NOTES IN THE NEWS
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Wanted: A Fresh Inquiry The clumsy efforts of the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight to shed reluctant light on...
...Both are advocating that the United States stop being so stuffy and inflexible about its unwieldy disarmament package...
...and the prohibition of "compulsory political contributions...
...The record, for example, shows that Sherman Adams, President Eisenhower's chiefof-staff, assisted Murray Chotiner, California lawyer-lobbyist who was Vice President Richard M. Nixon's campaign manager, to secure help from the Civil Aeronautics Board in behalf of Chotiner's client, North American Airlines...
...But the latter set up such a tremendous howl—and a documented howl it was—that the Subcommittee was obliged to hunt for some of the dirt it had preferred not to find...
...So do just about all the decent elements in the Democratic Party...
...A genuinely courageous investigation would seek, most of all, to get to the bottom of the community of interest between politics and business which has made a sham of regulation and enabled those special interests that are supposed to be regulated to make captives of the commissions that are supposed to regulate them...
...A substantial majority of these indicated a willingness to accept members of other races when the slower-moving breakdown of discrimination in housing brings a different racial group closer to the church doors...
...In 1957 the mayor called the Green municipal slate of political hacks a "stinking ticket...
...But the House Subcommittee approached its inquiry as though its purpose were to learn little and reform less...
...This does not mean, however, that I am not afraid...
...In New York City another beachhead was established last month in the churches' fight to break down racial barriers within its own ranks...
...Some authorities have argued that their influence on the day-to-day lives of the populace is greater, and more direct, in fact, than the impact of the other three branches of government, for these independent agencies regulate a wide variety of rates and fares, determine public power policy, govern air, rail, and bus transportation, control labor-management relations, grant radio and television franchises, determine communications policy, supervise the securities markets, oversee the banks, and police advertising and merchandising methods...
...But the independent commissions, functioning for the most part behind closed doors, have largely escaped public scrutiny because the press has made only the feeblest effort to cover them—and then only their more spectacular activities...
...in fact, will welcome such a meeting, and will not be afraid to invite them, or the entire Politiburo, to our nation, to give them free access to our newspapers, television, and radio, and let them show themselves to the free world for what they really are...
...It would seem under the circumstances that Congress itself would long since have established a committee to keep these quasi-judicial agencies, which it created, under constant surveillance, dealing as they do in billions of dollars worth of rates, franchises, and values...
...Though they are private, their actions are clothed with the public interest...
...A Look at Labor Too The Fund for the Republic has brought out a companion brochure, Unions and Union Leaders of Their Own Choosing, similarly available without cost for one to ten copies...
...These commissions, constituting, as they do, a fourth and powerful arm of government, exercise an enormous impact on the lives of most Americans...
...But history usually cannot be reversed...
...The Senate should undertake the task—and the sooner the better...
...Responses to a series of questionnaires sent to churches cooperating with the Cleveland Church Federation revealed that 52.5 per cent of the Cleveland area churches include, or have included, more than one racial group in their active membership...
...Without going into the merits of the North American case, it is worth pointing out that Chotiner wrote Adams and that the latter replied in two letters written on White House stationery, one of which was inscribed "Personal and Confidential...
...The system "is not the product of evil-minded men," we are told...
...The appointments to these commissions exercising quasi-judicial authority in critical fields have gone, for the most part, to political hacks with little or no competence in the fields they were chosen to regulate...
...Instead, like Republican Stassen, Democrat Humphrey pleaded for a first step agreement that would reaffirm to the world "the true spirit of America"—not the "image of a snarling giant breathing fire and destruction, but the image of the Good Samaritan who seeks to bless mankind...
...And the unions will be too...
...I believe it is the content of these systems rather than their form that matters...
...One of our foremost authorities on the subject, Berle reports that 50 per cent of American manufacturing is held by 150 corporations...
...I hope that in the near future we will have the kind of leadership that will not be afraid to meet with a Khrushchev or a Bulganin...
...Dulles is committed to the cold war, to imposing settlements on the Soviets, to sitting back and waiting and hoping for greater repression in and ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union...
...Bernard Schwartz, professor of administrative and constitutional law at New York University and a registered Republican, was thought to be a safe scholar who could be kept on a leash...
...It is the Senate which confirms appointments to these commissions...
...In his letters, Adams reported that he had gone over the case "carefully" with the CAB chairman, and added: "Is there anything further in this matter that I can do to be of assistance...
