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HERE COMES LABOR

Chester Mo Wright

ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT VELIE

THE PEOPLES LIBRARY

New York • 1939

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

All rights reserved — no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief
passages in connection with a review written
for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1939.
Reprinted July, 1939.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Who Is Labor? i

II. What Labor Wants 9

III. What Labor Asks For 16

IV. Labor on the March 23
V. Captains, Privates, and Camp Followers 31

VI. The Structure of Labor 40

VII. The C.I.O. Walks Out 47

VIII. Brothers under the Skin 59

IX. Party Lines 66

X. Strikes 72

XI. Peace Has Its Victories 82

XII. Labor and the Lawmakers 90

XIII. Labor Votes for Its Friends 95

XIV. Bargaining Becomes Legal 99
XV. Labor against Itself 106

XVI. Labor and the World Picture 111

XVII. Labor Looks at the New Deal 118

CHAPTER I
WHO IS LABOR?

AMERICAN Labor is on the March. Millions of
men and women, working people, are fighting
for a chance to live better lives. Whenever they win,
life is better for all of us together. This book is about
Labor and what it is doing. But the word "labor" is
sometimes confusing. Suppose we put it this way: If
you spell labor with a small "1" you mean work. If
you spell Labor with a capital "L" you mean people.
So this book is really about human beings engaged in
a dramatic struggle.

But Labor does not include everybody, or even
everybody who works. Doctors, scientists, and other
professional men often work longer hours than any

strong union would permit its members to agree to.
Business men and bankers often work very hard. They
have a right to say that they, also, help the people of
the United States to live. And that is what work is
for, to enable the people of a country to live. But pro-
fessional and business men do not work for wages.
And they are usually employers of others. The word
Labor means wage-earners.

Some people hold that Labor is a class, the "prole-
tariat/* which owns nothing; the slaves of the capital-
ists or "bourgeoisie" who control everything. But it
would be hard to convince an American locomotive
engineer who owns his own home, perhaps some
shares of stock in a good company, and whose son is
studying in college, that he belongs to the proletariat
or ever has belonged to an oppressed "class." Amer-
ican workers just do not think in those terms.

There are about fifty million men and women in
this country who work— or would like to work— for
wages. They do not employ others; they are not mem-
bers of the professions. No doubt they are workers,
but one cannot say what the whole mass of them
wants, or where they are going, or what they are try-
ing to do. They have never gotten together and de-
cided on these things. They have no one to speak for
them, or to lead them; they have no way of planning
and acting together as a whole group to help make
the life of each individual better.

So it is only the workers organized in labor unions
who can be counted as a force in this country. They

have spokesmen who let their wishes and opinions be
known. Acting together, they have developed great
power over their own lives, and they deeply affect the
life of the country as a whole. When you speak of
American Labor, then, you mean organized working
men and women. You mean the unions.

Unions are not made up of any one particular sort
of person; almost every type of American is repre-
sented in their ranks. There are college graduates and
people who have never learned to read. There are
Negroes and Chinese. There are members of the
country's proudest families, and people whose parents
never took a bath in winter. There are also men of
sound judgment, and fools. There are savage fighters
and smooth diplomats. There are those who will
gladly lay down their lives for a cause and those who
will betray any party or any person for power or
money. There are those who see ahead with clear eyes
and those who follow blindly after the man of the
hour.

In the conventions that order Labor's affairs, the
man who digs ditches sits down between the clerk
who spends his days juggling columns of figures and
the skilled machinist to whom a hair's thickness is
greater than the difference between a good job and a
bad one. And as these men are different in their work,
they are different in their lives and in the problems
they have to face. So you cannot say that Labor is this
kind of person, or that kind. Labor is Americans,
organized to act and think together.

I have spent my life working with American Labor,
sometimes as part of its organized body, sometimes as
an observer. I have seen its triumphs and defeats
from close up; watched it blunder, right itself, go on.
I have known its people— members of the rank and
file, the officers, and the men and women who have
given their whole lives to Labor quietly, with small
rewards and no fame.

And I believe in Labor. It has been a force for
great good in the United States, socially, economi-
cally, spiritually. It has improved the standard of
living, maintaining the right of the American worker
to all that makes for health and the better things of
life. It has helped to keep the United States demo-
cratic by fighting against too great a difference be-
tween the rich and the poor, by guarding the work-
ingman's freedom, and by seeing to it that workers
did not become a helpless mass, without a voice,
without defense against exploitation, without a part
in the nation's affairs.

Labor truly has taken to itself the principle upon
which this country was founded— that all men were
created equal before the law and that equal opportu-
nity should be granted to all. And in the long run I
believe that Labor has helped the very industries
against whose owners and bosses it has struggled.

So I am going to talk about Labor as I have
known it. I want to explain Labor's point of view; to
tell of its actions and policies as Labor itself sees
them; to justify as Labor justifies its own doings; to

criticize as Labor often criticizes itself. I am not an
official and so have nothing either to say or to hold
back as a matter of policy. And I am not interested
solely in the subtle and impersonal problems of soci-
ology and economics of which Labor is a part. The
things I have to tell are these: what Labor means to
union members, and what Labor means to you.

It is important that you understand the people
who make up organized Labor, and how they are
organized; what Labor seeks to do and what it helps
to accomplish next; how it goes about it; whether or
not it keeps step with the nation as the days march by.

This is not a history, but a look backward helps
us to remember that what is happening now is in a
large part the result of what has been happening
through the years. For I am trying to help you see
where Labor is going, and show you some of the
main directions it is taking. I want you to under-
stand the force of its drive as it goes along, and how
these things relate to the nation as a whole.

Naturally, I cannot give all the details of this tre-
mendous picture in a short book. But if you and your
fellow citizens, who together make up America, know
something of the main outlines, the most important
facts, and something of the human side of it all, then
you will be better prepared to understand what is
happening here— and how it affects you.

The power of Labor depends upon the number of
workers who are organized. All of Labor's hopes,

dreams, and aims are bound up with the strength of
numbers. Thinkers and leaders do not always know
exactly what they will do with a mighty membership,
but they are certain that it will give them the power
to accomplish whatever aims Labor may decide upon.

I know of nothing that illustrates all this so well
as a drama, small in itself but great in meaning, that
took place more than twenty years ago. Samuel Gom-
pers, who did more than any other man to bring
Labor together under one banner and give it a voice
in the country's affairs, stood alone with me one night
on the open porch of a hotel in Atlantic City. In the
starlight we could watch the waves sweep in, an end-
less procession, powerful and majestic.

As he watched, Samuel Gompers saw in those roll-
ing waves a symbol. It was during the World War,
and organized Labor was growing with a great for-
ward surge. Gompers stretched out his fist in a gesture
that showed how eager he was, and how baffled, and
said in a voice tense with emotion:

"If we only had ten million organized "

There are not yet ten million organized. But dur-
ing the last few years Labor has again surged forward.
Dark and troubled days came after that night when
Gompers saw Labor's future in the rolling waves.
Except for the period of the World War, there was
very little change in the nation's way of thinking
about Labor over the twenty-five years before the
coming of the New Deal.

Labor could be expected to do certain things, and

it was generally felt that certain things could safely
be done to Labor. The "yellow dog contract," which
bound the worker not to join a union, was upheld
and protected by the courts.

Labor injunctions were issued, preventing men
from doing, as organized groups, the things they had
a lawful right to do, and compelling them to do the
things they had a lawful right to refuse to do. "Pri-
vate detective agencies," as they were called, fought
to break strikes ruthlessly and on a grand scale. The
Bergoff Agency, leader of them all, reached the pin-
nacle of its battle-axe success.

There were periods when Labor gained and pe-
riods when it lost, but not much change in the large,
important parts of the picture. There was a great
deal of talk, but not much was done that was new.

With the autumn of 1929 came unemployment in
great, man-swallowing waves. Union treasuries went
down; union dues fell away. Labor ranks shared the
woes of all the country's banks. Great ambitions went
into the dark of economic night like ghosts of
grandeur.

Then came Franklin D. Roosevelt— and action. The
nation turned its face away from old ways. Freed by
New Deal laws and spurred by New Deal policies,
Labor surged forward. From a scant three and a half
millions, the unions grew to more than seven mil-
lions. This new surge brought great changes, and
more are coming.

It will not be a rash, rampaging Labor any more.

Most of the strong-arm days of reckless moblike ac-
tion are over. The coming days are likely to be a
time of well considered, constructive action, of co-
operation for the making of a sounder nation. The
future will see less yawning gaps between the "haves"
and the "have-nots"— a fairer distribution of the re-
wards of American industry.

The march goes on. Today America can look down
the road and say, in truth, "Here comes Labor!"

CHAPTER II
WHAT LABOR WANTS

ONLY a few workers, those especially gifted or
especially fortunate, can get what they need
and want if they have to act alone. The only way for
all of them to get their fair share of America's plenty
is to band together and use the power of numbers.
They must "bargain collectively/' Large groups must
sell, through spokesmen, the services of all their mem-
bers on better terms than individuals could com-
mand.

But workers must collect in groups before bargain-
ing can start, and employers must accept the fact that
they are to deal with a group before an agreement
can be reached.

Freedom to organize, a freedom long denied by law
and by custom, has always been the first thing Labor
wanted. And the second thing has been the recogni-
tion by employers of unions as the agents with whom
they have to deal. Most other things that Labor may
need or want can be gained only when collective bar-
gaining is possible.

Freedom to organize is guaranteed by law, now,
and employers are compelled to deal with unions.
Labor today has thrown most of its strength into the

effort to get for its members the practical benefits
that collective bargaining brings within reach.

First are the material needs, such as food, shelter,
clothing, the things every man and his family must
have in order to live decently. This is, in spite of its
evident justice and economic soundness, a large
order. It means, among other things, steady work and
continuous income for workers. As the weeks rush
along, this problem is shaking American political life
to its roots.

High up among Labor's wants are the natural am-
bitions for power. Also important is the desire for
what are called the spiritual and ethical experiences,
the desire for a full life. What a person needs for
rich, full living, each must measure and define for
himself. But we may say generally that workers, like
all Americans, want education, pleasure, travel, as
much freedom as possible, and an understanding of
the world about them.

Workers are people in no way different from those
about them. Ordinary men themselves, they want
what other ordinary men want. And they expect to
get these things in the same way and by the same
means. They strive to satisfy their ambitions and
their desires.

That brings them, through their unions, to these
questions:

How much do things cost?

How much has Labor got, or how much can it get,
with which to pay the bill?

To answer, Labor must consider just about every
factor that goes to make up what we call economics.
The list includes taxes, both seen and unseen, real
wages, the services and costs of government, profits,
operating costs, and so on down the line.

These are the factors out of which we get a sum
total called National Existence. Organized Labor
faces a real job in supplying what the workers want,
and the demands increase as our national life be-
comes more complicated.

We have said that all workingmen are not alike.
Neither are all bankers, all merchants, or all doctors.
Among union members we can find almost the whole
range of human ability and human capacity for think-
ing and understanding. The ranks of Labor no longer
contain only men who wear overalls— though some-
times men who wear overalls have great powers of
mind and magnificent qualities of soul and spirit.

By and large, the mind of the worker is the prod-
uct of his time; and we are living in a time of
machinery and of science. A great share of the work
of today has been shifted from human backs to mar-
velous machines. It takes many intelligent and highly
trained workers to run those machines and keep them
in repair.

It does us good to remember that there was a time
in the past when all workers labored with their hands,
when they tilled soil, tended flocks, wove at their
looms, or handled simple tools. For century after
century there was almost no change.

Look at your own family records to see how recent
was the breakaway from living directly by hand. A
scythe, a cradle, and a flail were the workaday tools
of the farm when my grandfather was a young man.
All of the tools and materials for making a house out
of trees were simple; all except the nails, hinges,
locks, and glass. And there was great debate in those
days about whether the new wire nail which came
with the machine age was really any good, as com-
pared to the old square-cut nail of tradition. In the
parade of the centuries, that time of my grandfather's
was only yesterday.

Just back over the hill, in the later eighteenth cen-
tury, men began to apply steam to machinery. The
result was the greatest change in the speed of living
since the human race began. Eighteen centuries had
been running on and on, each very much like the
last, so far as the average man was concerned. Then
in less than two centuries came the amazing world of
today. And so we have to think about what Labor
did to meet the new conditions, and about the whole
Labor problem. The speed of change has been no
less for Labor than for others, but Labor has had a
harder time keeping up. Today change is so rapid
that we have problems which must be settled in a
week, whereas in earlier times— if there had been
such problems then— they might have waited for
years.

Year by year the speed of change grows faster. I
should like to emphasize that phrase, Speed of

Change. It needs to be fixed in our mind. Look at it
over the last ten years; look ahead a little. Speed of
Change. And the catalogue of what Labor wants is
changing in the same way. The Knights of the Round
Table had no such complicated issues as those which
face the executive board of a 1939 union.

So we have new demands today which are not
material needs in terms of food and clothing and
housing, but which are just as important. On many a
day in the past, gunpowder was the principal require-
ment of Daniel Boone. With another workingman of
that day, the broken ax handle was a tragedy. He
had to have a new one or stop work.

Today the great need may be a decision by the
National Labor Relations Board, and it may well be
that until the decision is handed down all wheels are
stopped and all hands are idle.

A change in the rate of a tariff schedule may mean
the difference between work and no work for a large
group. A Supreme Court decision may alter the
course of life for thousands. An act of Congress may
constitute something vastly more important in the
lives of workers than a revolution would have accom-
plished a hundred years ago.

The means by which needs are satisfied have
changed, and are changing, with the speed of light-
ning. The result has been to let down the bars, to
create new rights, and to send organized Labor driv-
ing ahead with the greatest speed of growth it has
ever known.

Labor's wants thus can be defined only in terms of
today. They do not stand still. They are not wrapped
in packages and laid neatly away upon shelves, from
which they may be taken one by one, last year, this
year, or next year, always the same. If we are to
understand them at all, they must be regarded in
terms of life. And life never stands still. Inventions
create new needs. New needs frequently require new
laws. New laws have their imperfections— and again
change is demanded.

Beneath the shifting pattern of economic life are
two basic things that are unchanging because they are
now, always have been, and always will be part of
life in America: first, freedom; second, the material
things necessary to provide a high standard of living.

Freedom has, through all the history of organized
Labor, been number one on the list, and at least so
far as the present generation is concerned it will stay
at the top. As for material things, Labor wants all it
can get and isn't afraid to say so. As a matter of fact,
Labor's official declarations have repeated a thousand
times the principle that workers must receive, for
services given, a return that is ever larger and larger.

Any ideas that there are certain enjoyable things
which workers should not want may as well be dis-
missed. Definitely, the organized Labor movement
wants every good thing there is, and wants every good
thing there is just as soon as it can be had legitimately

and with due regard for the safety of the whole
system.

The needs of individual workers will always differ
just as do those of bankers or preachers or idlers.
Workers want automobiles. If next year they can
afford a better car than they own this year, they will
buy it. Education, environment, and earning power
are three of the major factors in determining the
needs of all individuals, whether they are workers
or not.

How to satisfy needs, both material and otherwise,
is perhaps the greatest problem confronting the na-
tion today. There is plenty wrong with both industry
and law, and to adjust those weaknesses is one of the
main concerns of the Labor movement.

CHAP nu III
WHAT LABOR ASKS FOR

SOME Labor leaders think in terms of immediate
objectives— of victories that can be won tomor-
row or the day after, Others have their eyes fixed on
distant goals, and would guide Labor's march accord-

ingty-

'I 'his is confusing to those who want to know what

Labor is after. To add to the confusion, leaders dis-
agree as to how l.i.si l.ahoi may forge ahead toward
ils objectives and slill keep its balance. Around this
disagi cement is centered the light between the A.K.
of L. and the C.I.O., and the air is full of war cries
as each side tries to rally more and more men to its
M.I m l.i 1 1 U So it is necessary to stand off and study
the t|iies(mn coollv. without taking sides and without
being swayed by the opinions of cither party.

