Flexible Flyer

Emulating the career of another famous flier, now all but forgotten, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker has returned to this country, almost a national deity, capitalizing on the role of a hero to preach a reactionary anti-labor doctrine. Professing to be the voice of 7,500,000 soldiers, he has, in their name, denounced labor unions, urging the control of all organized workers under company unions and the complete abolition of the closed shop. In addition, the veteran flier proposes that the returning soldiers be given a favored position over the ordinary worker.

The first idea would be the destruction of all the sincere work of labor unions during the past two decades. It would be a return to charitable company paternalism, lower wages, and lower living standards. The second plan is equally undesirable; it would mean the creation of a favored class of workers, who, because they were once able to fight, would hold jobs at the expense of the ex-defense worker, whose position has been as important, and in some cases, more difficult.

There is something altogether wrong in Rickenbacker's injection of personal political and social opinion into his emotionally eloquent speeches. He is turning on the very men he claims support him. He forgets that his soldier friends, too, are former American workers, and for a good part, union men.

The captain's personal opinions on labor, management, and politics are tolerable as long as they represent him alone. His demands for wartime civilian sacrifice seem justified, but in camouflaging a reactionary attack on American unionism under the guise of "soldier's representative," he is stepping too far. Let Rickenbacker remain the air hero, the undying fighter, the pattern for a flyer's dream; but let the War Labor Board, the unions, the American public itself determine the future of Labor.