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PARTISAN REVIEW
principle, American principle, to throw the "foreign, communist
agent," Bridges, out of the labor movement. Never, never would they
negotiate with Bridges! The time had come for a show-down. And
so for a while it seemed. For more than three months, the ships
were idle, the harbors empty. But
10
and behold, suddenly at the
beginning of winter, there were the photographs again of Bridges and
the shipowners smiling at each other, and the happy announcement of
a fine contract satisfactory to both parties, and ready to go into
operation tomorrow. There was a little catch in the announcement.
Harry Lundberg's sailors had, during the strike, also presented their
demands to the shipowners. But somehow these demands had been
lost sight of in the shipowners' get-together with the foreign com–
munist agent. The ships were to sail tomorrow, but no contract had
been signed with the Sailors' Union of the Pacific. But they did not
sail. Fortunately for America, Lundberg, like Reuther, understands
both communists and shipowners, and fears neither. His sailors blocked
the sellout, and manned the ships only when their contract, too, was
signed and delivered. I wonder whether the shipowners have reflected
on how the greed, the ignorance and cowardice they displayed in
this 1948 Pacific Coast deal with Bridges paid off in 1949, in Hawaii?
The American businessmen are ignorant, dangerously ignorant.
Some among their great publishing houses have distributed millions of
copies of propagandized books by communists and their fellow-travel–
ers. In the case of China particularly, these books are weighty among
the causes of the disaster that has taken place. With all the devo–
tion in the world to free speech, could they not at least leave it to
the communists to publish their own, instead of using the resources
and ability of business to smear the country with this mental poison?
In their million-copied magazines, they print articles skillfully advanc–
ing the communist line. While the
New Leader,
the finest anti-com–
munist paper in the country, and a journal of real distinction, tilts per–
manently on the verge of bankruptcy, and keeps barely going only
because of the goodwill of its first-rate but unpaid contributors and the
enlightened backing of David Dubinsky, the businessmen write their
checks to newspapers and magazines run by communist united fronts
or hospitable to communist-line authors. How many communists and
fellow-travelers, how many communist causes, have drunk deep of
the many-millioned streams which Marshall Field has poured into