Beneath the conflict and the oratory are three im-
mediate ohjc(ti\cs lor which all l.aboi strives: pillars
which uphold the benefit! that are won for individ-
u.ils and families:

i. Stable conditions of employment* steady jobs.

8. A minimum M. mil. ml ol hxiiu', thioni;h ti\m:', .1

minimum wage by law or otherwise; high enough
incomes.

;{. Collective h. Maiming in regnlatm}', lelations he
tween employers ,ind employees ,uul in in.in.i^inj; the
nation's economic slnu line.

In general, these .ne what (he lij;hiinj«- .ind the
shonlini; .ne .ill .ihnnt.

Pay that is more than a fixed minimum and work*
Ing hours that are fewer than a fixed maximum estab-

hsh .1 higher M.ind.nd of living for workingmen'i

l.nnilies, and guai .inlee iheni mOTC freedom tO live a

full life. When conditions are stable, when work is

sle.idy .ind (he ici m.s nndei \vhi( h La hoi is sold to (he

employer remain the same over a long time, then
families get the benefits over a long time and know
how they are going to live. When conditions are
shaky, they do not know what is going to happen to
them from one month to the next.

Labor wants most of all the freedom to fight for
better conditions. Laws already on the books have

broken the shackles of older oppressions, and Labor
asks only that it he allowed to go its way unlettered
by new chains. In dealing with both employers and

llir s(. lie. if is .illei the s.ime things. \\lielhei in a
demand laid down on .1 ( onlei em e t.ihle <>i in .1 hill
introduced in ( oip-iess, (he purpose is the same.

If they had a choice, American labor unions would

always lalhei de.il \vilh employer, lli MI depend on
laws passed by (!onj.»iess 01 hy sl.iie le^islalines. I he
i e. i son is ( I c.n . Labor takes an ,n 1 1 \ e p.i 1 1 in i K ••« »i u
(ions with employers. II mistakes .lie m.ide ihey <.m
he ((>iie< ted in lalei a^ieements. On the olliei hand,

Labor's relation to legislation is not so definite, not
so direct, and much less open to later changes.

Labor is like life itself, changing from day to day.
So we are not shocked to learn that Labor may com-
pletely reverse itself. It may seek entirely new ways
of achieving an objective, or it may even change the
objective as time goes on. This is the "opportunism"
or shortsightedness for which American Labor has
been greatly criticized. To this Labor answers: The
American workers' standard of living is the highest
in the world.

Because Labor does not plan too far ahead, its
objectives are hard to set down in words. It might be
assumed that they are to be found in the resolutions
adopted by Labor conventions and in the actions of
Labor executives; but this is true only in part. Many
a decision reached in an official convention is later
ignored. Very often, in fact, it is known at the time
that it will be ignored. In other words, some things
are "for the record," while others are tools for day-to-
day use.

That certain decisions are meant only to be re-
corded and not acted upon is in no sense under-
handed, because often it is desirable to set forth these
viewpoints and positions, not for the sake of today,
but for protection against the demands of tomorrow.

American Labor has marked out no point at which
to plant a banner and say:

"Here is the end of the road."

It has never felt wise enough to determine what
measure of progress or what state of society would be
completely satisfactory. But it has, in a very real
sense, set its eyes far beyond these goals.

It has said:

"So far as we know, there is no end of the road. We
shall go on and on, striving to make each year better
for humanity than the year before."

It has said:

"There may be a better state of society and a better
way of life than any we can now think of."

It has said:

"We are not vain enough to believe that our
imagination can picture the heights to which the
human race may climb or the measure of benefits
which the Labor movement may achieve."

There are those who will argue that in taking this
point of view, American Labor confesses that it lacks
any permanent and definite philosophy. Others will
hold it to be the finest and truest philosophy of them
all. Certainly, American Labor has numbered in its
ranks many real philosophers, and perhaps their
thinking was clearer because it was done in terms of
the life and conditions of the nation. Sound or not,
the philosophy has developed from the soil and the
tools and the resources of America.

The final objectives of Labor organizations are
usually based upon movements opposed to the phi-
losophy of the nation in which they exist. In this
country, Labor has no final objective because it be-

lieves that American industry fits into the practices
of democracy. So it is content to set up immediate
demands; and when today's have been satisfied, then
it will consider tomorrow's. And it is not interested
in long-range programs having to do with the over-
throw of existing political control. Socialist move-
ments in non-socialist countries, for example, have a
final objective. They work for the establishment of
socialism.

What happened in Russia may serve to make this
clear. Under the Czar there were several movements
that had final objectives and long-term programs for
reaching them. When the Bolsheviks gained power
the final objective which they had cherished for years
ceased to exist. It had been reached; it no longer lay
in the future.

So the Bolsheviks then became interested in imme-
diate objectives. They had the kind of government
and the kind of economic system they wanted, so they
worked from then on in that framework. In the same
way, American Labor works in the framework of
democracy and capitalism.

The revolutionary objectives which formed the
long-range program of Labor movements in other
countries have been unnecessary in the United States
because the final objective for which American work-
ers would certainly strive— democracy— had been
achieved by our people before our Labor was organ-
ized. But if ever American industry is in conflict with
democracy, then something like a long-range objec-

tive will take form within the American Labor move-
ment. Labor will fight for democracy.

Our nation has a Constitution. It has a philosophy
which is expressed in the Constitution. It has an
ideal. But it does not have a chart setting forth its
objectives over a long term of years. Congress meets
in sessions, regular or special, and deals with the
issues as it sees fit at the time.

A big navy Congress will succeed a little navy
Congress, and a high tariff Congress will succeed a
low tariff Congress. Laws are passed and laws are re-
pealed. Certain policies are fairly stable and certain
others are extremely changeable. If a long-range pro-
gram should ever be charted, any session of Congress
could knock it into a cocked hat.

So, too, with American Labor. It has a constitu-
tion. It has a philosophy and it has ideals. It has poli-
cies which are fairly stable, and it has policies which
may change overnight. It has principles which are
enduring. But it has no long-range program or final
objective. If it did, any convention, regular or special,
could destroy it and put another in its place.

For this reason, no one can set down as final a
statement of what Labor wants or will do this year,
much less what it wants or will do next year— or the
years on beyond. It will depend upon the immediate
needs and how well they are satisfied from time to
time. A great and vital need in 1930 was the right to
organize freely. Another need was to get rid of the
system that required every worker to sign a separate

employment contract. The individual employment
contract and denial of the right to organize were re-
garded by Labor as mighty instruments of oppres-
sion. As long as these obstacles existed it was impos-
sible to increase the number of members in Labor
organizations.

Then came the government, with law after law,
some written with Labor's help, some without regard
for Labor's advice. But these new laws, although they
brought tremendous growth in membership, gave
Labor cause for worry. It sees them as a network of
regulations woven by legislatures and put in force by
the courts. They grant and protect rights, but it is
also possible that they may restrict future progress.
So no one can be sure that within another twelve
months Labor will not be fighting for escape from
the same legal structure which gave it freedom from
old oppressions.

CHAPTER IV
LABOR ON THE MARCH

EBOR depends upon the strength of numbers to
fight its way clear of oppressions. Unions are
the foundations upon which it builds; if they do not
spread and multiply, the whole movement must come
to a standstill. So Labor steadily recruits nonunion
workers, both for unions already formed and for new
ones which it plans to place in the field. These latter
may represent either trades and industries not already
unionized or new locals of organizations that are ac-
tive elsewhere.

The going union pretty much takes care of itself.
Members "sell" its advantages to friends, fellow work-
ers, and casual drifters. But the formation of a new
union is not so simple. It calls for a blend of sweat,
endurance, courage, strategy, eloquence, varying
methods, and such further qualities as are needed to
handle the special problem at hand. It is in charge
of an official organizer.

Labor organizers go about their jobs by searching
out first of all the nonunion workers who may be
willing to listen. Such people are found in various
ways. Sometimes they write in and suggest that a new
union be formed in the district where they work.

Sometimes they are located by hit-or-miss methods.
Sometimes a single interested person spreads the
appeal among his circle of friends. Sometimes public
meetings are advertised and held— and sometimes po-
lice break up these meetings with a variety of results.

Organizers never know what lies ahead. I have met
many who are marked for life with the scars of con-
flict. The records show they seldom run away from
trouble.

Those who charge American Labor with lack of
fight, as many have done, don't know the movement.
No corner of the world has ever produced a Labor
organization in which there was more willingness to
get down to physical combat than the United States
of America.

But it takes more than courage to organize a union.
It takes more than even a careful, tried-and-true plan
of action, which may run on the rocks without warn-
ing. If it smashes, the organizer never hesitates to try
again with an entirely new approach. The truth is
that almost every method by which human beings
may be drawn together has been used at one time or
another in forming Labor unions.

Sometimes a great deal of strategy is necessary.
There are cases in which public sentiment must be
stirred to a point where it will accept unions before
any attempt can be made to form them. Labor has
been somewhat slow in the past to adapt modern pro-
motion methods in organizing workers, but today it
misses no opportunity to reach the masses. The radio

and up-to-date printing may be listed as methods of
spreading the word.

Sometimes organizers find difficulty in choosing the
proper kind of appeal for reaching a particular group
of workers. The problems in larger cities are differ-
ent from the problems in isolated rural communities.
Cities are not all alike. You cannot work in Detroit
as you would in New York, and Chicago is not like
either one of them. A textile mill in some remote
Virginia or Carolina district requires still different
methods. The problem in Alabama and Mississippi
is wholly different from the problem on the Pacific
Coast. And so it goes, up and down and across the
whole country.

Even when a certain district has been studied at
length, the organizer cannot count on conditions
staying as they are. Industrial change may upset all
calculations and plans. Consider, for example, the
effect of inventions upon Labor. At times it has
changed the problem of organizing, and at other
times it has made necessary complete reorganization.
Some unions, like the farmers' when the grain-binder
came into use, opposed the use of machines, while
others accepted them and sought to control their
operation.

Cigar makers fought the coming of the machine
age, but printers accepted it and lived to see it make
far more work for them than older ways had ever pro-
vided. Today plastic materials threaten damage to the
memberships of more than a dozen unions, for just

as steel replaced wood in construction, so plastics may
replace steel on certain parts of the job. Thus inven-
tions have "made" some unions and broken others.

Once the carriage makers were proud craftsmen in
Labor's organization— but try to find their factories
on your industrial map today. The automobile
changed the national transportation picture; it set
workers roaming from state to state looking for work,
and created a nation freer to move than any in the
history of the world. This, too, has brought new prob-
lems to organizers and union executives, who must
try to prevent jobless armies from rushing wherever
some unusual volume of work happens to appear.

But difficulties of this kind may be smoothed out
with clear thinking. They are not like the physical
dangers of the old days when, in setting forth to form
unions, organizers risked their lives. Many of them
punctuated their services with stretches in jails, some
made frequent trips to hospitals for repairs, and a
few were carted straight to morgues. Organizing tech-
nique is as fascinating as any human drama could
be, but in the past its dark side was likely to be a
solid black.

Gradually, over the years, organizers found their
jobs growing a little easier. The change began with
the development of company unions, which date al-
most from the moment when John D. Rockefeller,
Sr., was converted to the idea that public opinion
was something with which to reckon. An end had
been put to the older Rockefeller policies by a disas-

trous strike at Ludlow, Colorado, and by the mas-
sacre of a tent colony of strikers by the state militia.

It was early in the first presidential term of Wood-
row Wilson. At the President's suggestion, Congress
authorized the appointment of the United States
Commission on Industrial Relations, which was pre-
sided over by Frank P. Walsh as chairman.

The Rockefellers saw the handwriting on the wall.
They hired Ivy Lee as public relations counsel, and
brought to the United States a rising young engineer,
W. L. Mackenzie King, who later was to become
prime minister of Canada. As had been expected, the
Commission unearthed horrible truths about indus-
trial practices. W. L. Mackenzie King immediately
set about building a structure of company unionism,
and Ivy Lee developed a policy of public relations.

One of the most significant of all industrial dramas
occurred as a direct result.

During a session of the United States Commission
on Industrial Relations held in the City Hall of New
York, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was on the stand as a
witness. The late Mother Jones, long known as the
angel of the miners and one of the most fiery and
vigorous of all Labor organizers, was an observer in
the room. She was no friend of the Rockefellers. She
had berated them, in fact, from the Rocky Moun-
tains to the Atlantic Coast with a biting tongue and
a vivid vocabulary. In her seethed all the hatred of
the miners for the Rockefeller industrial kingdom.

But Ivy Lee persuaded her, somehow or other, to

meet John D. Rockefeller. As the session adjourned
the two who had been bitter foes up to this time
shook hands under the eyes of a battery of reporters
and photographers.

It was a signal. Perhaps it was a symbol. It was like
Robert E. Lee and U. S. Grant meeting with a
friendly handclasp. It was the first important step in
a new public sentiment toward the interests operat-
ing under the name of Rockefeller. Thousands and
thousands had the immediate feeling that, if Mother
Jones and John D. Rockefeller could shake hands
and talk pleasantly together, something must have
changed in the Rockefellers' attitude toward Labor.

No such significance would attach to a similar
meeting today, because Labor and employers are now
much closer together. There is still plenty of bitter-
ness among opponents on the industrial scene, but it
is no longer the fierce hatred of that period a quarter-
century ago. The Ludlow massacre, as it was called,
had sent a flame of seething passion through the ranks
of workers from coast to coast.

Ludlow meant Rockefeller, and Rockefeller meant
Ludlow, until Ivy Lee achieved his masterpiece of
diplomacy in the New York City Hall. It was the
turning point. After that, W. L. Mackenzie King
began to rebuild the Rockefeller structures in oil and
coal, and the development of company unions began
in earnest.

Labor has always condemned the company union
as a tool of the employer; members in that kind of

union had little voice of their own. But the company
union did blaze a trail to the formation of collective
groups. It did get workers used to organizing. It did
get employers used to accepting unions. And by set-
ting these examples, it made the way easier for Labor
organizers later on in some fields.

Labor's final hurdle was that it had no legal right
to organize workers. In due time this was provided by
the passage of the National Labor Relations Act.
Under the former laws, a Labor board haa been set
up by Senator Wagner and the later legislation was a
natural development. The real purpose of the National
Labor Relations Act is to guarantee the right of
Labor to organize freely and without control by em-
ployers.

This Act ended the long fight that had been waged
for recognition. Its faults alarm Labor for the future,
but at least it grants freedom to organize, and there
is no reason to believe that right will ever be denied.

The Board made it clear that the freedom of Labor
to organize must be respected by employers. It made
it equally clear that the right to bargain collectively
is real and will be enforced. Labor has taken advan-
tage of these guarantees to good purpose. When the
law was passed the whole movement did not include
more than three and a half million workers. Today
there are twice as many. This astounding growth is
perhaps the most important fact in American indus-
trial history.

If we could stand again where Labor stood twenty-

five years ago, the road ahead would stretch stony
and hopeless into the vague distance— so much was to
be done and the pace was so painfully slow. But
today, looking back over the years, it seems almost as
if some kindly Fate had led the march, step by step,
in an amazingly short time. Never in all the history
of the world was so much accomplished by Labor, in
anything like so brief a period as the last quarter-
century.

