The Case for the Public: A Rebuttal

IN his attack on my article, ‘Labor Takes in the Fair,’ Mr. Van Arsdale bases his first refutation on the statement that Dr. H. Ernesto Lopez, the Venezuelan Commissioner at the 1939 Fair, made a ‘fantastic’ charge when he said it was necessary to agree to pay union electricians ‘$26 a day to turn our lights off and on.’ Mr. Van Arsdale counters that ‘no union electrician was employed to maintain the Venezuelan Pavilion.’ He adds that Dr. Lopez ‘was repudiated by his own government’ by its announcement that it would participate in the 1940 Fair despite his allegations concerning high labor costs, and that Dr. Lopez ‘corroborated his government’s announcement by tendering his resignation.’

The imputation here is that Dr. Lopez was compelled to resign for making erroneous charges. On visiting his embassy in Washington, however, I learned that instead of repudiating him his government wished him to represent it at the 1940 exposition. It was suggested that I could reach him at his New York office. I now have before me his personal statement which reiterates that the 1939 labor conditions were ‘unbearable.’ He stresses that the protest ‘made jointly by most of the commissioners at the meeting held by the French Commissioner on June 8, 1939,’ was sufficient ‘to refute the contention of Mr. Van Arsdale that the labor difficulties were but “figments of the imagination.”’ The document drawn up on this occasion complained of $12, $14, and even $16 an hour wage rates which ‘applied in cases of overtime made compulsory through the order given by the unions to their workers to slow up the work.’ (I discussed this charge in detail at the outset of my January article.)

‘As far as my previous statement is concerned,’ continues Dr. Lopez, ‘in which I said, “They wouldn’t complete our building unless we paid union men $26 a day to turn our lights off and on, etc., etc.,” this is an absolute and positive truth and may be attested to by all members of our commission and employees of our pavilion, who will corroborate this statement in its entirety. The contention that no union maintenance man was employed is false. The gentleman employed in this capacity was a Mr. Simmons. I recall him distinctly because of a stammering affliction he suffered from. His union number, I have just ascertained, was 68533.

‘My correspondence with the Venezuelan Government will show that although I tendered my resignation I recommended that they reconsider their decision not to exhibit for 1940. It was my belief that inasmuch as our exhibit had been so successful, with three and a half million visitors (over 10 per cent of the total attendance), it was a gesture of good will to maintain our exhibit and in keeping with the trend towards the “Good Neighbor Policy.” Also, because of the definite promise made by Mr. Whalen in answer to my question, in the presence of all the other foreign commissioners, that no labor difficulties would be inflicted upon us this year. He stated that he had the promise of influential labor leaders. My recommendation was made to my government in spite of the very “poor neighbor policy ” of the labor unions, which to my way of thinking does not represent the feeling of American labor in general, but the shortsighted view of a minority group.

‘As far as I personally am concerned, in his statement that I was repudiated by my government, it is sufficient to state that it is true that I tendered my resignation the same day the Fair closed, for personal and economic reasons. My government, however, has not accepted this resignation to date, although I shall insist, because irrevocably I do not desire to be Commissioner next year. I am a physician, and my practice does not permit of sufficient time to dedicate myself to a position of this kind.

‘ I am appreciative of this opportunity you have given me to rectify some of the misapprehensions of Mr. Van Arsdale.’

In his next paragraph Mr. Van Arsdale ridicules my statement that ‘a $3600 New England contract for electrical “maintenance,” which prevented any but union men from touching a fixture, did not at first even provide for replacing a burned-out light bulb on less than thirty-six hours’ notice.’ ‘The New England States exhibit,’ writes Mr. Van Arsdale, ‘is “located in the Court of States, which was maintained free of charge by the World’s Fair electricians.” ‘

It is true that these lights eventually were provided with electrical maintenance which was ‘free’ to the extent that there were no charges other than those covered in the contract. That is why I used the ‘at first’ qualification. This fact, however, does not deny the evidence given me by the manager of one of the affected exhibits, that none but union electricians could touch a fixture: the Fair management’s maintenance men were unionists. Neither does it answer my original charge that it was necessary to pay $8.81 to have the Fair management’s union electrical crew replace a burned-out electrical bulb on less than thirty-six hours’ notice. The exhibit manager says that, until protests rectified the matter the so-called ‘free’ service could not be guaranteed on less than thirty-six hours’ notice.

