THE LAST COLUMN

...The Editor Reserves The Last Column THE most melancholy fact of the war, it seems to me, is our apparent determination to embrace the principles and practices of Nazism or Fascism even as we throw 10,000,000 men and a couple of hundred billion dollars into the struggle to destroy the Nazis and the Fascists abroad...

...Challenge To Democrats "In a city the size of Los Angeles," the report declares, "this conspiracy is a phenomenon which demands careful scrutiny...

...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Wisconsin Progressive, and Sen...

...Such opposition to the national labor policy as has existed in the Los Angeles metropolitan area can only result in a wholesale violation of labor's civil rights and in social attitudes which are at variance with the spirit of industrial democracy...

...And for us here at home the challenge is more positive—the challenge to stop dead in its tracks the present march toward fascism in America...

...When this opposition in the community is due to a lack of understanding or familiarity with labor relations, it may dissolve with the passage of time...

...In such an atmosphere, labor's civil rights cannot be properly exercised and the tyranny of local persecution and opposition to trade unionism is intolerable...

...M.H.R...

...Fascism At Home But war came and the debate ended...

...Phil said then, and warned in a hundred speeches afterward, that one of the brutalizing effects of war was intolerance...

...3 issue, I could not help but remember what Phil La Follette said on Columbus Day, 1939, when he was debating Frank Knox on the question, "Should The Arms Embargo Be Lifted...

...The Committee report shows how business interests financed powerful "front" organizations, like the "Associated Farmers," to wage war against labor, and how these huge corporations paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to police officials and law enforcement agencies, which thus became virtually private, armies of the anti-labor forces...

...The "class hatred" against which Phil La Follette warned takes many forms, but notably at present it takes the form of an organized assault against labor...

...The report exposes the operations of a skillfully organized, lavishly financed, and powerfully managed conspiracy to destroy labor unions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and warns the Senate that the fascist-like techniques used in these California cities are "but symbols of many other areas in various parts of the nation...

...Every scoundrel sowing the seeds of racial, religious, and class hatred would find a thousandfold increase in the fields he can till, if we make hatred respectable by joining in war...

...Here, indeed, is a grim picture of only one phase of the developing Fascism at home...

...Elbert D. Thomas, Utah Democrat...

...The rising tide of racial and religious bigotry, the crushing of small business, the glorification of executive rule, the organized smear against the "delays" and debates of Congress, the assault against organized labor, and now the formal presentation of a urogram of compulsory labor for men and women—all these signposts show how far we have wandered from our course...

...There are many industrial areas in other parts of the country which are known as open shop or anti-union centers, and where, as in Los Angeles, there is a phalanx of opposition to trade unionism composed of employers, civic groups, and public officials, supported by bankers and newspapers...

...The Committee's recommendation, that Congress act to outlaw such anti-American conspiracies, should command the support of every small "d" democrat, regardless of his stand on foreign policy, who understands that military victory against foreign Fascists does not lessen the danger of Fascism at home...

...The smear against organized labor now bears the highest stamp of approval—the Administration itself -—and represents one of the most dangerous manifestations of the emerging American Fascism...

...But when this opposition to the exercise of the rights of employes to organize and bargain collectively is a pattern of organized interference, strong and precise measures of protection must be devised...

...for the Town Meeting of the Air...

...Proceedings against an individual for unfair labor practices under the Wagner Act may not prove to be an effective measure of protection...

...Worse than bankruptcy," he said, "perhaps worse even than the loss of life, is the fact that war would be followed by the worst era of demagogues that the world has ever seen...

...Certainly for Phil La Follette, facing Japanese fire 10,000 miles from home on the beaches of Cape Gloucester, New Britain, there is no time and no inclination for "I told you so's...

...Every conceivable weapon including labor espionage, the use of professional strikebreakers, industrial munitions, the blacklist, credit pressure from bankers, high-powered publicity on the radio and in the press—was pressed into service in the war against labor unions...

...The Senate Civil Liberties Committee has just issued a report of great significance which bears the signatures of Sen...

...When 1 read, and reread, and read aerain John Haynes Holmes' powerful indictment of "The Rising Tide Of Bitterness," which we carried in our Jan...