CHAPTER V

CAPTAINS, PRIVATES, AND CAMP
FOLLOWERS

EBOR on the march over those years was like an
army. It grew to a strength of nearly eight mil-
lion workers, and it rubbed shoulders with thousands
of others not in its own ranks. All these people
helped make Labor the living thing it is today. Some
of them were tragic, some humorous. Some were
trivial, some profound. Some were serious, some bur-
lesque. They included such figures as Eugene V.
Debs, Terence V. Powderly, Samuel Gompers, Wood-
row Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, James Duncan,
James O'Connell, Mother Jones, Frank Morrison,
William B. Wilson, William Green, John L. Lewis

Men gone to glory in mine explosions, men with
fingers and arms cut off between factory wheels, men
burned by flying steel, men smothered deep in the silt
of rivers

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Matthew Woll, I. M. Orn-
burn, Daniel J. Tobin, David Dubinsky, Victor L.
Berger, Sidney Hillman, Meyer London, and pages
upon pages of other names, some as illustrious, some
never heard of, some standing only for treachery and
defeat

Stool pigeons, dicks, finks, double-crossers, generals
of strike-breaking armies

Andrew Carnegie, Uncle Joe Cannon

Newspaper reporters, business agents, poets like
Carl Sandburg, artists who could tell stories with
paints and crayons, cartoonists like Dusty Rhodes,
managing editors like Gordon Nye

Crooks with money in their pockets to give away
and crooks with hands outstretched to take it

Good men, bad men, beggar men, and thieves,
preachers, politicians, and plutocrats. Not one of
them all but has shared somehow in the fight for
Labor.

They helped and they hampered the movement,
each in his own way, but they are a part of the story.
They are a part of yesterday's story, of today's, and
they will be a part of tomorrow's as it runs on toward
a climax that nobody knows.

These people have been written about, but there
are others, behind the scenes, of whom the public has
never heard. Two personalities in particular deserve
tributes. One is Rosa Lee Guard, no longer among
the living. The other is Florence Thorne.

Rosa Lee Guard came to the American Federation
of Labor as confidential secretary in the days of her
youth. From that vantage point, first with Samuel
Gompers and later with William Green, she watched
Labor make history over what might be termed the
adult years of its life. She saw the whole parade, the
weaknesses and the petty things along with the heroic

and the tremendous. She was in the midst of it all,
but she chose to remain unknown to the rank and
file. Her signature on official correspondence was the
masculine "R. Lee Guard."

Florence Thorne has been the intellectual force
back of many important decisions. She continues in
that capacity offstage, a name rather than a person-
ality to the movement as a whole. But the great and
the near-great still come from the corners of the earth
to talk over Labor affairs with this quiet and cultured
woman. Her desire to avoid the limelight does not
lessen her stature as a mighty power in Labor. Per-
haps it helps.

These two are singled out as examples. There are
hosts of others behind the scenes who share grave
responsibilities without asking or expecting public
appreciation. Labor has managed, since the begin-
ning, to gather to its service men and women of out-
standing ability and with what Franklin D. Roosevelt
has called "a passion for anonymity." That is the sign
and symbol, we must suppose, of the magnetism of
the movement and its importance to the people of
everyday life.

Another Labor worker who needs introducing is
the business agent. He gets into print often enough
to be known, but usually by being cartooned and
misrepresented. He isn't fat around the middle, as the
pictures would have you think. He is the contact man
between unions and employers, and he is too busy to

get fat. Called a "walking delegate" in earlier days,
the modern business agent trudges from job to job
to see that things are running smoothly, and makes
adjustments where there is friction.

It is a bigger order than it sounds. The business
agent has been the hero of a thousand minor strug-
gles of which the public never heard. He has disci-
plined members of his own union and told employers
the truth in short, ugly words that brought results.
His job, as a matter of fact, is to make sure that
union affairs are handled properly at all times, and
particularly when there are differences of opinion
between Labor and employers.

Sometimes, of course, the business agent takes it on
the chin. But that is to be expected; taking it on the
chin is a commonplace of Labor controversies. Many
an employer, too, beaten fairly either by force of
reason or by defeat through strike or lockout, has
taken it on the chin like a man and then lived up to
the bargain he made as a result.

Sometimes the workers, through no fault of their
own, also take it on the chin. There are more than
40,000 local unions in the United States; there may
be 50,000. Call it 45,000, and then remember that
this means 45,000 sets of officers, to say nothing of
still others at the head of national and international
unions, various types of councils, and city central
bodies.

Out of so many, it goes without saying, some will
use bad judgment, some will exceed their powers,

some will go completely wrong. When they do, the
workers themselves are the ones who take the licking.
Jobs blow up in their faces, strikes are lost, and the
whole union finds itself in bad odor with the public.

It is inevitable that Labor officers will occasionally
make mistakes; executives in all lines of industry do,
from little stores to big corporations. Consider, also,
that few businesses m America today are harder to
run than unions. For Labor officers there is, as a
matter of fact, no eight-hour day. Their work never
ends.

Business agents, whatever the cartoonists think, are
too active to get fat, but union executives sometimes
do. Most of them have been accustomed to hard work at
a trade, and when they shift suddenly to an office job,
usually in middle life, they find neither the time nor
the urge to keep in good physical trim. They let
themselves get fat. But their expanding girth is not,
as some people think, the result of eating too well or
living too easily. More often, it is devotion to the job
itself. This is not defense; it is explanation, and ex-
planation sadly needed.

Other human factors of Labor need bringing out
into the light. For example, the question is often
asked: Does the employer ever get an unfair deal
from the executive or business agent? Of course he
does. Sometimes he even gets a deal that involves
crime— walls have been ruined, glass broken, products
destroyed. There is no defense for such things. I think

one of the worst foes of the Labor movement is the
mistaken or wrong representative who sets out to
win a strike by seeing how much property he can
destroy.

If these tactics are not to be excused or whitewashed,
at least they can be explained in some measure.
Labor conflicts are battles. Some of them naturally
generate a high degree of heat. Heat and hate. Out
of the heat and hate come ill judgment and license.
Smash goes a window! Crack goes a skull!

But it happens on both sides of the fence. Business
men, it may be pointed out, have been guilty of care-
lessness with the law. The courts and the Federal
Trade Commission are the witnesses, and history does
not accuse; history records.

Labor admits that its own slate is far from clean.
There has been misconduct— and worse— within its
ranks. There has been corruption. There have been
cases of racketeering, when blackmail was demanded
and paid to union officers for striking or for calling
off strikes. For myself, I would be inclined to say
"What about it?" except that no one can ever quite
properly say "What about" any human's straying
from the strait and narrow.

I recall the only conversation I ever had with Cal-
vin Coolidge. It was in the White House, and he
made himself comfortable in a chair, laying aside for
the moment the stinginess of words which was part
of the Coolidge legend. He plumped at me, with
some heat, a question which was substantially this:

"What I'd like to know is, why your unions don't
throw out the crooks and bad characters?"

I confess I found myself jolted a bit, because when
the President of the United States blazes away at you
like that you want to be careful with your answer.
And I held no office, had no responsibility. But my
answer was in this general form:

Mr. President, unions don't like crooks, but unions
are not law enforcement agencies. They are organ-
ized for an entirely different purpose. You preside
over government, and government gives us the agen-
cies for trial and judgment and law enforcement.
Unions could not take over those functions. And be-
fore it can be said that a man is a crook, before any
punishment can be made, it must first be proved that
he is a crook.

No problem has been more baffling to Labor than
how to end corruption within its ranks. It wants to
seek out and punish criminals, among other reasons,
because the average union is jealous of its good name.
But unions are not courts of law, not grand juries,
not district attorneys. They do try, convict, and pun-
ish members for violations of Labor rules, but that
is the limit of their legal powers. To go further would
mean putting themselves above state and federal laws;
it would amount, bluntly, to anarchy.

I think Mr. Coolidge was impressed by that ex-
planation.

Spokesmen for Labor have pointed out, also, that
no union official ever took a bribe except when it was

handed to him by an employer or the employer's
representative. Two people, one union and one non-
union, share the crime. It is the outgrowth of con-
ditions rather than of human depravity or union
practices. Labor is not, as some critics have accused,
a hotbed of corruption. If the records could be bal-
anced, the percentage of misconduct among union
workers would certainly be no greater— and in some
cases much less— than that among people in other
walks of life.

The man in the street knows that corruption ex-
ists in high places, but how often is a public official
ever convicted? Grant that Labor has not always
been as rigorous as it should have been in suppress-
ing evil within its own ranks. Grant that suspicion
frequently points an accusing finger at some union
member. Grant even that evidence may be uncov-
ered to establish his guilt.

What then? What next? Nothing, nothing at all.
Labor has reached the dead end of the case, because
it lacks the machinery to try, convict, and sentence
criminals. That is the task of government.

So much for the legal handicap. Coupled with one
more factor, it may serve to explain Labor's reluc-
tance to take action against its members. That factor
is the loyalty within unions to the institution of
unionism; it runs parallel to the family tradition of
brotherhood. Loyalty dug its roots deep in the earlier
days of the movement, when union members were in

high disfavor with employers and were considered
almost outside the pale of the law.

It goes back to the time when they met in base-
ments, in the back rooms of saloons, and in other
hide-outs. The close relationships that developed
offer no excuse for whitewashing racketeering or any
other crimes within the movement, but they do sug-
gest a reason why unions are sometimes none too
eager to accuse suspected members. After all, Labor
is only a cross-section of humanity.

CHAPTER VI
THE STRUCTURE OF LABOR

THE C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. are much more
alike than the public has been led to suppose.
Points of difference have been used as talking points
by leaders struggling for supremacy, and as slogans,
which means that they have been exaggerated. Nor
are the real differences definite and complete, as black
is different from white. And so, before describing the
ways in which small groups of workers have asso-
ciated themselves into the two great organizations
which represent Labor, we must look more closely
at the labels that have been applied to them.

The A.F. of L. is said to represent "craft" or
"trade" unionism. Labor itself did not coin the term
"craft" as applied to unions, and it has always fought
against the word as being too narrow in its meaning,
too old-fashioned and too European. Americans work
at "trades"— the machinist's trade, and the carpenter's
trade, for example. The A.F. of L., therefore, believes
that the term "trade unions" describes more accu-
rately the organizations of which it is composed. The-
oretically, each craft union is composed of workers
in one occupation: bricklayers, painters, blacksmiths,
typesetters, and so on.

The C.I.O. is said to represent "industrial union-
ism." This term is too general and vague to be accu-
rate. But theoretically an industrial union is one
which includes all the workers in a given industry,
no matter what separate trades they may follow. For
example, all who work in the brewing industry are
supposed to belong to a single union; all coal miners
to belong to one union; all automobile workers to
belong to one union.

Take, for example, two electricians. If one was a
regular employee of a brewery and the other of an
automobile factory they would belong to the same
trade union, the local for electrical workers. But by
the principle of industrial unionism they would be-
long to different unions, one to the brewers' and
the other to the automobile workers'.

Actually, the C.I.O. does not fully represent in-
dustrial unionism, nor the A.F. of L. craft unionism.
For instance, the International Association of Ma-
chinists is one of the proudest of the so-called craft

unions in the A.F. of L.; yet it includes workers
who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be
called machinists. The "federal unions" which the
A.F. of L. organizes in various plants and communi-
ties are really industrial unions on a local scale. The
Flat Glass Workers of the C.I.O., on the other hand,
regard themselves as a highly specialized trade group.

All that can be said truthfully is that the C.I.O.
believes, in general, in industrial unionism; the A.F.
of L., in general, believes in trade unionism.

It is entirely inaccurate to describe the C.I.O. as
"vertical unionism" and the A.F. of L. as "horizontal
unionism." A good example of a vertical union is the
International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Join-
ers, which reaches from the roots of the tree to the
finished wood product. Its membership includes
those who work in the forest and follows through to
those who work on finished lumber with factory ma-
chines. This union, which is in the A.F. of L., has
been bitterly attacked by those of the left wing who
shouted loudest for vertical unionism, and did not
seem to know a vertical union when they saw it.

The theoretical differences between the C.I.O. and
the A.F. of L. have had little practical effect on the
way in which the two institutions are built. They
are so much alike in construction, and do business
in so much the same way, that they can be described
together.

Locals are the foundation of Labor. They are
formed according to the needs of a group of work-

ers in an area— a town, a county, a city or section of
a city, or a plant. The members of each local meet
together and decide on matters concerning their own
affairs. Besides voting for president, secretary, treas-
urer, and sometimes for a local executive body, each
union member votes in the election of a businss agent
—a paid, professional representative.

The influence of the business agent varies from
local to local; he may have more power or less than
any of the other officers. In smaller communities, an
A.F. of L. business agent may represent several trades,
in order to be able to give his full time to his pro-
fession and be paid for doing so. It is important that
a business agent receive no other money than what
he gets from the unions; he must be free to deal with
employers in the way that best serves the workers.

Each local is more or less dependent on the na-
tional union to which it belongs. If the local cannot
strike without calling on a larger organization for
help in paying strike benefits, it will not usually
move without having been advised to do so by the
officers of the international union from which it ex-
pects financial help. If it can finance a strike on its
own money, it may do as it pleases.

Above the locals are various bodies which repre-
sent groups of locals. These bodies are of two types:
those which represent only locals of one trade or one
industry, and "those which represent all the locals in
a given area.

Those bodies which represent one trade or indus-

try are all part of some national— or "international,"
if Canadian locals are included— union, such as the
International Typographical Union in the A.F. of
L. and the United Mine Workers in the C.I.O. Each
local may send delegates to the national convention
of its union. The delegates elect officers who manage
the union's larger affairs, spend money entrusted to
them by the locals for strikes and other purposes, etc.

The officers and committees of the national and
international unions have a powerful influence over
the locals because of the wealth they control and be-
cause of the power they usually have to grant or take
away the charters of locals.

In order that each part of the United States may
be well served there are local councils representing
all the locals of a given trade or industry in a given
city or other area. For instance, the painters, paper
hangers, and decorators of St. Louis are served by
the St. Louis District Council.

Locals of many different trades or industries are
represented in communities by city central bodies
which attend to such affairs as affect all the workers
in that locality. There are also within both the C.I.O.
and the A.F. of L. state bodies, and several different
types of district bodies and councils, which promote
laws favorable to Labor and attend to other matters
which are important to all the workers within one
state or in several adjoining states.

The officers and committees of all these groups are
elected by delegates sent to conventions by the lo-

cals. In their turn, all the groups representing a
number of locals, and also the locals themselves, may
send delegates to the national conventions, which
are usually held once a year. In an A.F. of L. con-
vention, each national or international union has as
much voting strength as it has dues-paying members.

Unions with large memberships, such as the Inter-
national Brotherhood of Teamsters and Chauffeurs,
which cast well over 3,000 votes at the 1938 conven-
tion of the A.F. of L., are of course more powerful
than smaller unions like the Machinists', which only
cast 1,901 votes at the same convention.

At these national conventions the A.F. of L. elects
officers and an executive council, men who will have
the interests of 5,000,000 workers in their keeping
for one year. In the fall of 1938 the C.I.O. adopted
a constitution, and it will meet each year in regular
convention to elect officers and transact business on
a national scale. In other words, the C.I.O. now has
a system for managing its affairs that is, in general,
like the A.F. of L.'s.

In national conventions are decided matters of
policy, either by special committees or by means of
resolutions voted upon by all the delegates. In other
words, the conventions decide, in general, what laws
and legislators, what social reforms, what tactics, etc.,
labor will favor or oppose. It is up to the officers—
this year to William Green and to John L. Lewis—
to put these policies into effect.

The money that Mr. Green has to spend is a small

proportion of the dues that the union members pay
each month. All of this money comes into the A.F.
of L. treasury directly from its affiliated unions,
whether they are internationals or local federal
unions. The C.I.O. also receives monthly contribu-
tions from the national and international unions affil-
iated with it, as well as from the locals.

In both the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. the national
and international unions are autonomous; that is,
they are the bosses of their own affairs. Their affairs
must be managed according to their own constitu-
tions. However, the C.I.O. constitution imposes some
sharp restrictions not imposed by the A.F. of L. As
in our national government, where the power is
divided, personality and political skill have a great
deal to do with who has the deciding word among
Labor officials.

CHAPTER VII
THE C.I.O. WALKS OUT

NO DISCUSSION of Labor today is complete
without going into the conflict between the A.F.
of L. and the C.I.O. But I do not intend to discuss it
as though it were the paramount issue of all time.
It isn't. A much more vital question relates to the
new Labor laws and their effect upon the life and
methods of Labor unions. That is the field in which
history will discover the real marker between one
era and another.

