Obiter Dicta on the Inside Story

Before the balloting on the Kennedy-Douglas Bill, Lyndon Johnson and Jack Kennedy conferred secretly with Al Hayes, head of the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee, and asked whether any of the Knowland amendments was acceptable. Hayes said labor wanted no new laws which would affect union activity in any fashion. The three then spoke long-distance to George Meany, who also rejected any compromise.

Then Johnson, fearing some conservative Democratic defection, attacked the Knowland proposals as anti-labor and announced that the union chiefs had agreed to cooperate later on “a reasonable labor bill to come out of committee in sixty days.” Thus reassured, ten liberal Republicans joined the opposition to defeat the amendments, while Frank Lausche was the only Democrat to line up with Knowland. It appears certain to observers that there will be no new labor laws this year.

MR

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Morrie Ryskind

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Before the balloting on the Kennedy-Douglas Bill, Lyndon Johnson and Jack Kennedy conferred secretly with Al Hayes, head of the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee, and asked whether any of the Knowland amendments was acceptable. Hayes said labor wanted no new laws which would affect union activity in any fashion. The three then spoke long-distance to George Meany, who also rejected any compromise.

Then Johnson, fearing some conservative Democratic defection, attacked the Knowland proposals as anti-labor and announced that the union chiefs had agreed to cooperate later on “a reasonable labor bill to come out of committee in sixty days.” Thus reassured, ten liberal Republicans joined the opposition to defeat the amendments, while Frank Lausche was the only Democrat to line up with Knowland. It appears certain to observers that there will be no new labor laws this year.