Westbrook Pegler
Wisconsin State Journal/June 19, 1951
‘ I have the honor to present the answer of the Central Labor Council of Clark County, Nev., to my disclosure that Ralph Howard Alsup, its president, who is also vice president of the State Federation of the AFL. is an inveterate jail-bird, a gunman and a habitual criminal, now under conviction for shooting in the body a poor union stiff who appealed to the Las Vegas painters’ union for justice. His criminal record includes three gun charges and two such convictions. This answer is published in the Nevada Citizen, the official publication of the County Labor Council. Alsup is listed on the masthead of the Nevada Citizen as president of the Council. He is boss of B. J. Lydon, the editor.
The statement follows:
“Mister Pegler Again Pours Venom on Labor.”
“Mr. Westbrook Pegler, that atrabilious gentleman of the kept daily press, who hates everyone and everything, was a social visitor to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. He dined and was entertained lavishly in one of the plush hotels of the strip.
“Not much was said about the gentleman’s visitation here in the daily press, perhaps because it was not desired that any of the people who live on the wrong side of the tracks might get to the omnipotent one with their opinions, as if he would pay much attention to them anyway.
“A fortnight later, Mister Peeler released from his syndicate a series of articles typically Pegleresque, poking malicious fun at Las Vegas, attacking its citizens and generally continuing his attack upon organized labor. Mister Pegler apparently saw the right people whilst he was dined in their midst, for his diatribes bear as much of the stigma of the Nevada Citizens’ Committee as they do their own particular style of cynical mouthing.
“Mister Pegler admits he made a pilgrimage to the jurisprudential abodes of the youthful district attorney, Mr. Roge Foley, and he must have drunk deeply of the intellectual aroma of the district attorney’s office, for he refers fondly and respectfully to ‘Mr.’ Foley. For common lay folk he does not use the gentle prefix.
“Then it must be assumed that Mr. Pegler also drank deeply of the invigorating atmosphere that pervades the office of Mr. Albert Edward Cahlan, the editor of the Review-Journal, where each must have salaamed In the presence of another mental giant. For, in his articles, Mr. Pegler related that a Catholic priest interceded at one time to prevent certain persons from publishing a report that Ralph Alsup had once served time in Texas for an Infraction for which he later received a full pardon from the governor. This is the same line which Mr. Cahlan once used to show how he, the great benefactor of labor, the mahatma of the Democratic party in Nevada, had protected Ralph Alsup from public shame.
“Of Las Vegas, Mister Pegler refers to that cowardly tough town of the old West and once again as the timid Wild West of Nevada. Of unionists in Las Vegas he speaks as predatory mobs protected by the ‘crooked Roosevelt and Truman ” administrations.’
“All unionists are the objects of Mister Pegler’s venom. They are, to quote him, ‘brutal scoundrels.’ And Ralph Alsup, as president of the Central Labor Council and vice president of the Nevada State Federation of Labor, is pointed out in particular as a ‘most vicious criminal unioneer.’
“Most of Mr. Pegler’s bilious writings are not worthy of repetition or of second thought. They are of value only as indicative of the low ebb to which certain elements in Clark County will go in their welcomed importation of a professional scandal monger and scold, to encourage his rabid utterances, at the cost of untold damage in the national reputation which Las Vegas has so carefully built. No means is too vile in their efforts to blacken the name of organized labor and members of organized labor.
“It is no secret that Ralph Alsup had erred in his early youth. There were mitigating circumstances and there were reasons, of course, but they do not especially concern any of us. The point is that for his errors, Ralph Alsup had paid the cost. He had atoned for his missteps. The sovereign state of Texas had recognized that and given him an unconditional pardon. It is axiomatic on the Nevada desert that a man is as he is, not as he once was or as he may be in the future. If a man is honest in his dealings, if he is sincere in his thinking and in his actions, he is a man to be welcomed and respected. Dragging past records out and rattling skeletons is only an effort to delude the public into thinking that all organized labor is rotten.
“Ralph Alsup needs no defense in the eyes of organized labor. Unionists know him for a man of honesty and sincerity, they know him as a man who has been courageous in fighting the elements, inside and outside the unions, who would destroy the organized labor movement. Is it not a greater glory to be on the other side? Westbrook Pegler and the bile that he pours forth are nothing. The newspapers which cater to his kind of stuff are nothing. The view not to be neglected is that of the anti-labor forces closing in, viciously and tenaciously, with all the power of money and avenues of public information. Labor must form ranks and face the inevitable Armageddon where the divine right of the working man must prevail against intolerance and warped mentality and selfish greed.”
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