But the Labor conflict came with drama. It com-
manded attention and continues to hold the center
of the stage. We find it easier, however, to take sides
than to be objective, and there has been all too little
unprejudiced discussion of this great conflict and its
causes. Much has been said about principles in the
war between C.I.O. and A.F. of L. As I see it, the
whole dispute is one involving tactics and practices.
I fail to find any principle involved at any point.

It is important to understand that the same differ-
ences of opinion that finally caused the break have
been setting Labor organizations against one another
for a long while. Nor was the revolt of 1936 the first

time that John L, Lewis had challenged the leader-
ship of the American Federation of Labor.

Samuel Gompers founded the American Federa-
tion of Labor on the ruins of the Knights of Labor,
in 1886. From that time until his death, in 1925, he
remained its president except for one term, in 1895.
He was the kind of man who held strong leaders to-
gether because of their downright personal devotion
to him.

"What does Sam want?" they would ask, and they
did what Sam wanted because of a magnificent loy-
alty that carried with it the complete conviction that
Gompers was right. He was the great leader who drew
men to him personally, and whose mind compelled
their respect.

True enough, there were sharp divisions of opin-
ion under Gompers. There were battles and seces-
sions, but they were over issues which no personality
could surmount. Many of them were caused by dis-
putes growing out of the use of new materials; for
example, the struggle between the carpenters and
sheet metal workers as to which should have juris-
diction when metal trim for doors and windows be-
gan to take the place of wood. But in good time such
disputes came to an end.

Only once was Samuel Gompers seriously chal-
lenged for leadership. Some two decades ago, John L.
Lewis ran against him for the presidency. The A.F.
of L. convention met in Denver and, curiously
enough, because William Green was a miner's

delegate, it became his duty to nominate Lewis.

The Socialist group among convention delegates
had belabored Gompers for years; they said, repeat-
ing the charge that he was reactionary, that American
"pure and simple trade unionism" was altogether too
"simple"; that American Labor was wasting its time
in playing nonpartisan politics instead of plunging
into "class-conscious, working class, political action."
But Gompers had stuck to his guns and, so far, fought
off their attack with ease.

John L. Lewis threw his hat into the ring. When
the votes were counted he picked up the hat, dusty
and battered by an overwhelming Gompers major-
ity. With a most interesting smile, Lewis said to the
convention that he guessed he "must have misunder-
stood the call."

The issue of industrial unionism versus craft union-
ism also began during the days of Gompers. The
I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) offered
its challenge and for a time seemed to be sweeping
the West. And what a cycle of up-and-down that
brings out! Galloping toward Utopia came the West-
ern Federation of" Miners, an industrial union led
by William D. (Big Bill) Haywood. These were the
"hard rock" miners, from their stronghold in Colo-
rado and Montana.

During a bitter strike, former Governor Steunen-
berg of Idaho was killed. Haywood, with Moyer and
Pettibone, his fellow union officials, was tried and
acquitted. William E. Borah was the young prose-

cutor. Clarence Darrow took part in the trial in his
usual role as the counsel for the defense.

Haywood went free, to take leadership of the
I.WVW., raging across the land "with two weapons in-
stead of one; the red card [of the Socialist party] in
one hand, the union card in the other"— taunting the
A.F. of L. and proclaiming the coming of a new day.

The Western Federation of Miners lost strength;
the I.W.W. went up the hill and shortly marched
right down again. The Western Federation of Miners
was given a new name and admitted to the A.F. of
L. But it never climbed back to great strength, though
there was a rise during the World War period. It was
one of the original group to form the C.I.O.; but
even under its present flag it is unable to assume
the power and the vigor that it had in that first grand
fling, that first great upswing under the banner of
industrial unionism.

If the steel industry had not followed for years a
practice of importing shiploads of European workers,
under contract, from various countries and making
a babel out of Pittsburgh, and if it had not stood
solidly and effectively against unionism, the present
picture of American Labor might have been quite
different.

Steel held the line against the unions to such good
purpose that at the time the C.I.O. came into the pic-
ture the A.F. of L. union, the Amalgamated Asso-
ciation of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, represented

only a handful of the army of workers in the in-
dustry.

Wholesale importing of workers was partly stopped
by immigration laws, although the laws of 1885 and
1887 forbidding contract labor were long evaded.
The steel industry in 1922 made a strong campaign
for a law that would give it the privilege of import-
ing European labor under contract. Steel somehow
fought the unions to a standstill. The A.F. of L.'s
organizing drive, under William Z. Foster in 1921,
ended in failure and the departure of Foster for red-
der pastures.

But this was merely an episode in the battle that
began with Homestead and slaughter, and has not
yet been ended. For while Big Steel has found a way
of living with unionism, Little Steel clings to the
old industrial structure. It may cling with slipping
fingers, but it clings just the same.

Steel's resistance brings us again to the cleavage
between A.F. of L. and C.I.O. The steel situation
was a basic reason— perhaps the basic reason— for the
split.

When the National Recovery Act and the Labor
Relations Act established the right to organize, the
United Mine Workers sailed through the coal fields
like an avenging power, building membership at phe-
nomenal speed, making up for all the years of gun-
fire along Coal Creek and Cabin Creek and for all
the battling against heavy odds in West Virginia and

Kentucky and Alabama. There stood forth, east of
Illinois, a coal diggers' union almost 100 per cent
strong. Almost 100 per cent, that is, except at one
critical point.

The mines owned by the steel companies could not
be unionized. These mines are called "captive mines."
The union could not touch them. And the union had
to have them or face an ever-present threat to its
security elsewhere in the coal fields. More than that,
wages could only be made uniform under both free
and captive mines, if the miners got Big Steel. John
L. Lewis believed that Big Steel could be unionized
only by breaking down every vestige of trade lines
and uniting all steel-mill workers in one big union.

The A.F. of L. was making plans for a steel or-
ganizing campaign. But the plans didn't move fast
enough to suit Lewis. There is nothing discreditable
about any part of this. With "the woods on fire'* for
organization work, it was the natural and logical step
for the miners' leadership to translate this need in
the battle cry, "Organize the Unorganized!"

The plan to increase the executive council of the
A.F. of L. brought on the fight that ended in the
forming of the C.I.O. John L. Lewis led in pushing
that plan from start to finish.

It may be worth while to examine briefly a deli-
cate phase of this split. Lewis began his fight by pro-
posing to enlarge the executive council to twenty-

five. In San Francisco, in 1934, a compromise on
eighteen was reached, after a brazen trading of votes
on the convention floor that shocked even some who
took part in it. It is to be remembered that in that
famous compromise action, John L. Lewis and Wil-
liam L. Hutcheson, president of the Carpenters,
were arms-around-each-other co-workers, members of
the same group, and agreed on the same convention
action. A year later they were to engage in the most
famous fist fight in A.F. of L. annals.

Other personal differences and ambitions widened
the break. Always there are personalities; for the am-
bitions of men are right and natural. But whether
Labor would now be divided had there been other
personalities in leadership we cannot know. At least
the characters of the men involved did have some-
thing to do with the "when" of the final split.

There is much that is alike in William Green and
John L. Lewis, much that is not. Both are, more or
less, men aloof. Both were miners. Both have but few
to whom they feel closely drawn. Neither is much
given to what is called mixing. Both make up their
own minds. Both are respected by their armies. If
either of them had the persuasive, disarming person-
ality of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the course of Labor
history might have been changed.

Green has less freedom of action than Lewis, be-
cause more of the A.F. of L. officials, such as interna-
tional union presidents, are entrenched behind their

own constitutions. Both have timed some of their
public actions excellently; both have likewise done
some bad timing. There is a belief, doubtful now,
I think, that Lewis has a better standing in the White
House; Green is stronger on Capitol Hill.

But— and this is the thing that does have point-
John L. Lewis never was popular in A.F. of L. con-
ventions. That is a fact. It does not lessen his stature
nor reflect on his personality. Different in type, given
to dramatic convention operations, usually isolating
himself and his delegation, he was regarded gen-
erally as a man who wanted to be let alone.

A score of other men have their friends who would
go to any length in their defense or support. Such
men as I. M. ("Dick") Ornburn, Matthew Woll,
Thomas F. Burke, and others not less liked because
they are not named here, find their friends doing
things because "Dick wants it," "Matt wants it," or
"Tom wants it."

Harvey C. Fremmirig, president of the Oil Work-
ers, now C.I.O., had friends who went to his defense
just because he was Harvey. But there was no crowd
around John L. Lewis' delegation, certainly no crowd
large enough to count, that would "go down the
line" because, as a person, "Jonn wants it."

In all fairness this fact must be cited as a factor
having some bearing on the developments of the
past three years. Men try to find ways to come into
agreement with those they like warmly. They do not

try so diligently for men they respect but do not
like. Lewis was respected, but outside his own union
he was not liked, among leaders generally, with the
warmth that make friends.

Differences of opinion as to policies also divided
the two groups. For example, there had been long
dispute as to whether organization in such fields as
steel, automobiles, and rubber should be industry-
wide, or whether skilled workers should be organ-
ized in their separate trade unions. Lewis and his
associates saw quicker organizing in industrial unions.
A goodly number of A.F. of L. men agreed on that,
and had agreed for years. But the A.F. of L., by and
large, protects a union against competition from other
unions that try to take away its members; that is, it
protects the "jurisdiction" of each union over the
workers which that union is supposed to represent.

Lewis and his fellow miners felt that they had
to go after steel, that they had to go at once, and
that they had to go with a plan which made no dis-
tinction whatever between classes of steel workers—
they had to get them all into one union. In Novem-
ber, 1935, the leaders of seven A.F. of L. unions
formed a committee, the "Committee for Industrial
Organization," to accomplish Lewis' purpose.

To carry on the campaign, slogans were made,
weaving an idealism of industrial unionism about
the whole movement. That was natural, and it would

have been done by any group doing the same job.
Slogan-makers and flag-makers always do a good busi-
ness when war is on.

From the first, William Green called the C.I.O. a
dual, rival organization that intended to split the
Federation. Through its executive council, the A.F.
of L. called upon the C.I.O. to disband, and ap-
pointed a committee to negotiate peace. No com-
promise could be arranged, and the C.I.O. carried
on. It was joined by four other unions.

In September, 1936, ten of the first twelve C.I.O.
unions were suspended from the A.F. of L. But the
C.I.O. had already begun its great organizing cam-
paign in steel and other industries. The United Mine
Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
of America were the heavy contributors to a war
chest of several million dollars. Within eighteen
months, C.I.O. unions had obtained contracts with
the United States Steel Corporation, General Motors,
the Chrysler Corporation, and scores of other com-
panies.

To get a complete understanding of why C.I.O.
could drive ahead with such vigor and speed, we
need to understand its objectives. Steel was the first
goal of C.I.O. That led naturally and along direct
economic lines to automobiles, which in turn led to
rubber and glass.

The effort to organize steel led to oil and textiles,
too, but there were other and more compelling rea-
sons for relating those fields to the new drive. In the

case of textiles, Mr. Hillman, president of the Amal-
gamated Clothing Workers of America, impressed
the executive committee of C.I.O. by reasoning along
the same lines as those used in launching the drive
on steel. Organization of the textile industry, espe-
cially the cotton mills of the South, was of prime
importance to the cotton-goods department of Mr.
Hillman's union. Many of the cotton garment fac-
tories of the South were "captive" to the cotton mills,
just as coal mines were "captive" to steel companies,
some through outright ownership, others through in-
fluences about as potent as ownership.

Of course, cotton is also related to rubber, since
it is an important material in making tires. So we see
that the main line started with steel and went back
through steel's largest customers and on into con-
nected industries.

What next? Are there to be any more spectacular
victories? Where are they? There are several pos-
sibilities for the near future, not all of them involv-
ing the glory of victory.

By July, 1938, the Automobile Workers were torn
asunder by an internal conflict more serious and in-
volving more fundamental issues than the big divi-
sion between A.F. of L. and C.I.O. The Rubber
Workers of Akron are in an economic tailspin,
partly because much of the industry has moved away
from that former rubber capital. Those two situations
trace their ancestry directly to general C.I.O. poli-
cies. That is a fact.

Even so, C.I.O.'s record of gains is impressive. In
the fall of 1938, with a claimed membership of
4,000,000, it felt strong enough to stand alone as a
permanent institution. There were important rea-
sons for adopting a constitution. So the letters
"C.I.O." now stand for "Congress of Industrial Or-
ganizations."

In giving you the outlines of the battle between
the two dominant groups in Labor, I have tried to
point out some of the factors so frequently over-
looked. I have not touched on the fact that, whereas
the A.F. of L., under its constitution, must make a
public detailed report of money raised and spent,
the C.I.O., as long as it was a committee and had
no constitution— that is, up until the fall of 1938—
was not required to report to its membership at all.

I have not touched the issue of Communism, which
is more important than even most Labor men realize
and likely to be a long-time plague to some of the
C.I.O. unions. Nor have I touched upon the excur-
sions into political action. Around the issue of Com-
munism a book could be written— and should be
written, but from a factual point of view. Possibly
another is called for by the political operations that
have been recorded in the past year.

CHAPTER VIII
BROTHERS UNDER THE SKIN

/CHARGES have flown thick and fast. C.I.O. has
\^ said that A.F. of L. is near death. A.F. of L.
has said that C.I.O. is dual unionism. By all the stand-
ards generally applied in Labor ranks, the C.I.O. is
a dual or rival organization. But neither of them is
dying. Within a year the A.F. of L. had built its
membership to a total as large as it was before the
ten unions that actually withdrew took their depar-
ture. That is hardly a sign of being dead on the feet,
or a sign that the A.F. of L. is a rigid and reactionary
organization, unfit for the modern industrial world.

Warriors have to have their slogans. They have to
make their verbal charges. They have to wave flags.
And the loud talk has screened the fact that the C.I.O.
and the A.F. of L. are brothers under the skin.

In the first place, nine of the present C.I.O. unions
grew up within the A.F. of L. I do not know of one
that has changed a single principle of its constitution
since it left the Federation. The clear meaning of
this is that these unions are going on in fundamen-
tally the same way as before the division.

There are four unions that may be said to have
changed somewhat in structure— the United Textile

Workers, the Autpmobile Workers, the Rubber
Workers, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron,
Steel, and Tin Workers. But none of these has
changed its constitution. There has been no change in
such unions as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers,
the Oil Workers, and the United Mine Workers.

In other words, the substantial, veteran unions in
the C.I.O. have found it possible to live in the C.I.O.
under precisely the same constitutions they lived
under while in the A.F. of L. I repeat this fact as
proof that the difference between the two groups is
not one of principle.

The union leaders who helped John L. Lewis to
form the C.I.O. felt that the lines that marked one
union off from another should be broken down. Yet
I do not know of a single union among the ten that
originally formed the C.I.O. that has given up any
of the jurisdiction it held under the A.F. of L.

Let us look at the enlargements of jurisdiction. The
United Textile Workers had industry-wide jurisdic-
tion under the A.F. of L. There has been no broad-
ening there. Nor in the jurisdictions of the United
Mine Workers, or the Amalgamated Clothing Work-
ers.

The jurisdictions of the Automobile Workers, the
Radio and Electrical Workers, the Rubber Workers,
and some others, as originally denned by the A.F. of
L., have been broadened. There had been a challenge
to the jurisdiction of the Oil Workers before the split,

and this union felt that its future development could
be better protected within the C.I.O.

A map of C.I.O. industries would fit almost line
for line with the nation's basic industries— coal, steel,
copper, oil, electrical manufacture, automobiles. In
this field the C.I.O. went to work with practically a
clean sheet; that is, when the original ten organi-
zations went to work, they could issue charters as they
chose without interfering with other unions having
established charter rights of long standing such as
one finds within the A.F. of L. C.I.O. went to work
with no constitution to limit its actions.

In the steel and textile industries, organizing com-
mittees were set up with practically unlimited juris-
diction. No organizations within the C.I.O. came
into conflict with these committees.

