In the LaFollette Committee's public laundry corporate labor relations are getting the scrubbing of their lives. The sheepishness with which labor spys and executives unfolded their shabby exploits hints that the rule of pry and prowl and deceive will be dropped in the future. General Motors, the target of the current investigation, has oozed unsavory details. Not content with ordinary spying, its men stole union files, deliberately broke the Wisconsin law for registration of detectives, and jammed up union activities. Some of its workers in Lansing read in yesterday's paper that all the officers of their union were detectives, a triumph for the Pinkerton Agency.

The harvest of bitter strikes which General Motors rasped this winter started some second thought in its councils, which led to the dismissal of the agency. This public pillory of one company must be impelling the others to reconsider the wisdom of bossing the workmen by fear and distrust, for the cost of spies is great and the increment from their use is disastrous. If it is important that the executives know what labor is up to, better systems can be devised to find out; many factories have them already. The half million dollars a year that, for example, General Motors spent on detectives bred some of the hostility and suspicion lying behind the strike. The waste of this method sticks up like a sore thumb along side the inexpensive welfare activities of such companies as Endicott Johnson, whose workers are among the most contented in the country. Productive efficiency as well as morale goes out the window when spics sneak in the side door. How long it will be before espionage disappears depends on how quickly the business men grasp the real costs of their policy.