I pointed out in my article that Nevada withdrew from the Fair in part because of union demands that its members rewire a five-ton concrete working model of Boulder Dam which had been brought to New York as part of its exhibit. The Nevada affair is the third item Mr. Van Arsdale considers. He writes: ‘The official records of the New York World’s Fair prove the charges concerning Nevada are false in every detail.’

I do not know what the official records of the Fair contain, for when I sought access to them, as a reporter wanting information for public enlightenment, the authorities made it plain to me that they were private and nobody’s business. However, as a result of a letter to the Governor of Nevada, I do have before me a copy of the official record of Nevada’s Fair participation commission and an explanatory letter from Joseph F. McDonald, commission secretary and editor of the Nevada State Journal.

The official record — the resolution withdrawing Nevada from the Fair — stresses that Nevada appropriated money and sent its exhibit to New York as the result of promised rental concessions, assurances of protection against labor difficulties and non-interference in the installation of its property, and avowals that the Fair management would assist in getting the work done for a reasonable price, but that when the State sought to carry out its end of the bargain the Fair management increased its rentals and withdrew all assurances ‘against labor trouble in the installation of the Boulder Dam replica.’ Additionally, the resolution insists, ‘it was found that work performed by union labor in Nevada would be not acceptable to union labor in New York.’

Mr. McDonald’s letter adds that the State even went so far as to stop payment on its $9500 rental warrant in an effort to force the Fair management ‘to give us direct assurance that we would be protected against exploitation by contractors, unions and all others who appeared to be running the show.’ Meantime, he goes on, the Boulder Dam model had been taken to New York ‘and was at the Fair grounds but was never unloaded.’ The reason was that the State’s representative on the scene, unable to obtain an installation bid which was not far in excess of the price paid at the San Francisco Fair ‘for a similiar and in some respects larger exhibit,’ in addition could not obtain any assurance ‘that there would be no extras or that the exhibit would be installed in any agreed time.’ Naturally, the representative did not deal directly with the electrical union. He dealt with the contractors, who were the only persons permitted to hire the union’s men for such work and who therefore must be regarded as their agents. ‘Unofficially,’ Mr. McDonald says, ‘our representative was given to understand that the wiring would not be passed by the union, and we went so far as to request the Central Trades and Labor Council of Las Vegas, Nevada, where the model was built, to use its efforts to clear the model with the New York union.’

After correspondence with the Fair management and reports from his architect, who spent two weeks in New York, Mr. McDonald came to the conclusion ‘that the whole thing was cock-eyed, and that the Fair management had no control at all over the situation.’

‘It struck me,’ he wrote, ‘that the contractors, determined to get all they could, were blaming the unions, and in turn the unions were blaming the contractors, and the Fair management was sitting back, hoping that the exhibitors would be suckers enough to come in and take a beating. . . . The experience cost Nevada about $7000 in preparing its exhibit and shipping the Boulder Dam model to New York and bringing it back.’

Were I not limited in the amount of space to which a rebuttal is entitled, I should like to throw the light of fact on each point at which Mr. Van Arsdale has attacked my article. I should like to clear Dr. Neil Van Aken of the ‘repudiation’ charge. Far from being repudiated, he still represents the Netherlands Government in New York and I have his personal statement. Some interesting comment, even more revealing than that which I have offered here, could be presented to refute some of Mr. Van Arsdale’s countercharges. Instead of picking and choosing to build up my own case, however, I felt it would be fairest to him to take up his charges in their chronological order and answer them in so far as space permitted. It must be assumed that he would set forth his most damaging evidence and his best defense in his first three barrages. The strength of those that follow must be judged by the weakness of his initial attack.