New charters issued by the C.I.O. have usually

been on an industry-wide basis. Whether these char-
ters would have granted such wide jurisdictions if
there had been within the C.I.O. other organizations
with established authority and membership in the
newly organized fields, is hard to tell. For instance,
the jurisdiction of the Radio and Electrical Workers
within the C.I.O. covers the entire electrical manu-
facturing industry. Just what problems there would
have been, and how they could have been solved if
organizations with established membership in this
industry had gone into the C.I.O., is an open ques-
tion.

However, the theory that jurisdictional disputes
can be avoided under a system of industrial organi-
zation has long since been exploded. As a matter of
fact, that idea had been proved a mistake before the
Committee for Industrial Organization came into
being. The C.I.O., in spite of starting with a clean
sheet, has developed within its ranks a number of
very serious jurisdictional disputes. This is not said
in criticism. It is merely recording a fact.

No form of organization has yet been discovered
by Labor which eliminates disputes between organ-
izations as to which shall have the right of way in
certain fields. Streamlining of one kind or another
does not eliminate collision. Free human beings do
not lend themselves to arrangement in patterns on
request.

It is an interesting fact that in the printing trades,
where there now are five trade unions, there once
was but one industry-wide organization. The work-
ers in the printing trades decided that it did not meet
their requirements. They separated, therefore, into
the respective trades, which are Compositors, Press-
men, Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Photo-Engrav-
ers, and Bookbinders. Moreover, until shortly before
the organization4- of the American Newspaper Guild,
the International Typographical Union claimed and
had jurisdiction over news writers. This jurisdiction
was surrendered voluntarily. This is the outstanding
example of the breaking down of an all-inclusive or-
ganization into parts.

As I have said before, you cannot pigeonhole the
facts about Labor, nor expect Labor to do anything
but change. Unions have to meet the terms and con-
ditions created by industry itself. And Labor has to
follow, at least in part, the line created by industrial
developments, changes in industrial output, and a
dozen other factors, including the desires of the mem-
bership.

There are in the C.I.O. some unions that go far
beyond the borders of an industry and include in
their membership workers in many industries. For
instance, the United Mine Workers seems to have
developed the theory that all who are employed on
property owned by the owner of a mine, or who work
in related industries owned by the same corporation,

shall be members. Thus there are barbers and beauty
parlor operators in the United Mine Workers, be-
cause the towns in which they are employed are
owned by the mining company.

In the A.F. of L. the lines that mark off one union
from another are becoming looser with the passing
of each month. I doubt whether you will find today a
single union called a "craft" union that does not
have within its membership some workers whose
duties take them far outside the boundaries of a
single craft. In many fields the unions are all-inclu-
sive.

The formation of the C.I.O. has helped in break-
ing down the old rigidness of jurisdictional lines.
They still hold, in the main, but in both the C.I.O.
and the A.F. of L. unions are saying to one another,
"If we can't organize them, you organize them."

Thus the United Automobile Workers have or-
ganized workers in plants that have nothing what-
ever to do with automobile making. Within the A.F.
of L. the Electrical Workers have organized telegraph
operators in some of the Pacific Coast cities; and the
Commercial Telegraphers' Union, which has juris-
diction over telegraph operators, does not object.
Drivers of bakery wagons are found in the Interna-
tional Brotherhood of Teamsters and Chauffeurs and
also in the Bakery and Confectionery Workers Inter-
national Union.

These facts are well known, and there is no protest
made. Both of the great labor groups are out to get

all the members they can, and both have adjusted
themselves to the needs of the hour. The real differ-
ence between them is, at bottom, one of age. The
C.I.O., just starting out in life, has been able to do
very much as its leaders chose. The A.F. of L., with
laws and traditions reaching back to the founding of
the first American unions and beyond, with a tried
and tested constitution and a body of unwritten law
to govern its actions, and the long-established rights
of its member unions to be considered, has had to
move more carefully.

And not to be forgotten are the differences in the
men who lead the two groups. No matter how much
alike two armies may be, in action they take on
much of the character of their staff officers.

CHAPTER IX
PARTY LINES

FOR many years Labor presented a solid and
unified political front. When it split into two
groups, the division made itself felt in unfortunate
ways. In the campaign to reelect Franklin D. Roose-
velt, for instance, some of the leaders formed Labor's
Non-Partisan League under the chairmanship of
Major George L. Berry. It was a compact and united
backing. Major Berry belonged to the A.F. of L. His
two principal associates, John L. Lewis and Sidney
Hillman, belonged to the C.I.O. State chairmen and
committee members throughout the country came
from both groups.

Roosevelt was elected. But no sooner had the ballot
boxes been stored away for another year than Major
Berry resigned, leaving the League in the hands of
Lewis and Hillman. Then Labor began its political
division, and in the end the A.F. of L. denounced the
League and called upon all its members to withdraw
from it.

The division between A.F. of L. and C.I.O. ran a
political course almost parallel to the industrial, or
strictly union, course. As the split continues, it will
extend to every possible field. The two groups will

not work together on any issue, although at times
they may have the same goal in sight.

Whether the C.I.O. will go on as an independent
political organization, selecting its own candidates
and supporting them through a Labor party, remains
to be seen. But the signs seem to show that it will
do so. The American Federation of Labor will con-
tinue its policy of keeping out of parties while still
being active in politics.

It may take several years for the two groups to
establish their final lines of action. The C.I.O., for
example, may for some time find it necessary to
follow one political policy in one part of the country
and another elsewhere, assuming, of course, that the
Labor warfare continues.

It is understandable that the present tendency of
each group is, somewhat, to do the opposite of what
is done by the other. Bear in mind, however, that no
matter what means either group in Labor may choose
for action in politics, both groups will be working
for substantially the same principal objective, so far
as American industry is concerned. Undoubtedly
there will be differences in details; but, for the next
few years at least, the real objectives will not differ
materially. Up to this time, both wings of the Labor
movement hold to the capitalist or profit system of
production and distribution. As long as that is the
case, the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. will have the same
general objectives, though the ways in which they
try to reach them may be quite different.

Under the pressure of what is, I believe, admitted
to be a larger radical membership, the C.I.O. may,
in time, develop a definite political philosophy at
odds with the capitalist or profit system. If it does,
we shall have a new picture, and new forecasts will
have to be made. But the platform of the American
Labor party does not offer any signs of an immedi-
ate rush to embrace a radically different social and
economic order in place of the one we have. It is, at
best, a platform of vigorous reform.

At this point, however, we have an important fac-
tor. If the C.I.O. turns definitely to independent
political action, through a Labor party, a Farmer
Labor party, or a Progressive party, it will need to
develop a political program of its own. Such a pro-
gram must differ enough from all others to set it
apart and give it appeal. That of itself will mark
a new and sharp line of division between the two
groups of Labor, and the split will be sharper and
less easy to close.

As yet the breach between the A.F. of L. and the
C.I.O. could be healed without compromise of prin-
ciple on either side. I say "could," not "may." As
unions, the organizations in both groups have sub-
stantially the same practices, strive for the same ob-
jectives, write the same kind of agreements with
employers, talk the same language, and spring from
the same philosophical source.

There is no important difference between them in
principle. There are only differences in practice. The

cry of industrial unionism versus craft unionism has
nothing essential about it that keeps the two move-
ments apart. There are industrial unions and craft
unions in both groups, provided we substitute the
term "trade" union for "craft" union.

If the dispute is carried over into the political field
with the C.I.O. acting as a party, or through a party
of its own making, something definitely new will
come into the picture. There will then be an issue
that may revive some of the old feeling of antagonism
that set the American Federation of Labor and the
Socialist party against each other. It would result in
a definite split in the matter of belief, and we might
have something that could not be settled by com-
promise. Compromise can find a way through and
around policies and practices, but it ceases to be
effective where principles are concerned.

Still another factor may enter the picture to upset
students and reporters and wreck all predictions. That
is the lack of unified purpose within both Labor
groups as to political action and objectives. In this
connection, the fight on the Wages and Hours bill
in the latter part of April, 1938, is worth recalling.
Labor's Non-Partisan League, representing the C.I.O.
in politics, brought to Washington a large group of
its leaders and members in an endeavor to force ac-
tion in Congress. At the same time the Oil Workers'
Union, which had already won hours of work shorter
than the maximum stipulated in the bill, fought to
keep it from passing.

There were equally sharp differences in the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor. Officially, the Federation
proclaimed its support of the bill, but it is a fact that
some leaders in the A.F. of L. secretly hoped it would
not pass. They let it be known that they could not
conscientiously support the wage rate of 23 cents an
hour then written into the bill.

It must be added, also, that many disapproved this
bill as a whole in principle, not because of its specific
figures, but because of the method of attacking the
situation. Within the American Federation of Labor,
there is a large, influential group which views with
less and less favor the thought of winning economic
advantage through political effort. That feeling must
lead, if it develops, to a departure from the philosophy
of the New Deal. Those who lean in this direction
believe that, since Labor depends upon the ability
of privately owned industry to maintain itself with
a profit, industry must be permitted to live and every
opportunity must be given to individual initiative.

These men argue that government should not un-
duly burden, by improper taxation or unfair or un-
reasonable limitations, the industries from which the
nation and the people live. Of course, they believe
also that industry must realize that it has its own
social obligations which it must observe, not merely
by word, but by deed.

The thinking of this group leads toward cooper-
ation between Labor and employers. Because these
men are really important in the shaping of Labor

policy, their views cannot be disregarded. Their pleas
for a return to what they believe to be basic American
practices may well have a considerable effect upon
future Labor political action. They do not ask for a
return to industrial autocracy, but for an escape from
control and regulation by government bureaus, boards,
commissions, and tribunals. They fear the weaving of
a network in which Labor will shortly find itself so
enmeshed as to have lost control over its own des-
tiny, damaging alike to unions and management.

Thus we have a great conflict of Labor thought,
Labor ambitions, and Labor aspirations. It is not un-
like a melting pot of ideas— or even a collection of
red-hot irons which may be welded by the pounding
of circumstances into a single ingot. For the moment,
the picture is one of confusion. Labor itself will work
out the future pattern.

CHAPTER X
STRIKES

SAMUEL GOMPERS used to say, paraphrasing
Byron, "I am the mildest mannered man that
ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." The Labor move-
ment has always been filled with leaders who held to
that tradition. Gompers meant, of course, that when
Labor and employers clash, the first step is to get to-
gether and attempt to solve the problems with reason
and logic. But if mild manners fail, then Labor does
not hesitate to declare war.

Strikes do not necessarily lead to violence. Most of
them, in fact, have been peaceful affairs, with the
workers simply laying down their tools and stopping
work until an agreement was reached. Sometimes it is
a matter of hours, sometimes of long, bitter months.
The usual procedure is for the union to call a strike,
take its members off the job, establish a picket line,
and put officials in charge to see that order is main-
tained. Lately the practice of using hired pickets has
come in, but not all unions approve it.

The strike is Labor's weapon of last resort. It is
called only when all other means of settling a serious
disagreement— over wages, hours, working conditions,

union recognition, or the like— have collapsed. By
shutting off production or distribution, Labor hopes
to compel further consideration of its demands.

The right to call strikes generally rests with local
unions, subject to approval by the national or inter-
national union. Neither the A.F. of L. nor the C.I.O.
can, as an organization, call a strike. With all his
power, William Green cannot. Executive councils
lack the authority. Even conventions cannot call
strikes, though they may advise that one should be
called by the proper body. The point of all these re-
strictions is that strikes must be decided upon by
those who will actually be affected by them. Some
local unions can do so only after a vote by the mem-
bers, while others permit their business agents to act
when an employer violates a contract. But if the ap-
proval of the international is lacking, as in the case
of spontaneous local strikes, they are called ' Illegal"
and the unions are subject to discipline, sometimes

even to the extent of losing their charters. The inter-
national executive board may, and frequently does,
order the strikes stopped and the men sent back to
work. Trade-union law is strict and, by and large,
strictly enforced.

Judgment, on the other hand, sometimes tempers
the decision. If the cause for calling a strike is gener-
ally regarded as just, approval may be refused as a
matter of record but discipline withheld. Even so,
"illegal" operations in Labor unions carry a stigma
that is punishment in itself.

The power of the international union to authorize
or forbid local strikes is necessary because of the far-
reaching consequences that are possible. A foolish
local strike may spread over the whole industry and
threaten the very financial structure of Labor. In the
past, for example, there have developed large-scale
strikes by unions with treasuries too weak to stand the
strain, so that an administrative body had to raise re-
lief funds through donations from other unions and
from a sympathetic public.

When the men are called off their jobs, managing
a strike is likely to become really big business. The
strikers must be taken care of while they are not
working. They must be paid and fed and housed.
Perhaps a new law will relieve Labor of the problem
of sheltering workers in the future, but stabbing
memories still remain of old days when strikers in the
mining and textile industries were evicted from com-
pany-owned houses. But even if the strikers are not

put out of their homes, a prolonged strike always
costs huge sums of money.

Except for contributions raised during the strike,
this money comes straight from the union treasury in
the form of strike benefits. It has been put there,
month by month, for that very purpose. Practically
all union constitutions— all of them, so far as I know-
provide the amount of dues to be paid and the man-
ner in which the money shall be divided in the
union's treasury. So much of each dollar collected
must go for the general fund, so much for whatever
benefit system the union may operate, so much for
the official publication, so much for the reserve fund,
and on down the list. Generally, it is from the reserve
fund that strike benefits are paid.

Some unions naturally have very small reserves,
while others have piled up huge sums in their treas-
uries. The Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers' Inter-
national, for instance, has a reserve running to per-
haps seven or eight million dollars. Amounts of this
size seem inexhaustible at first thought, particularly
when it is understood that average strike benefits are
small, just about enough to keep the strikers from
actual suffering. But in the case of a prolonged strike
involving several thousand men, the drain lowers the
sturdiest union reserve at an appalling rate.

So it follows, because of the obligations it must
face, that Labor is never eager to strike. It wishes to
hold its strength in reserve rather than be forced to
use it. But in no case— except with organizations of

government workers, which forgo the right to strike
for any reason— does it abandon its final right to call
out workers if negotiations and arbitration fail.

When they do, Labor turns to battle, and war be-
gins in deadly earnest. In actual practice, strikes as-
sume an endless variety of forms, because the tactics
must be planned to fit each individual case. Two out-
standing developments of recent years will make the
point clear: the flying squadron and the sit-down
strike. Neither is really new, but neither had ever
before been applied on so large a scale nor under
such dramatic circumstances.

The flying squadron came into wide use during
the nation-wide textile strike of 1934. It was effective,
of course, because many workers had automobiles of
their own. Scores, sometimes hundreds of striking
workers, operating in swift caravans, would descend
without warning upon a textile mill and, more by
audacity than by actual force, empty the mill of its
employees and throw around it a picket line to keep
them out. The method proved highly successful.
Once a mill was closed by a flying squadron, it sel-
dom reopened. The strike was as good as won.

Employers protested, of course. They said the fly-
ing squadron was illegal, but they could not prove it.
The fact must not be overlooked that industrial con-
flict is actual warfare. Each side seeks to win, once the
fight is begun; and each uses the best means to make
sure of victory, often with a fine disregard of ethics.

If there was trespass by flying squadrons in the tex-
tile strike, there was also, at its conclusion, a tragic
and impressive list of dead among the union workers.
Somebody had broken a law other than the law of
trespass.

The sit-down, perhaps the most dramatic of all
strike methods, reached the peak of its force in the
automobile industry. In the end, it was followed by
the first general labor agreement with the automobile
manufacturers. The idea of sit-down strikes seems
to have been thought of first by the workers them-
selves, for there is evidence to show that union offi-
cials were as surprised as employers by the method
and its success.

That the sit-down strike could be used to destroy
union discipline was something Labor did not find
out until after peace had returned. At the moment,
all the leaders thought of was that the strike had been
won. If it had been lost, on the other hand, there
would have been no justification whatever for the
sit-down tactics. Many a general in warfare runs the
same risk. If he wins his battle his tactics prove them-
selves right. If he loses, he was wrong.

