A. F. of L. Week

President William Green of the American Federation of Labor, & colleagues, spent an active week and filled many headlines.

Coal. The A. F. of L. week began with an interview at the fountainhead of executive intervention, the White House, where President Green & colleagues set forth the three great grievances of striking bituminous coal-miners--police brutality, suppression by injunction and "gigantic conspiracies" by the Interests (railroads, power companies, banks) to depress coal prices and crush union labor (TIME, Nov. 28). They asked President Coolidge to call a conference of miners and operators; and to suggest that Congress investigate police strikebreaking, injunctions, conspiracies.

President Coolidge was sympathetic but hesitant. He did not appear to have the soft coal situation at his executive fingertips. He said he would consult Secretary of Labor Davis and urged his callers to do likewise. He said he could not very well call a conference of Labor and operators without the latter signifying their willingness. He lacked authority to intervene unasked.

Next day, after Cabinet meeting, the President was more versed in coal complexities. The industry, it seemed to him, was undergoing a period of adjustment. Supply had outrun demand. Small operators, or operators with large overhead, were pinched by competition and could buy coal more cheaply than mine it. These, apparently, were reasons why the operators had abrogated the Jacksonville minimum wage agreement of 1924. Secretary of Labor Davis had asserted in October, at the A. F. of L. convention in Los Angeles, that the coal industry is overmanned by 300,000 men (TIME, Oct. 17).

The A. F. of L. men scarcely concealed their thoughts. President Coolidge had, they guessed, heard the operators' point of view from Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, whose interests control the Pittsburgh Coal Co., which was among the first to depart from the Jacksonville agreement.

Secretary of Labor Davis, however, had evidently been given full charge of bituminous ambiguities. Secretary Davis listened all one afternoon to blocky, shock-headed President John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, whom he told he was "going to get busy with both sides at once." Director Hugh L. Kerwin of the Department of Labor's conciliation board, was another attentive listener to President Lewis. President Daniel Willard of the Baltimore & Ohio R. R. said, during the coaldusted week: "I cannot speak for the other railroads*, but as far as the Baltimore & Ohio is concerned I can say that we have never attempted to regulate the price of coal." Green on Injunctions. The United Press invited President Green of the A. F. of L. to write on strike injunctions. He wrote: "The American Federation of Labor and its 4,000,000 members have become alarmed at the action of certain judges. . . ." He cited injunctions written by Judges Schoonmaker and Langham of Pennsylvania, who viewed Labor Strikes as restraints of trade. He cited the Clayton amendment to the Sherman Anti-Trust act, which says:

". . . The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the anti-trust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purpose of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organization from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof, nor shall such organizations or members thereof be construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under the anti-trust laws."

The phrase which weakens this supposed warrant for strikes is, of course, . . . "lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects. . . ."

Green on 5-Day Week. President Green was invited to speak at a convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, in Manhattan. He spoke about the five-day working week--how it had been proven economically sound, how worker-productivity had been increased (by machinery) while manufacturing costs had decreased; how the A. F. of L is determined to have the five-day week adopted by U. S. industries generally. "The Right To Organize." President Green busied himself in Manhattan and called Vice President Matthew Woll, lawyer and injunction expert of the A. F. of L., to aid the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes. This union had been enrolling as members of a new chapter the employes of the Interborough Rapid Transit Co. The company, having already established a Brotherhood of I. R. T. Employes, maintained that its employes were already in a position for collective bargaining of their services and any effort to unionize them constituted conspiracy against their wage contract with the company. The company sought an injunction against the alleged conspirators. Lawyer Woll, U. S. Senator-elect Robert F. Wagner of New York and other counsel for the Union men, prepared to show that there was no union conspiracy because there was no valid contract between the company and the Brotherhood which it had formed. The Brotherhood was a creature of the company and in contracting with it the com-pany was contracting with itself. Furthermore, argued the unionists, the injunction sought by the I. R. T. would abrogate the basic principle of trade unionism--namely, the right of Labor to organize. Strike Suits. From Pittsburgh came news that coal companies were going to sue the United Mine Workers for some $1,000,000 damages and expenses alleged to have been suffered by the companies when striking miners refused to evacuate the houses they rented from the companies. Unionists boiled when they learned that among the expenses which the companies sought to collect was pay for the strikebreaking police against whose "brutality" they have been loudly protesting (TIME, Nov. 28).

*Other roads accused by the A. F. of L. were the Pennsylvania, the New York Central.