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MOTION PICTURES AND THE WAR 551
principle, and they could not be reconciled. We felt we had to defeat the proposal and it was defeated.
In the fifteen states where there is "right-to-work" legislation, A.F.R.A. has been put out of business. Right to work legislation will either destroy us or seriously impair our union's activities.
Of the "freedoms" and "human rights" of which we are hearing such vocal defense these days, one would expect that the "right to work" would be accepted as axiomatic. It seems to me a complete anomaly that a group of workers should be so organized and so controlled that it can take away from one of its members, because he exercises the right to express a political opinion, the very right to work which the union was presumably organized to safeguard. Is not his right to express political opinion exactly equal to that of any or all members of the union's governing board to express theirs? By whose authority can the constitution of a labor union supersede the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America? When was a part greater than the whole?
But to end these personal reflections on a happier note, the last year of this period saw me in the same setting as the first. Again I was "back home in Indiana," this time for the Eighth Bond Drive, still in the capable hands of Eugene Pulliam. This time the governor was Ralph E. Gates, a man whose sincerity and force I greatly admire; the movie star was Ann Sothern; the scene was the State Fair Grounds, with bands, music, skating, and generally high spirits. We drove out in sleighs, the governor and Ann Sothern in the first, Mrs. Gates and I in the second. We were pushed around the ice by skaters in great glee. But no amount of ice could chill the warm hearts of these good folks.
Some questions are perennial because inherent in human nature, or the constitution of the universe, or the relation between the two. Jesus said, for instance, "The poor ye have always with you." So, apparently, with some international problems. One of my last official conferences before resigning the presidency of MPPDA in September of 1945 was with Donald Nelson, then president of the Independent Motion Picture Producers' Association, and President Truman, just five months after he took office. Foreign distribution was the thing we discussed. Earlier that year our Association had formed the new Export Association, to get more effective united action in handling all overseas matters. This was another definite chapter in industry co-operation, of which our earlier wartime financial dealings with Great Britain had proved perhaps the most striking example.
Now that it is past and over, we can look back with a wry smile on the tug-of-war that resulted in bringing back to America more than