Labor admits frankly that it has won victories with
a show of strength and a willingness to make a pitched
battle of the issue. The eight-hour day was the first
great achievement to be won on the battlefield. The
determination to make it a conflict was arrived at
by convention action of the A.F. of L., with the

United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners
chosen to lead the movement. Victory came in the
end, thanks to the fighting spirit of the carpenters
and the printers, by means of strike after strike.

Sometimes Labor finds itself with a strike on hand
which it didn't expect at all. Across a conference table
both parties to the negotiations may do what poker
players often do— bluff. With neither side knowing
just what reserves or will power the other may have,
one of them bluffs a point too much and the fight is
on. Labor has done its share of bluffing at times and
has paid for it.

The boycott is a part of the strike picture. A non-
union product may be on the market for years with-
out suffering from a union boycott, but when
organization takes place and a strike is called, the
boycott serves its purpose. Like strikes, boycotting
methods vary with conditions and with the clever-
ness of the people who plan them. They may be
imposed by A.F. of L. and C.I.O. executives, by in-
ternational unions, and even, within fixed limits, by
city central bodies. In effect, they are simply a plea
to the public not to buy the goods of an employer
who has violated some principle of Labor.

Boycotts serve to keep possible customers away
from places unfair to Labor, but they do not bar out
the strikebreaker. He and his fellows were the ones
in the old days who turned peaceful strikes into
bloody battles. Those were the times when the oppo-
sition to Labor unions was more bitter than it is

now, and when employers protected themselves with
injunctions issued by the courts. Strikebreaking was
an organized business, then. It had to be licked.

Just what is a strikebreaker? Perhaps the meaning
can be made more clear if the reader will think of
himself as a striker. Let us say you belong to a union,
for example, a molders' union. You are on strike for
several things, including a ten-cent wage raise, the
removal of serious dangers, and the right to a hearing
before being laid off or fired. The foundry hires a
"detective" agency to get things moving again, and it
sends along a Bowery bum or an ex-convict to take
your job.

Enough others of the same stripe are brought to
fill the shop. But you spot particularly the fellow who
takes your job. It is your job, even yet, because you
expect to go back to it when the strike ends. But there
is the stranger in your place, probably unskilled at
your work, at your bench mold, literally taking the
bread and butter out of your mouth.

Maybe you like that job a whole lot. Maybe you've
held that job ten years and feel you have a certain
preferred place in the scheme of things in that shop.
Maybe you have even got a recognized seniority built
up, and maybe your union protects that seniority as
an actual property right, if not in law at least in
fact. Whatever may be the case, one thing is sure.
Another man is there, in your place, at your job.
That man is a strikebreaker. By employing him the
boss hopes to break down your resistance, bring you

to his terms, or else put you out for good. Now mul-
tiply that one man by the total number who have
taken over the jobs of your friends and you have the
groundwork for trouble. Men who watch strikebreak-
ers doing the jobs they think of as their own are not
always moved by sentiments of sweetness and light.

Regardless of what the law or the courts may say,
workers have always felt they own their jobs; they
have felt that they have a property right in them.
Going on strike doesn't mean abandoning jobs for
good. Not at all. So bringing in strikebreakers seems
almost like theft, almost like taking the jobs that be-
long to the workers and giving them to somebody
else. Naturally, the feeling kindles a lot of hate and
heat which is likely to flare up in physical conflict.

There is another point to consider. Strikebreakers
are usually recruited from among people who know
nothing about the work they are called on to do.
They have no knowledge of it and no skill to bring
to it; their real job, as a matter of fact, is to make it
appear that a plant is in operation, strike or no strike.
Since the enlistment of strikebreakers is definitely a
war measure, getting rid of them is a counter war
measure. And so the history of Labor disputes, until
the coming of the National Recovery Act, has been
splotched with desperate conflicts between strikers
and strikebreakers.

That phase of industrial disputes, however, is prac-
tically at an end. A stronger Labor movement,

coupled with a more favorable public opinion, has
written into law declarations of the rights of Labor
and rules for the peaceful handling of the disputes
which once led to hand-to-hand battles.

But Labor still believes in the strike as a final re-
sort in fighting for a principle. It has made definite
progress through conflict. That is to say, no union
ever improved conditions for its membership until
it achieved the strength to compel industry to recog-
nize its strength, until it proved able to assert itself
in a voice of authority. True, Labor has lost strikes
as well as won them. But not every lost strike is a
mistake. Often enough, Labor has fought and lost
for principles which it considered worth losing for.
There is a Labor adage which says that you can com-
promise on tactics and policies, but that you can
never compromise on a principle. And there is an-
other which says no strike is ever wholly lost.

Labor has proceeded on the theory that it could
afford to lose battles as long as the main trend was
forward. It always had so little to lose that at the
worst it would find itself set back only temporarily.
Every war has its lost battles. Labor's place today is
proof that in the large sense it has won magnificently.

CHAPTER XI
PEACE HAS ITS VICTORIES

THE union picture is broad. There may be
strikes at one end of the great canvas, but at the
other Labor and employers stand shoulder to shoul-
der for their common good. Few people know about
the scores of technical advisers on Labor's pay rolls-
statisticians, negotiators, authorities on industrial
problems, men and women skilled in management
and production— who keep their fingers on the pulse
of business and industry. Scores? There are hundreds
of them, with the number growing all the time. And
their main job is to make it possible for unions and
employers to cooperate.

Today, cooperation with employers through agree-
ment is almost the gospel of the American Labor
movement. It holds true particularly in the A.F. of
L. and dates back to the moment when employers
accepted the existence of unions. And more is meant
than merely the sustained cooperation in the shops
where Labor has made collective bargains, with the
terms set down in black and white.

In the limited field of written agreements, of course,
there is cooperation throughout the realm of indus-
try; it is taken for granted. Countless studies, super-

vised by both sides, are made in an effort to find out
how production may be made better and services
more satisfactory. In the broader field, where there
is no written agreement, there are also examples of
cooperation to be found in every year of history
since the Labor movement began to have a real effect
in America.

The real goal of cooperation is to keep the wheels
of industry turning, good times or bad, when the
country is prosperous, or when there is a depression.
Labor wants jobs; industry wants steady operation.
Both, in a word, want to make working conditions
stable.

Wide-scale cooperation spreads slowly, keeping pace
with the growth of unions and the acceptance by
employers of social responsibility. Even today, it has
far to go. There are still plenty of employers who
say of the unions, "Let them row their own boat,"
and there are still plenty of unions which say of the
employers, "Let them paddle their own canoe." But if
they have interests in common farseeing officials on
both sides will be likely to see the advantage of co-
operating.

It follows, of course, that any agreement of unions
and employers to work together must be along lines
planned and accepted by both. A striking example of
defiance of joint rights is to be found in the develop-
ment and application of the Bedaux system of "effi-
ciency in production."

Known as the "speed-up" or "stretch-out" system,

it was imposed upon the workers without consulta-
tion or consent, and left in its wake a bitter resent-
ment which has never been overcome. The Duke of
Windsor canceled his plan to visit the United States
in 1937 because of feeling against Bedaux, the inven-
tor of the system, who was to act as the Duke's un-
official host.

There can be no doubt whatever in the minds of
those familiar with industry that efficiency equal to
that obtained by the Bedaux system might have been
developed through cooperative measures on the basis
of mutual understanding and effort. Proof lies in the
fact that in many industries efficiency was developed
in exactly this way. Perhaps, after all, it is a healthy
thing that there was resentment against a system that
was imposed without asking Labor's cooperation.

There is no point in pretending that wholesale co-
operation exists at the present time, but there are
strong indications that it is on the way. Today, a great
many persons are interesting themselves in developing
large-scale cooperation between unions and industry.
They call it by the more inclusive name, collabora-
tion. Experimental steps have been taken, and possi-
bilities of all kinds explored. The first question each
side asks about the other is, "Well, what do they
want?" Because the wants do not always agree, colla-
boration may come slowly. But to have seen the need
and the possible advantages is a long step in the di-
rection of a common understanding.

Neither union nor employer can be expected to
yield to the other on matters of principle, even for
the sake of achieving cooperation. That would be ask-
ing too much. But spokesmen for both sides agree
that some compromise must be made, not only for
mutual benefits but for the advantage of the nation
itself. Going by what they have observed in coun-
tries abroad, they feel— and feel strongly— that Amer-
icans must so order the American house that Amer-
ican institutions will be safe against attack by either
propaganda or violence.

However, threats from overseas and the welfare of
the nation are not the only reasons why leaders be-
lieve that Labor and employers ought to make every
effort to work together. Actual cooperation has al-
ready proved its practical value.

Suppose we consider first what has been accom-
plished by the railroads when the unions and the
management pulled together. The Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad will be remembered in industrial history as
a proving ground. Efforts were made to push cooper-
ation to the fullest extent. The union went so far
as to employ engineers and set up special machinery
for the purpose of working with the management to
achieve better operation for the benefit of both work-
ers and employer. An entire volume could be written
about that undertaking, which has continued for
more than twenty years.

There have been many other examples of cooper-
ative efforts between unions and railroads. These at-

tempts have helped to push through special laws gov-
erning their relations. No later than the past two or
three years, moreover, Labor and management have
worked together at finding a way out of the financial
difficulties of the railroads. Unions have thrown their
splendid statistical and research staffs into the effort,
working jointly with those of the railroads, and all
have hewed straight toward the common purpose.

Railroad unions, it should be made clear, do not
yield a single step unless they are convinced that
yielding is a necessity. Their cooperation does not
mean that they have sacrificed any of their aggressive-
ness. It does mean that, if open conflict ever does
come between railroad unions and railroad manage-
ments, it will be only when every means to a peaceful
settlement has failed. Perhaps, too, there is another
reason for their cooperation. Unions believe that they
have a right to share in the profits of the enterprise,
so they accept a joint responsibility for operation.

Cooperative efforts have not been restricted to
railroads, even in the solving of financial problems.
Unions have dug deep into their pockets more than
once to help industry. The International Association
of Machinists, to cite a single example, has on at least
two occasions directly financed employers whose re-
sources were not sufficient to meet the strain of un-
usual times and circumstances.

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union,
led by David Dubinsky, has gone as far as any union

in the development of union-management coopera-
tion, with an enviable record of achievement and an
unequaled gain in public approval.

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers, under the
leadership of Sidney Hillman, has repeatedly lent as-
sistance for the reorganization of entire schemes of
production in factories that were losing money. This
union took over the complete job of redesigning pro-
duction methods for plants and saw them operate on
the new basis to the profit of the employers.

An outstanding example of cooperation for the sav-
ing of an entire industry occurred late in 1937. Eager
partisans of the Chinese, among whom were a great
many left-wingers, though not the Chinese themselves,
spread organized propaganda against the wearing of
silk and particularly against the wearing of silk stock-
ings. The boycott was said to be intended to cripple
Japan, which is the source of practically all America's
raw silk.

But it happens that the United States has almost a
monopoly in silk manufacturing, and the propaganda,
if successful, would have gone far toward wiping out
that American industry. So the unions and employers
met and formed a joint council to oppose the boycott
and brought it to a standstill by this united opposition.

Sometimes Labor serves its own ends in a more
material way by cooperating with employers. There
was the case of the Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers
Union, which built a factory at El Paso, Texas, to

manufacture bricks. At this time, unionized contrac-
tors in the Southwest were having trouble in getting
supplies with which to build, because certain organ-
ized employers in California would not allow union-
made bricks to reach union construction jobs.

The new factory solved the problem. It did more
than that. For one thing, it offered a successful ex-
ample of cooperation between union and employers.
For another, it proved to be effective in union war-
fare against an antiunion employers' association in
California.

In general, however, Labor's cooperation has no
motive except the one which appears on the surface--
to keep industry going. Unions cooperate with the
entire city of Miami, Florida, to make sure that the
tourist season is not marred by industrial disputes.
The Oil Workers International cooperates with the
largest employers in the petroleum field to determine
an annual wage which the industry can afford to pay
and still continue in business.

Still another type of cooperation pays dividends to
both unions and employers. That is the development
of apprentice education in the building trades, set up
to furnish the industry with the needed number of
skilled workers. Unions and employers combined to
work out the problem in the first place, and their
joint efforts brought about in the end a further co-
operation. New York enacted a law under which ap-
prentice training schools are operated by the state.

Unions and employers alike are consulted and are
interested in their tremendous success.

The many efforts to promote health and safety are
closely related to cooperation. More than that, they
are the signals of a desire for a healthy democracy.

Most Labor agreements contain provisions for
safeguarding health and for protection against acci-
dents. Often these regulations have to be enforced
against union members themselves, who get careless
about risks they run. Public health records state that
there is three times as much tuberculosis among un-
skilled laborers, and seven times as much pneumonia,
as there is among professional men. Unskilled work-
ers must be protected from the conditions that lead
to disease by cooperation between Labor and employ-
ers, which has materially reduced disease among the
organized skilled workers. It is said of the Cigar
Makers International that regulations written into
agreements have added as much as ten years to the
average life of workers in their industry.

Health and safety for workers, pride in union prod-
ucts, apprentice education, stable industry, profits that
warrant fair wages, joint responsibilities and benefits
—the list of what Labor wants runs on and on. And
when, as in these matters I have mentioned, industry
wants the same things, cooperation is assured. There
lies the promise for the future, for the basis of co-
operative development is the discovery of purposes
common to both workers and employers.

CHAPTER XII
LABOR AND THE LAWMAKERS

/COOPERATION between unions and employers
\^ does not begin and end in industry; it also
makes itself vigorously felt among the lawmakers in
state capitols and in Washington. Whether the issue
is a matter of principle, a threatened right, a ques-
tion of control, or burdensome, unfair or diverted
taxes— anything at all that may interfere with indus-
trial stability and advancement— Labor takes up
political cudgels in defense. Often it joins with em-
ployers to win a common cause.

Sometimes the aim is to get laws passed along new
lines, sometimes to protect rights which have not yet
been given legal guarantees. In either event, Labor
will work side by side with employers if it believes
the objectives of whatever the project may be are of
mutual advantage.

Promotion of the "Truth in Fabric" bill in Con-
gress may be given as an example of cooperation to
secure new laws. The manufacturers of pure wool
products sought Federal Trade Commission regula-
tions requiring the truthful description of contents by
labels on the fabrics. They asked, also that Congress
pass a law to the same effect.

VOTE YES/

Labor agreed that it would be useful to compel
proper labeling of cloth. Representatives of unions
in the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. appeared as witnesses
in both houses of Congress. They declared not only
that they were in favor of truthful labels for fabrics,
but that Labor disliked working on materials which
were not genuine.

Labor went farther, arguing that if the act passed
it would be better for the industry itself: truthfully
labeled fabrics would sell better and provide more
jobs. Labor put its shoulder to the wheel because it
believed absolutely in the objective set forth by the
employers.

On the protective side, Labor is equally ready to
cooperate with employers. Its friends in industry are
those with whom it has collective bargains, and if
their rights are threatened by legislation, Labor is
quick to respond.

So when Congressman Wright Patman introduced
a bill to levy a tax on chain stores that would make it

hard for them to stay in business, Labor accepted the
challenge. Here was a threat on its very threshold.
Nearly all the construction work for chain stores is
under union contract, and their clerical forces are be-
ing organized. So Labor jumped into action in a
dozen places and in a dozen ways to fight the Patman
bill.

A similar bill, introduced in the New York State
Legislature early in 1938, stirred Labor into another
cooperative political fight. Union representatives ap-
peared on the scene and worked for its defeat in com-
mittee hearings in both houses.

Further examples of cooperation between unions,
both A.F. of L. and C.I.O., and employers come read-
ily to mind. The oil workers unions gladly assist in
any constructive efforts to remove burdensome taxes
on gasoline and to prevent money collected by such
taxes from being used for anything besides aids to
highway transportation.

