than he is in his direct discussion of the ILGWU...

...This does not mean, however, more educational or public service programs...

...But one wonders whether Bell's "parallel" also condones as "understandable" this aspect of Hill's tactics...

...New York City Shelley Appleton Vice-President, ILGWU Daniel Bell replies: Shelley Appleton, understandably, is preoccupied with the ILGWU...

...Jim Crow in reverse...