...The Progressive believes that both the Subcommittee and Schwartz have behaved badly, the Subcommittee because of its inexcusable conduct in subjecting Schwartz to tactics of delay, harassment, and concealment, and Schwartz by retaliating with methods that can be sanctioned only under the immoral doctrine that the end justifies the means...
...One is Stassen, the other Senator Hubert Humphrey...
...The Protestant Council, representing 1,700 churches of 31 denominations, elected its first Negro president...
...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Wanted: A Fresh Inquiry The clumsy efforts of the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight to shed reluctant light on the curious conduct of the Federal Communications Commission emphasizes the urgent need for a new and full-scale investigation of all the independent agencies of government...
...But Green & Company have blackballed Dilworth because he would not play their game...
...Hail to the Machine...
...It is the Senate whose members—or two-thirds of them—will not soon be involved in reelection campaigns and can therefore give the necessary time to such an investigation...
...He turned out to be a rip-roaring, rambunctious firebrand—an amateur crusader who fought helplessly for a time against a group of professional cynics...
...It seems clear enough from the way the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight has conducted itself up to now that we can count on it to pursue no such deep-going inquiry...
...The Wrong Man When President Eisenhower parted with Harold E. Stassen as his disarmament aide, at the request of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, he let the wrong man go, in our judgment...
...I believe we must try to work with the system...
...There are countless unanswered questions that would be raised in a thorough investigation of the kind for which the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight has shown that it has no stomach...
...One man represents what is hopeful, the other what is hopeless in American foreign policy...
...they affect the levels of wages and prices, the access of individuals to jobs, the volume and continuity of production, and many other aspects of society...
...Mayor Dilworth sounds more like Presidential timber to us than a mere gubernatorial candidate...
...Stassen is committed to relaxation of tensions, to meeting the Soviets halfway, to encouraging tendencies toward freedom in the U.S.S.R...
...If ours is the best way of life, and none of us doubt that it is, we should be delighted by the opportunity to show that way of life to the Communist world, and engage in the freest possible exchange of people and ideas...
...But the FPC, along with the other regulatory agencies, has escaped scrutiny by Congress or the press for many years...
...Both are urging that we negotiate with the Soviets for a temporary cessation of nuclear tests, with ample safeguards by way of inspection and enforcement...
...But the survey brought to light some significant facts that hold a brighter hope for the future...
...lifting of barriers to joining a union...
...They have broad powers, both administrative and judicial, which are aimed at the single objective of protecting the public against abuses by special interests...
...Senator Morse has proposed such an inquiry...
...Taken at face value, the figures would hardly give occasion for jubilation—only slightly more than half of the churches have mixed congregations...
...He was used and then discarded when he was caught...
...Green and his machine associates did not quite dare reject Dilworth openly for refusing to play their brand of politics...
...What makes all this so mystifying to us is our hunch that President Eisenhower leans toward the Stassen concept, but is unable, for reasons we can't quite'fathom, to buck the sullen intransigence of his Secretary of State...
...The stockholders, it turns out, have little or nothing to say after they buy their shares, for corporation directors, Berle tells, are an "automatic self-perpetuating oligarchy...
...Thus, in 1949, he selected his old pal Mon Wallgren, former Senator and former governor of Washington, to sit on the Federal Power Commission...
...Written by Dr...
...Two years later Wallgren retired to an estate near Palm Springs, Calif., where he has date and grapefruit groves...
...Pointing out that President Eisenhower's rigid nine-point program for disarmament has no chance of acceptance as a package, Humphrey said recently: "No nation, least of all the suspicious Soviet Union, would agree to such sweeping provisions all at one time...
...There is far greater game involved in a truly objective investigation of FCC and the other regulatory agencies—game the Subcommittee shows little or no intention of hunting...
...As a result, Dilworth has been obliged to withdraw from the race...
...In recent years, however, the Democrats have routed the corrupt Republican crowd—yet today they find themselves prisoners of the machine in their own party...
...Governor George M. Leader, who will be the party's candidate for U.S...
...There are many questions that would be raised—and perhaps answered—in any purposeful investigation...
...President Eisenhower's appointments to these regulatory agencies have been shockingly bad, as The Progressive has pointed out on several occasions during the past five years...