The Pottery Workers cooperate with employers
for the protection of the American pottery industry.
And even though it may seem at times to weaken the
solidarity of Labor as a whole, there is instance after
instance of one union's refusing to declare a friendly
firm unfair when it has a conflict with another Labor
group.

There must be no misunderstanding on this score.
The C.I.O. believes in cooperation between unions
and employers as thoroughly as does the A.F. of L.
The length to which it is willing to go through leg-

islation is well demonstrated by the combined effort
of the United Mine Workers and the mine owners to
bring about the enactment of the Guffey Coal Con-
trol Act. Both unions and employers participated,
also, in its administration.

The A.F. of L., to cite a similar example, makes
possible the enforcement of the Railway Labor Act
through cooperation of its unions and the railroad
management. Under this act, the relations between
Labor and railroad management came under a com-
bined administration through a governmental agency.

In both these typical cases, once Labor and employ-
ers found a common objective, they went the full
route to it by legislation.

Whether all these appeals for legislative backing
contribute to industrial prosperity, we may not always
know at the moment. But this is a field in which
unions and employers are working together toward
what they believe to be steady national improvement.
Once more, of course, it is Labor's opportunism in
action.

There may be disagreements about Labor's meth-
ods or goals. But when Labor sets out to achieve an
objective, and determines that cooperation with em-
ployers in legislation is the best means to that end, it
does so because it believes most ardently that it is
helping to create industrial prosperity. That is the
justification for its action, and Labor has more to
lose than its critics have, if that action is wrong.
Economists, students, and theorists may take facts

and figures and build upon them whatever reasoning
they choose. They may praise or denounce. But in
the end they are responsible only for their opinions.
Labor is responsible for results.

It does not follow that Labor is always right. Incon-
sistencies creep into the record, and occasionally
Labor contradicts itself in action. It must always be
that way as long as the democratic spirit dominates
the movement, for there is no supreme command
which can compel the rank and file to follow obedi-
ently.

You find the same inconsistency in state legisla-
tures; some tend violently in one direction, some in
another. This is democracy at work. Uniform intelli-
gence and uniform reasoning can be neither com-
manded nor guaranteed. Labor has as much right to
make mistakes as state legislatures.

Labor may stumble now and then along the way.
But it still comes on growing in power and achieving
greater benefits for workers. If the progress can be
made easier or faster or more certain through cooper-
ation with employers, by legislation or otherwise,
Labor will be more than satisfied. Some day we may
liave a complete democracy in industry.

CHAPTER XIII
LABOR VOTES FOR ITS FRIENDS

E.BOR has achieved many of its objectives
through legislation. But it has not been satis-
fied to sit back and hope that favorable laws would
be passed. It has stormed out, instead, and fought for
them tooth and nail. Its aims and methods are not
like those of the labor political parties in Europe, but
that does not prove that American Labor is not in
politics. From the very beginning, it has been in the
kind of politics it knew best how to use.

Make no mistake on that score— American Labor is
in politics. It carries on its fight in Washington as
well as out in the field, and its influence is felt by
every senator and congressman. Exactly what it will
accomplish eventually through political influence is
a question that only the future can answer. But Labor
will play a big part in carving out whatever may be
the national destiny, and political action will be a
vital means toward that end.

One way of looking ahead is to study Labor's polit-
ical accomplishments of the past. The record sheds
much light on present-day policies and shows where
they are leading.

American Labor has not tied itself to a political
party, nor set up a party of its own. Nonpartisan ac-
tion is a tradition— a first principle of belief— followed
for almost forty years. Two phrases coined in the
early days of the movement have continued to live,
though not always with their original meaning.

One was, "pure and simple." It described the type
of American unionism which refused to support par-
tisan labor and political action, or revolutionary phi-
losophies. It did not take the critics long to burlesque
the "pure and simple'* phrase, and the effects were
sometimes humiliating.

The other slogan was, "Reward your friends and
defeat your enemies." This, too, won its share of jeers
and twisted meanings, but it served in more than one
campaign to rally the forces of Labor to political
victory.

When the phrase was coined, Labor had prac-
tically no friends in Congress; today only a few mem-
bers are regarded as out-and-out enemies. The change
did not come by accident. American Labor made its
first great bid for political power in 1906, when the
Bill of Grievances, so called, was written in conven-
tion and presented to the administration in Wash-
ington. After the voting had been checked, all
outstanding enemies in Congress were marked for de-
feat, and in time most of them went back to private
life. Each succeeding year has seen a lower percentage
of enemies and a higher percentage of Labor's friends
in Congress.

There has been much criticism of the method of
applying a measuring stick to political officeholders
and office seekers. But it has worked. The measuring
stick is nothing more nor less than the voting record
of each legislator. Labor takes its position in legisla-
tive issues and checks every vote that is cast. This
record is passed on to Labor's voters in the House
member's district or in the senator's state for study
and future action. It clearly shows whether he is a
friend or an enemy of Labor.

In spite of the fact that the A.F. of L. and C.I.O.
are now often pitted against each other, and may in
time develop entirely different political policies, in
spite of anything that can happen, American Labor
will always be a power in politics.

And now Labor looks at the large, important issues
of the day and takes its stand. It does not believe that
prosperity can be found in relief rolls, but it admits
that they are a temporary necessity, like splints for

a broken leg. It holds to the theory that the best guar-
antee of prosperity lies in shortening the number of
work hours per week and increasing the rates of pay
progressively, as production becomes more and more
efficient. That belief, so often stated, so widespread,
so boldly fought for in season and out, is accepted
throughout the ranks of Labor.

Labor is not so much for broadening the income-
tax base as it is for increasing the tax of the higher
brackets. It would not levy punishing taxes on busi-
ness, but it would tax much more heavily the larger
incomes of individuals.

In its attacks upon great corporations, Labor has
been much less savage than some of the politicians
who called themselves progressives. Whether right or
wrong, the fact remains that American Labor is for its
friends in political life just as ardently as it is for its
friends in industry.

And why not? Labor is in politics for a plain pur-
pose: It fights for laws that will improve the condi-
tions of its workers and that will make the United
States a b^ter country to live in.

CHAPTER XIV
BARGAINING BECOMES LEGAL

NO LAW among the many new ones that have
changed our national way of living is more in-
teresting and important than the National Labor Re-
lations Act. It not only makes collective bargaining
legal, but compels employers and unions alike to ac-
cept it as the method for settling their differences.

To understand how much the Act means we must
turn back for a quick view of Labor's upward march
from conditions that made the worker's life a burden.
To a great extent the obstacles in the way were laws
that protected abuses of human freedom and decency.
But the suffering and oppression which these laws
made possible— factory fires and mine explosions, the
various forms of disguised slavery that went with the
company store, the "yellow-dog" contract, the labor
injunction, child labor— these also goaded Labor and
its supporters on to fight harder.

A quarter of a century ago, courageous pioneers
were battling stoutly for factory inspection laws that
would do away with some of the worst abuses. Jane
Addams, William English Walling, Senator Robert
F. Wagner, and Jimmy Walker were among those

who tried to get a system of factory inspection by com-
missioners.

When girls locked in a loft were burned to death in
the Triangle fire in New York, that was an argument
hard to answer. Just so, in later days, millions of un-
employed offered an irresistible argument for the
National Recovery Act. And just so the anti-Labor
actions of Republic Steel were used to justify the Na-
tional Labor Relations Act.

It is fair to wonder— and many Labor men do—
what would have happened if employers and their
establishments had not offered such glaring examples
of injustice and exploitation.

Today, the rights of Labor are protected in many
ways. We have factory inspection. We have mine-
safety laws. We have abolished the Labor injunction
as far as the Federal courts are concerned. We have
outlawed the yellow-dog contract. We have restricted
immigration almost to the vanishing point. And we
have the United States Department of Labor and its
various services.

Among all the political agencies set up to assist in-
dustry, the conciliation service of the Department of
Labor belongs high on the list of honor. Few federal
agencies have served more effectively and with less
self-advertisement. I do not know how many indus-
trial disputes it has settled peacefully and without
benefit of publicity; the exact figures do not particu-
larly matter. But I do know that the number is very
large, and that the service continues to go on year

100

after year, winning increasing respect from both
unions and employers.

This growing value of the conciliation service is
an endorsement of voluntary methods. Nobody is com-
pelled to use the service. Those who turn to it do so
on their own initiative and without pressure from
any source.

In the present state of the world, any real American
may be pardoned for pointing to such striking evi-
dence of the value of peaceful progress through the
agencies of democracy. Great problems still remain to
be solved, but other problems equally baffling have
been solved in the past. Those of the future can be
solved by the same method.

There are some Labor leaders who believe that the
Labor Relations Act itself should be stripped down to
a statement of guarantees, leaving all compulsory
factors out. This would mean a definite return to
what is sometimes called "the Gompers philosophy,"
which applies to the C.I.O. as well as the A.F. of L.
For, be it remembered, nine of the unions in the
C.I.O. had their birth and lived the greater part of
their life within the A.F. of L. The newer organi-
zations in the C.I.O. have scarcely had time to form a
philosophy or lay down a program for the future.

Perhaps the Gompers philosophy should be ex-
plained briefly, for there are many today to whom
Gompers' name means nothing, though he was presi-
dent of the A.F. of L. until his death in 1924. As long
as it followed his policy, Labor did not ask the gov-

101

ernment to do anything but clear away the obstacles
to union organization and collective bargaining.
Labor wanted only freedom. Having secured the right
to bargain, Labor would then proceed to get what it
needed for itself.

Instead, legislators passed the National Labor Re-
lations Act, appointed a board to administer it from
Washington, D.C., and set up regional boards which
hear and decide cases throughout the country. Besides
passing upon actual grievances and issuing orders, the
regional boards decide which union shall bargain, and
the employer it shall bargain with. They decide when
bargaining may take place, and under what circum-
stances.

For help given by the National Labor Relations
Act, Labor should be thankful. It is. But the law came
into being without any example to go by, and in the
midst of a critical period in industrial history. Some
Labor leaders are wondering whether it may not
prove a boomerang and strike at Labor itself.

For one thing, Thomas Jefferson's doctrine that
courts and tribunals always seek to extend their own
powers still holds good. In the beginning, the board
set up under N.R.A., the parent of the present board,
made it a principle that union officials and members
could present their cases in ordinary language and
get relief when it was warranted. Both in theory and
in actual practice, the old board made much of the
ability of the ordinary citizen to conduct his own
case.

102

The National Labor Relations Board began in the
same way. But as it handled case after case and laid
down ruling after ruling, and went before the Su-
preme Court on a dozen issues, there developed a
maze of procedures and rules governing the way in
which cases should be presented and dealt with. Also,
a long series of decisions spread into a network of
technical propositions, all important to the board, but
all beyond the understanding of anyone but a lawyer.
The layman, whether employer or Labor leader, be-
comes lost in a labyrinth of legal language and legal
procedure before he can state his case.

These things are said, not in criticism, but as mat-
ters of fact. That they are wholly unreasonable or
wicked, or signals of abuses to come, is not necessarily
true. But some wise Labor leaders see the possibility
of Labor's interests slipping out of its own control
and into the hands of lawyers. They do not like the
prospect.

Employers have aired their grievances, charging the
board favored the unions at the expense of manage-
ment. That has been true. But there are two points
that must be considered: First, the Act is Labor's
law, intended to establish rights that were not guar-
anteed before; second, no employer has yet been able
to pick a legal flaw in the Act itself. No employer has
ever got the Supreme Court to reverse a ruling
handed down by the National Labor Relations Board.
(The Consolidated Edison decision was a victory for
the A.F. of L., not for employers.)

103

But, though the Labor Relations Board has acted
within the law, it can hardly be doubted that the
regional directors have often treated employers with
the harshness of arrogant bureaucrats. Witnesses have
been treated in a manner totally unwarranted by cir-
cumstances.

In all fairness it must be admitted that it would be
difficult for any organization so large as the N.L.R.B.
to have a roll call of officials that did not include a
few ignoramuses, bigots, and pathological cases. But
the fact that regional boards have been prejudiced
and too severe seems to have been proved in many
cases.

Weight of evidence indicates that they have fav-
ored the unions of one group over those of another.
The division between the A.F. of L. and C.I.O. led
naturally to contests for the right to bargain. In
places where there are two competing unions, the
officials of the regional board must decide which is
to bargain for all the workers involved in the case.
It appears to be true that the C.I.O. has been favored
more often than the A.F. of L.

In judging the record of the regional boards, it
matters not a bit which unions have been favored.
What does matter is that any should be favored above
others. Representatives of a governmental agency
should not side with any group, to the grave damage
of another.

If it is possible to play favorites today, say the best
Labor thinkers, the situation may be reversed tomor-

104

row under another administration. And as the author-
ity of the National Labor Relations Board grows,
Labor leaders become more alarmed over what may
happen when the Board changes its point of view
after a later election. To put it bluntly, if a govern-
ment board can "sock" somebody, then whoever is in
political control can decide who is to get socked. So
the unions more and more are coming to say:

"If others can be hit today, we can be hit to-
morrow."

Any power can be abused. Any agency of govern-
ment can play favorites. That needs to be remem-
bered.

The whole issue of the future value and character
of the National Labor Relations Act and the National
Labor Relations Board is just beginning to be de-
bated. A great many of those on Labor's side— the
winning side— are still too intent upon enjoying the
fruits of victory to do much viewing with alarm. But
always, in any great movement, there are those who
are able to pause and take a long look ahead. Some of
them now believe that the Act must be modified or
else the government will completely rule Labor.

Labor must wait for developments. While it waits,
it may well call attention to its own tremendous
growth and present strength. Today it has nearly
eight million members. At the time the Act was
passed there were no more than half that many.

105

CHAPTER XV
LABOR AGAINST ITSELF

THOUGH some of the obstacles of earlier years
have been cleared away, suspicious public opin-
ion, unfriendly employers, and questionable legisla-
tion still clutter the route. And then, as if these
handicaps were not enough to slow progress, unions
frequently stir up quarrels among themselves.

Most of these conflicts can be traced back to in-
ternal or "office" politics. Foreign labor movements
expect them as a matter of course, and some of their
unions have two secretaries, one for external affairs
and one for internal affairs. But in American Labor,
problems come finally to a single executive. He has
been elected by the members, and he fights for those
who elected him. He may not care so much for the
opinions or the welfare of the members of other
unions who cannot vote to keep him in office.

It must be admitted at the outset that unions are
not perfect agencies at best, and that their officials
are not perfect men. All members are men who were
chosen by employers to do their work. Members, these
same workers, become union officials. Industry is free
to go anywhere to find executives of outstanding
ability: Labor is restricted to its own membership.

106

The wonder is, under the circumstances, that it has
developed such high standards of statesmanship and
integrity in leaders chosen from industry's employ-
ment rolls.

Internal conflicts, moreover, are usually over jobs
that mean bread and butter. The question of right
and authority may be dumped overboard in a battle
between two unions, each fighting for jobs for its own
members.

The twenty-year fight between Carpenters and
Sheet Metal Workers was a fight for jobs. Sheet metal
came along as a substitute for wood in the windows
and trim of buildings. Where carpenters had had the
field to themselves, sheet metal workers invaded with
a new material. One union was fighting for jobs for
carpenters and the other for jobs for sheet metal work-
ers; and the leaders on both sides fought for their
men with everything they had.

107

That conflict was an extreme case of internal poli-
tics which had its start in the formation of two oppos-
ing blocs. For there are blocs in organized labor as
well as in Congress and legislatures. Go into any con-
vention of either the A.F. of L. or the C.I.O., and you
will find blocs. We imported the word, but surely we
didn't import the idea. A bloc is a group, and a group
is "our crowd" or "our gang" against all the others.

In the American Federation of Labor, according to
what has come to be something like a tradition, there
is the "executive council crowd." In conventions it
tries to hold its votes together against opposition. This
executive council unity is not as real today as it was
when Samuel Gompers ruled with a twelve-man coun-
cil. Now it is an eighteen-man council. A lot of dis-
agreement may creep in among eighteen men, and
frequently does.