...Few developments would have provided a greater tonic for America's sagging spirit in foreign affairs than the dismissal of Dulles and the promotion of Stassen to be Secretary of State...
...The corporations said this once too [that they were private voluntary associations] and they were scrutinized...
...Bless these two Minnesotans...
...Clark Kerr, presidentelect of the University of California and a distinguished labor-management arbitrator, this study cautions unions to have a good look at themselves with an eye to providing "greater democracy" because if they don't do it, the public and the government will...
...I am...
...We hope the Senate heeds him—for once...
...Their power can enslave us beyond belief, or perhaps set us free beyond present imagination...
...Widening the area beyond manufacturing, he finds that "in terms of power, without regard to asset positions, not only do 500 corporations control two-thirds of the non-farm economy, but within each of that 500 a still smaller group has the ultimate decision-making power...
...It was only the bizarre tactics of a runaway counsel that stampeded the Subcommittee into looking where it preferred not to look...
...Fitfully over the years it has turned its attention to one or another of the independent commissions, but has avoided for the most part a full-scale investigation of the operation of the whole system...
...One to ten copies are available free on request to The Fund for the Republic, 60 East 42nd Street, New York 17, N.Y...
...Less Segregated Hour The charge that "eleven o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week" has for generations carried enough of the weight of ironic truth to be met only with embarrassment or silence by the bulk of the Christian clergy...
...1 Berle seems quite calm in the face of his evidence...
...The Subcommittee grew increasingly annoyed at Schwartz's determination to step on official toes, if need be, to get at the truth, and proceeded to fire him...
...The dangers are obvious...
...But Dr...
...Whether you believe—we don't— that this staggering aggregation of economic power is a "neutral mechanism," you'll be interested in reading Berle's thoughtful study...
...Dilworth's "pro-Communism" stood out starkly, they muttered, in comments like these made in the same speech: "We must establish some genuine communication between the Western and the Communist worlds, and we must not fear such communication...
...Pennsylvania has been notorious for political bossism for half a century, but mostly in the Republican Party...
...The two men are poles apart...
...See Miles McMillin's article on Page 12 of this issue...
...Vincent Sardi, Jr., owner of celebrated Sardi's Restaurant in New York, declared that "Those who discourage colored patrons are not only lawbreakers but short-sighted businessmen as well...
...Seventy per cent of the churches that now include more than a single race have opened their doors only in the past decade, and of these more than half made the change in the past five years—a greatly accelerating growth of inter-racial congregations...
...But if a recent survey of the Protestant churches of Cleveland is an accurate barometer of a nation-wide trend, the conflict between Christian preaching and practice on the brotherhood of man is gradually being resolved...
...Eisenhower has not been the first Presidential offender...
...Even though he was engaged in a desperate effort to keep the investigation from being embalmed at birth, it was unprincipled of Schwartz to leak unsupported charges to the press before those accused could be given an opportunity to answer, to resort to the shabby use of a secret recording device in interviewing a witness, and to abscond with the Subcommittee's files...
...The long-fostered notion that we have a "people's capitalism" because there are so many millions of stockholders doesn't stand up under Berle's analysis...
...Gardner C. Taylor, pastor of the Concord Baptist Church, Brooklyn, indicated his awareness of the world-wide implications of the Council's action when he accepted the presidency with the statement: "The world's future hinges on the direction toward which the darker peoples in Asia and Africa look for equality . . . We stake our lives, our hopes, our energies in the Protestant Council on our 'alikeness', which is stronger and more compelling than our 'unalikeness.' " The Right to Eat New Yorkers in east side, mid-town Manhattan have witnessed an unrelenting nine-year war against racial discrimination by restaurants in the United Nations area, a war which is now being won...
...They, too, are poles apart on many issues, but they are currently our most articulate spokesmen for a creative policy in negotiating with the Russians...
...Although the spotlight has played mostly on the FCC, there are other agencies of equal or greater importance handing out even more valuable prizes than TV channels...
...This Congress has not done...
...Recently the House of Representatives voted a $250,000 appropriation to a curiously named Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight to investigate six of the agencies—the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Federal Power Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Federal Trade Commission—all of them charged with policing vital sectors of the national economy...
...it was usually the GOP that ran the show in the Keystone State...
...Monopoly Marches On The Fund for the Republic, a freewheeling offshoot of the stuffier Ford Foundation, has performed a significant public service in making available to the public, without charge, Economic Power and the Free Society: A Preliminary Discussion of the Corporation by A. A. Berle, Jr...