Blocs may expand into alliances. In the building
trades field, for example, there has been an alliance
of the Electrical Workers, the Bricklayers, and the
Carpenters, standing shoulder to shoulder in a solid
wall against all comers. Its aim has been largely to
protect the jurisdictions of these three unions, and it
has done a thorough job.

Some observers look upon blocs, groups, and alli-
ances as wicked affairs, which is a good deal of non-
sense. They spell power. All power, of course, may be
abused. Unions have abused power; they have acted
unfairly against one another and against employers
and the public on more than one occasion. But the

108

same thing has been said of Congress, of the President,
and of the Supreme Court.

There is another point for the critics of Labor to
consider. Many things that seem against public pol-
icy, Labor welfare, or even idealistic thinking, have a
basis of sound reason. Often it lies in the normal re-
action of human beings to the influences which sur-
round them. So when a union drive smashes up, as
it does now and then when it goes too far in its effort
to better the condition of workers, human nature
may be the explanation.

Whatever the human weakness that brought about
the failure, the record as a whole is not changed any
more than failure changes records in the general
business world. Bankruptcies should always be com-
pared with successes. Union shortcomings and cussed-
ness—even including contract violation— should
likewise be compared with union achievement and
uprightness.

Unions are human agencies, more human than
commercial institutions, because they concern them-
selves wholly with the fate and welfare of human be-
ings. They don't sell things by the pound or yard.
They deal with wages, hours of work, shop rules and
regulations. They express the angers and passions and
fears and desires of men.

Internal politics, yes. Internal fights, yes. But what
else can you expect? Union meetings and conventions
often produce intense jealousies and opposing points

109

of view. Shall we do this, or shall we do that? Are we
for this, or are we for that? Are we for Brother X, or
are we for Brother K? These situations are common
enough, but in spite of them the vast bulk of union
business goes smoothly and in good order, with little
bad feeling, and with a great deal of dignity. Count
the abuses and mischief all you like, and you still
have a record of achievement that is brilliant, that
shines, that is a credit to the understanding and in-
telligence of the workingman.

Union members deserve more praise than they get.
They are not college men, remember; not business
men, not professors, not members of Congress. They
are wage-earners, usually meeting after a day at the
lathe, a day pouring hot metal, a day "on the wall,"
or a long hard day swinging a hammer. Certainly,
they are sometimes responsible for wrongs, abuses,
mistakes, and all the sources of internal dissenion.
But these workers— good enough for the boss to hire
—are human to the core. Could the critics do a better
job in a movement of millions?

CHAPTER XVI
LABOR AND THE WORLD PICTURE

THE international Labor map of today is a sorry
thing. Do as I have done lately: Take a map of
the old world and divide it into parts. Color in black
those nations with dictatorial or totalitarian govern-
ments. Paint in red the portions dominated by Com-
munism. Leave white those nations in which free
Labor movements still exist. The result is an area in
which the white is about the same size, in proportion
to the whole, as your thumb is to your whole hand.

That gives some idea of the problem American
Labor faces in its international affiliations. There is
precious little territory left to free Labor, and of that
little some seems always on the verge of slipping into
either black or red.

Now, take the map of the western hemisphere and
color it in the same way, using gray instead of black
for the areas in which unknown conditions exist. The
United States and Canada remain white. Puerto Rico
remains white. Costa Rica remains white. There are
white flashes in the Argentine, in Brazil, and in Chile.
Here and there, a bit of the white appears elsewhere.
Mexico is white. From Mexico south, however, black
and gray are dominant. Where white shows now, there

111

is no assurance that it will hold its own. Even Mexico
is doubtful. Whether it can escape in safety from the
pressure of black and red influences cannot be known
at this hour.

Now, where does American Labor fit into the world
picture? The answer to that question is complicated,
because often it may seem that American Labor is a
misfit in the scheme of things over the civilized world.
That would be more nearly true if it were not for the
fact that the world Labor picture has often been a
crazy quilt.

There are several world-wide Labor organizations.
With some of them, we need not bother. Few of them
have ever had any effect upon conditions in the
United States or upon the course of American Labor.
Today, the organizations of principal importance are,
starting from the left, the Communist International,
the International Federation of Trade Unions, the
International Labor Organization, and the Pan Amer-
ican Federation of Labor.

The Communist International reaches into the
United States through the Communist Party in this
country and through other organizations affiliated in
one way or another, directly or indirectly, with Rus-
sian Communism. These affiliates of Communism are
numerous, though often the relationship is well hid-
den.

The American Federation of Labor has been, off
and on, a member of the International Federation of
Trade Unions, since before the World War. Whether

112

this connection will continue is a question. Actually,
the affiliation is the result of a sense of duty much
more than of any emotional desire for international
Labor solidarity. American Labor never has been
very emotional about such things. The threat to our
standard of living by immigrants and by imported
products has also helped to kill any flaming desire
for international labor unity.

The International Labor Organization, which is
associated with the League of Nations, has a real
value to American Labor. This lies in the collection
of statistics and other information concerning world
conditions, which are given out freely and regularly.
The organization's record is one of achievement— but
in Europe, not in the United States.

The labor movement of the United States has not
had close relations with Labor in many of the Latin
American lands, except in Puerto Rico, which is a
part of this country. When the United States troops
occupied Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American
War, they found there a person named Santiago Igle-
sias. Born in Spain, Iglesias would have been a "don"
had he remained in his native country. But as an
intellectual rebel against oppression and autocracy,
he found his way to Cuba and thence to Puerto Rico,
where he served as an interpreter for the general staff
of the United States Army during its occupation.

Iglesias became, in time, a champion of American
institutions and American freedom. Out of his passion

for such things he gave to his family of ten children
such names as America, Light, Liberty, Justice, all
much more musical and attractive in Spanish than in
English. Samuel Gompers selected him as an organ-
izer, and under Santiago Iglesias' guidance the Free
Federation of Workers of Puerto Rico was formed, as
an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor,
under a common flag.

Entirely apart from the amazing accomplishments
of this organization of Labor for its members, no
other factor has been more potent in promoting
Puerto Rican understanding of United States institu-
tions. In the records of statecraft, this factor has not
been noticed. But it has been recognized by the
Puerto Rican people. Today, Santiago Iglesias sits in
the United States Congress as Resident Commissioner
from Puerto Rico.

The friendship between American Labor and the
organized workers of Mexico has been cemented by
the help they have given each other. During the revo-
lution of 1914 the Mexican unions signed a contract
with General Carranza, leader of the rebels, agreeing
to furnish men and supplies. In return, Carranza
promised to give Labor a favored place in the reborn
Mexican nation.

Whenever possible, the workers of each" trade
formed a separate army unit. Regiments of carpen-
ters, of masons, of printers, and so on fought in the
battles of the revolution.

Carranza won, and lived up to his bargain. The
114

present Mexican constitution, adopted in 1917, con-
tains what is probably the most advanced Labor code
in the world.

A copy of the remarkable contract between Car-
ranza and the unions was brought back to Samuel
Gompers by a printer named John Murray, who was
one of Labor's most talented diplomats. American
Labor became enthusiastically interested in the move-
ment among the workers across the Rio Grande.

Ever since that time American and Mexican Labor
organizations have cooperated closely. During the
World War the A.F. of L., through its Mexican
friends and associates, was able to do much toward
putting down the activities of German agents oper-
ating in Mexico. The Mexican workers saw clearly
that their best friends were in the United States, not
in Germany.

Out of this joint effort grew the Pan American
Federation of Labor, which included unions from
many other Latin American nations. Though this
organization has not been active for six years, Amer-
ican and Mexican Labor have kept up their old, close
association.

There are indications that the Pan American Fed-
eration of Labor may be revived. But organized
Labor in the Spanish-speaking countries is divided.
In the Argentine, for instance, there are at least three
distinct Labor movements, with three different phi-
losophies. The situation in other countries to the
south is almost as confused. But this does not change

the relation of American Labor to these countries,
because it has not been closely associated with Labor
organizations in any of them except Mexico.

As for "right" or "left" in Latin America, Amer-
ican Labor has only said to the peoples of those lands:
"We do not wish to interfere in your form of organi-
zation. What you decide upon in your own country
is your own affair. Your policies, likewise, are your
affair. The rights we reserve for ourselves, we hold
inviolable for you." But there has been one qualifi-
cation: American Labor refuses to associate with
Labor movements opposing democracy.

Harsh words have been said about union leaders
who sought tariff protection hand in hand with em-
ployers. But where the employers saw business men-
aced by large importations from low-wage countries,
the unions and their leaders saw jobs being rubbed
out.

Unions care little for the various schools of thought
dealing with international trade. That some econo-
mists say a loss in one place may be offset by a gain
in another has no appeal for them.

Immigration of workers threatened the standards
of Labor in the past, and Labor fought until it
checked immigration. The products of foreign low-
wage countries threatened its standards again, and it
fought for tariffs. There is no difference on that score
between the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O. The United
Mine Workers have fought against coal imports as

116

vigorously as glass blowers have fought importation
of coolie-wage glassware.

Exactly the same hostility is felt against products
which come from low-wage sections of our own coun-
try. South-to-North flow of manufactured goods and
the North-to-South flow of factories has caused a full
share of bitterness. And the battles before N.R.A.
deputies found unions lined up with all guns unlim-
bered to fight off differentials in wage-and-hour
standards between the two sections.

Actually, of course, there can be no such thing as
an American standard of living because conditions in
this country range all the way from the most primi-
tive to the most luxurious. For general purposes,
however, it is customary for newspaper editors, public
speakers, and Labor itself to attempt some definition.
In general, this standard is probably that enjoyed by
skilled mechanics. But, whatever may be thought of
as the measuring stick, American Labor defends it
vigorously before any attack, whether it is a wage
reduction at home or the importation of coolie prod-
ucts from the Orient.

In its relation to world economy, Labor in the
United States is not following any carefully worked-
out program. It deals with these problems just as it
attacks its domestic problems. It takes them as they
come and adopts whatever policies and tactics seem to
promise most.

117

CHAPTER XVII
LABOR LOOKS AT THE NEW DEAL

relation between Labor and the laws passed
under the New Deal is more important than any
other concern, however dramatic—even the struggle
between the A.F. of L. and C.I.O. The understand-
ing of Labor's new position develops slowly. When
it has fully dawned we may have a new kind of state,
or a furious demand for change in the law.

Look backward for a moment, to the years just
before the coming of the New Deal. Labor was fight-
ing abuses. It felt oppressed by the courts, harried
by spies and fake detective agencies. Recently the
La Follette Civil Liberties Committee has been re-
vealing the depths of spy infamy and brutality. But
that story of spies, thugs, strikebreakers, is an old one
to veteran Labor men. I remember how they tried to
smash a new streetcar men's union thirty years ago.
"Operative K reports that he followed So-and-So to
his home ..."

The ancient wrongs have been outlawed. We have
laws intended to give legal approval and protection
to all the rights which Labor has fought for. The
National Railway Act, the National Labor Relations
Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Maritime Act

118

with its Labor board, the Civil Aeronautics Act with
its Labor board, and the Walsh-Healey Act— these are
the most far-reaching and important.

Can there be any quarrel with the way in which
these laws affect the country? Of course there can.
Some employers are not satisfied. But has Labor a
complaint? To some extent, Labor now complains.
How much louder and stronger the complaints will
become remains to be seen. It is possible that Labor
will finally conclude that the gains are worth the
cost.

But mark these facts: Before the new laws came,
Labor itself could decide what its rights were. Often
it could not enjoy them, but in fighting for its rights
Labor was moving toward a goal of its own choosing.

Labor's own definition of its rights grew out of its
experience. Its objectives were based upon history
and forged in conflict. And Labor's idea of its rights
changed with the changing nature of industrial life.
Also, they were easy to describe and define without

benefit of legal sanction and lawyers' language.

The government has taken Labor's plain, under-
standable statements of its rights and spun them out
into long, wordy statutes that only lawyers can rriake
sense of. And the new laws have taken away Labor's
right to decide, in future, what its rights are. Actu-
ally, they have taken away the right to define certain
terms by which men live.

No one can force a government agency such as the
National Labor Relations Board to protect any right
until the Board itself has decided that the right ex-
ists within the meaning of the law. The Labor Rela-
tions Board may define a strike and decide whether
or not one exists. The Board may decide when and
if a union contract is valid. You do not know the
extent or meaning of the National Labor Relations
Act unless you know the rules under which its Board
holds its hearings and makes its key decisions. And if
you follow the development of these rules of pro-
cedure and study the decisions, you will see that the
law reaches into the shop where the worker stands at
his job, and may affect his way of life.

If, as happens, this great power now and then is
controlled by inexperienced theorists and impractical
people, it may seem to be solving Labor's problems.
But it may actually be raising hob with the unions
and with the lives of their members, hurting, not
helping the men, who really know something about
practical, workable relations between government
and industry.

120

If we find the desire to control gradually growing
out of the desire to protect, we need not think it
strange. Many lessons of history show us what to
expect from governments that are given power to
regulate the life and work of the people. There is a
real danger that the agencies set up by law to protect
Labor may cut its rights down to something less than
Labor thinks its rights should be.

Of course, Labor's faith in democracy is its hope.
If it finds that laws— even laws intended to be good
—are working hardships instead of furthering prog-
ress, its votes may be powerful enough to change
them.

Anything can happen as Labor comes marching
down the road with new strength. But unless it loses
everything that has been bred into it by American
heritage, unless it forgets all it has learned through
years of struggle, unless it hauls down every flag flung
to the breeze over its thousands of meeting halls,
Labor will not yield its right to freedom.

That is the important thing. Internal squabbles
may be overlooked, for American Labor is after all
American Labor, whether Federation or C.I.O. The
way of its life is about the same in both groups. There
isn't a dime's worth of difference in their handling
of negotiations and agreements. They all work to get
for the worker groceries for his table, rent for his
house, clothes for his back, hours of freedom, and a
reserve for wisdom or foolishness.

But deep in the teaching of all Labor unionism in

121

America, except in those spots where Communism
speaks, the desire for Freedom is the most powerful
impulse; this impulse can be driven back, it can be
hurt and discouraged; but as long as life keeps on,
human freedom within a free nation will be Labor's
demand upon employer or government.

The greatest obstacle to freedom is the one which
gets written into law. Today the law, strangely
enough, has harnessed its charter of freedom with the
trappings of regulation and restraint. It may fit the
needs. It may turn out to resemble accepted self-
control. But unless it does, Labor's next crisis may
come in the fight for freedom from the very laws
which sent it surging forward in the first phase of the
New Deal. There is the next point to watch along
the road.

The PEOPLES LIBRARY, a series planned and edited
by a committee of the American Association for Adult
Education, offers introductory books for every reader who
wants to understand new fields of knowledge. Members
of the committee are Charles A. Beard, historian, Morse
A. Cartwright, American Association for Adult Educa-
tion, George P. Brett, Jr., the Macmillan Company, and
Lyman Bryson, Columbia University.

All volumes are like this one in format and priced at
sixty cents.

BOOKS PUBLISHED IN THE
SPRING OF 1939

1. Let Me Think. By H. A. Overstreet

2. Which Way America? By Lyman Bryson

3. Here Comes Labor. By Chester M. Wright

4. They Worked For A Better World. By Allan Seager

5. Who Are These Americans? By Paul B. Sears

6. The Attractive Home. By Lydia Powel

BOOKS TO BE PUBLISHED
IN THE FALL OF 1939

7. Picture of Health. By James Clarke

8. Everyday Economics. By Mildred Adams

9. Science You Live By. By John Pfeiffer

10. The Way Out Of War. By Lyman Bryson

11. How Criminals Are Caught. By Arnold Miles

12. Statesmen in Strife. By George Genzmer

=lll=IIIEIM=lll=lll=lll=lll=llt=i

Toet's Corner I

* I

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BOOKS - GIFTS
STATIONERY

20 So. Oakland Ave.
Pasadena, Calif.

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