...The result up to now has been the resignation of Commissioner Richard A. Mack for his shoddy performance in connection with the granting of a Miami television channel...
...President Truman occasionally appointed political hacks or personal cronies to regulatory commissions—to the debasement of the public interest...
...Humphrey has drawn on his experience as chairman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Disarmament to concur, in principle, with his old Minnesota political antagonist...
...One revelation bound to emerge from any objective investigation of the independent agencies is the extent to which appointments have come to be regarded as political plums to be handed out by the President to the party faithful, however lacking in qualifications...
...The three constitutional arms of government function under a pitiless glare of publicity which enables the public to have some idea of what they are doing and how they are faring...
...Two Minnesotans Two gentlemen from Minnesota have been making the most sense to us in the field of foreign policy recently...
...Stassen has drawn on his three years of negotiating with the Russians to contend that it is possible to conclude an agreement this year that would ban nuclear explosions, under United Nations supervision, as a first step toward a disarmament settlement...
...appeals to the courts or to private bodies for the protection of dissenting members...
...Senator this year, wants Dilworth to run for governor...
...Kerr isn't at all sure that no matter what they do, "only the unions can scrutinize themselves...
...This is, I think, the highest concentration of economic power in recorded history...
...The Rev...
...Many of the segregated churches, both white and Negro, are located in residential areas which are overwhelmingly restricted to one race or the other...
...But Mack, a weak tool of far more powerful interests, is small fry...
...Wallgren cast the deciding vote, in the Phillips Petroleum case, against retaining Commission jurisdiction over gas at the well-head—a decision subsequently reversed by the United States Supreme Court...
...A genuinely courageous investigation would explore the background of the appointment of limited men like Mack to major positions...
...Although he believes the unions are doing "surprisingly well" in looking in the mirror, this friend of labor believes in four types of leigslation: the secret election of union officers, under some circumstances...
...A CAB regulation bars private communication about a pending case "between any member of the CAB and any person in public or private life...
...Spearheaded by the Committee on Civil Rights in Manhattan, a volunteer organization of businessmen, workers, students, and housewives, and supported by restaurant management and labor groups, a drive to gain equal service and treatment for Negroes through personal contact, investigation, conciliation, pressure from other restaurant owners and from unions has succeeded so well that a spokesman for the Committee was able to say recently, "We have felt that for several years now discrimination against Negro patrons in restaurants has been virtually wiped out...
...With kind regards, Sincerely, Sherm...
...But it was clear from the outset that powerful forces in and out of the government were determined to keep the investigation from developing into an objective quest for the truth...
...The Federal Power Commission, for example, exercises enormous authority in the utility field, involving water power sites, the clash between public and private development, the licensing of hydro-electric projects on government lands and navigable waters, regulation of the natural gas industry, utility finances, and other significant sectors of the national economy...
...Schwartz did succeed in shaming the Subcommittee into looking into some of the charges against the FCC...
...The result has been to deprive Pennsylvania Democrats of their ablest and most progressive candidate for governor this year, Philadelphia's Mayor Richardson Dilworth...
...We have to accept this power situation as, let us call it, a neutral mechanism subject to the control of the body politic as long as we keep it subject to that control...
...Instead, they expressed horror over an ad lib remark by the mayor calling for the recognition of Communist China...
...it would include a serious inquiry into the nature of the system itself—how it works, who are the men who make public policy, what are the criteria tor determining the public interest, what are the pressures and where do they come from, and to what extent flagrant lobbying and executive interference have corrupted what is essentially a judicial process...
...One that stands out starkly is the relationship of the White House to these theoretically independent agencies...
...Even more shocking has been the President's habit of choosing men who are opposed to the very programs they are appointed to administer...
...The first agency marked for investigation—the FCC—was known to be poorly administered, battered by internal strife, and subject to extraordinary pressures, from public officials and private interests alike, in the award of television channels and other favors...
...A genuinely courageous investigation would range far beyond what Speaker Sam Ray-burn has called "fly-specking...
...He added that surveys show the vast majority of diners don't care in the least if there are Negroes in a restaurant...
...Dilworth has long been at odds with the Philadelphia Democratic machine headed by Representative William J. Green, who is now awaiting trial on federal charges of accepting construction graft...
Vol. 22 • April 1958 • No. 4
